Tali Goya, born Juan Miguel Villar, is a Dominican rapper who bills himself El Rey del Norte. He was born in the country and raised in Washington Heights, and he raps in a mixture of English and Spanish that neither audience has to translate.

Singing Aventura on the subway

He was fourteen when he and Messiah put a reggaetón duo together. They started by performing Aventura songs on New York trains, which is the most literal possible description of working for an audience.

He was calling himself El A.K.A. then, on the strength of how he did in street freestyle competitions. The two of them were opposites — he was the hyperactive one, Messiah the sentimental one — and the duo worked because of it. Fua Sako, made with Lápiz Conciente, is from those years.

Tali y Messiah put out an EP on La Reina Records, and Mi Dimensión off it got into rotation on Mun2, MTV Tr3s and Music Choice. Between them they made something like eighty tracks and two mixtapes and never got a studio album out, because the label they were signed to did not have the equipment to make one. That is a specific and unglamorous way for a career to stall, and it is the reason a lot of that generation’s work exists only as loose files.

The tiradera as a career

What he does now is trap, and the form he works in most is the battle record. Manuelita and Anuel AAA are both aimed at Anuel AA. Kianna is aimed at Lito Kirino. Talitron takes on six Puerto Rican rappers in a single track.

This is worth taking seriously rather than treating as noise. Puerto Rico has owned Spanish-language trap since it existed, and a Dominican rapper who wants to be heard inside it has two options: be invited, or take it. He has spent years taking it, loudly enough that Anuel AA answers and Arcángel mentions him by name.

The records

Pum Pum, RPTM, Abaliao, Lock In, Sistema, La Caleta, Hablando M2, Lonchera, Trascendido. Moviendo Lo Kilo was cut with Chucky73, another Dominican out of New York, and distributed internationally. Di Lo Que Quieras put him with R1 la Esencia and Químico Ultra Mega.

He works through the label Tiger Gang, and the two flags he keeps next to his name — the Statue of Liberty and the Dominican one — are the whole position in two characters. He dresses the part too, in a way that gets written about as much as the music does. Neither the clothes nor the quarrels are the point. The point is that he is one of very few Dominicans holding a position inside a genre that was not built for him.