DJ Urba — Urbani Mota Cedeño, born in La Romana in 1980 — is a Dominican record producer and DJ. He is one of the architects of commercial reggaetón, and he built that career inside the Puerto Rican industry, which is why his name is better known to producers than to the Dominican public.

Los Jedis

From 2004 he worked as half of Monserrate & DJ Urba, also billed as Los Jedis, with the Puerto Rican Alex Antonio Monserrate Sosa. The pairing ran until 2010 across El Cartel Records and Mas Flow, the label built by Luny Tunes.

Daddy Yankee hired the two of them to produce Barrio Fino, released in 2004. It is the record that carried reggaetón out of the Caribbean and into the general market, it sold past two million copies, and it took the Latin Grammy for Best Urban Music Album in 2005. Barrio Fino en Directo followed in 2005.

The album most often named as the one that made reggaetón a global genre was produced by a man from La Romana, and the single that broke it, Gasolina, was built by two other Dominicans. Dominican hands shaped that record, and the credit for it has mostly gone elsewhere.

The catalogue

The pair worked steadily through the decade that followed: Wisin’s El Sobreviviente in 2004, Wisin & Yandel’s Pa’l Mundo in 2005, Los Vaqueros in 2006 and Los Extraterrestres in 2007, Ivy Queen’s Sentimiento in 2007 including its lead single Que Lloren, Tito El Bambino’s It’s My Time and later El Patrón, Nicky Jam’s The Black Carpet, Arcángel’s El Fenómeno, and records for Alexis & Fido, Héctor El Father, RKM & Ken-Y and Jowell & Randy.

Urba & Rome

After the split with Monserrate he formed a new duo with the Puerto Rican Luis Romero, known as Rome. They recorded as Urba & Rome and as Los Evo Jedis, worked out of Rimas Entertainment, and stayed together until 2024.

He returned to Daddy Yankee in that second run and produced Shaky Shaky, Hula Hoop and Dura. The album credits accumulated again — Wisin & Yandel’s Líderes and, a decade later, La Última Misión; La Fórmula; Arcángel’s Sentimiento, Elegancia & Maldad; Zion & Lennox’s Motivan2; Cosculluela’s Blanco Perla; Nicky Jam’s Fénix; Wisin’s Victory; Ozuna’s ENOC; Jowell & Randy’s Viva El Perreo; Ñengo Flow’s The Goat.

In 2020 the duo put out a record under their own names, Reggaetón de la Mata, going back to the sound of the genre’s first decade rather than tracking what was selling.