Young Grin, born Idelson Grin Hiraldo and billed as El Bolígrafo Letal, is a Dominican rapper, songwriter and producer from Puerto Plata. He has been working the north coast since he was a teenager and has stayed independent throughout.

The north coast

Dominican rap is written about as a Santo Domingo story, occasionally as a Santiago one and now and then as a San Pedro one. Puerto Plata does not appear in it. It is a tourist coast with a port and a cable car, and its music is assumed to be whatever the hotels are playing.

He named a song after the city and put it in the middle of his album, which is what a rapper does when the place is the point. He started at fifteen with his cousin Neikon and the two of them worked as a duo before he went out alone.

El Bolígrafo Letal

The album came out in 2014 on his own imprint and he produced it himself. Eleven tracks, most with guests from the same coast: Eres Dios, To’ Se Va A Quedar, I Live To My Way, Puerto Plata, Es Porque Te Amo, Judas Iscariotes, Carta A Mi Familia, La Única En Mi Vida, Sal Del Juego, Uno Eh Seixy.

The titles say what kind of rapper he is. Judas Iscariotes and Eres Dios on one record with Carta A Mi Familia, a letter to his family — this is a writer working religion, betrayal and obligation rather than money and cars. The nickname he gave himself, the lethal ballpoint, is about the pen.

He also made a documentary about the album, which is an unusual amount of self-archiving for an artist at his scale. A second album, Sentimiento Urbano, is credited to him and Neikon together.

Independent, and largely unheard

He says he has more than a thousand unreleased songs, and describes himself as a graduate and a polyglot. Those are his own claims and there is no way to check either, but the volume is at least consistent with a catalogue full of numbered uploads and freestyles.

He has been interviewed on Dominican urban radio and on local television in Puerto Plata, and beyond that there is almost nothing written about him. That is the ordinary condition of a rapper who never moved to the capital: the work exists, the audience is local, and nobody outside the province has been asked to notice.