O.G. Black — Adolfo Ramírez Bruno, born in San Cristóbal on 14 February 1976 — is a Dominican rapper. He was taken to Puerto Rico at five years old and became one half of Master Joe & O.G. Black, one of the duos that built reggaetón.

A Dominican in the Puerto Rican underground

He started recording rap while the genre still lived on cassette. His voice is on the Playero tapes, the underground compilations out of San Juan that are the founding documents of reggaetón, alongside Daddy Yankee, Wiso G, Ranking Stone and Master Joe.

That is worth stating plainly. The history of reggaetón is normally told as a Puerto Rican story with Dominicans arriving twenty years later, and there was a Dominican inside it from the beginning.

Master Joe & O.G. Black

The duo with Master Joe — Joel Hernández Rodríguez — ran from 1997 to 2006 across Dream Team Killer, Pina Records, Ole Music and Diamond Collections.

Francotiradores came in 2000 and Francotiradores 2 the year after, then Sabotage in 2004 and Los K-Becillas in 2005. Bailen Yackien, Mi Locura with Noriega, Mil Amores and Matadora are the songs people still name; Metimos Las Patas, Banshee Robao, Tú Naciste Pa’ Mí and D’ Abuso belong to the same run.

They were part of DJ Joe’s Escuadrón del Pánico, the collective that also held Ranking Stone, Trébol Clan, Genio and Guayo Man, and they managed and brought up other artists from inside it.

After the duo

He had already made Bajo Tu Observación in 1996 with Q Mac Daddy. After the split he made La Hora Cero in 2009 with Guayo “El Bandido”, and in 2013 he released Imparable and Back to the Underground: El Francotirador Edition — the sniper of the album titles being the name he has carried since 2000.