DJ Scuff, born William Jr. Walther Jiménez, is a Dominican DJ and producer. He has been running a channel since 2006 and what he does on it has become an institution: he gives new artists a beat and films them rapping over it.

The freestyle

Scroll his uploads and they are all the same shape. A name, the word freestyle, and his own. Defensa Peluche, Venty4, El Zombi 15, Yoan Retro, Yisoz, Tower Felonia, Young Say, Masha, Colchito La Pampara, Código TR, Coco Twelve, Cori Problema, Yeiti Snow — dozens of them, most of whom nobody outside the barrios had heard of the week before.

That format solves a specific Dominican problem. There is no label system to sign an unknown, no radio that will play one, and no venue circuit that pays. What there is instead is a DJ with a camera, a beat and an audience, and a slot on his channel is the closest thing the scene has to a record deal.

He has had Lismar on it, which shows the range: the series is not only for beginners, and an established rapper doing a Scuff freestyle is making a point about where she comes from.

Dembow de Mafu

He was making records before he was making other people’s careers. Dembow de Mafu, from 2009, is the one that changed his standing, and it arrived at exactly the moment dembow was turning from a barrio sound into the country’s dominant music — the years just before El Alfa took it worldwide.

The aliases are from that period. Scuff Selecta is a sound-system name, the kind a Jamaican selector uses, and Ma Que Kracha is the other kind entirely. Both tell you he came up playing to rooms rather than to algorithms.

The other side of the booth

He produces and he sings on his own records, and the credit lines carry his legal name and his own publishing company, which means he has been paying attention to who owns what — not a universal habit in this genre.

He also signed with one of the Dominican urban media groups, which is the arrangement most successful Dominican DJs end up in: the DJ becomes a platform, the platform becomes media, and the music is one of several things it produces.

What is worth noticing is how many careers pass through him and how few of them will ever say so. A freestyle on his channel is a first credit, and a first credit is the hardest one to get.