The DEY

Though the three members of the DEY had not shared a childhood, their overlapping personal tastes and musical leanings drew them together the moment their paths crossed. MC Divine, raised in the South Bronx before relocating to Puerto Rico in 1998, first encountered vocalist Élan Luz Rivera—who had grown up in New York and made her Broadway debut at sixteen as Cookie in The Capeman—at Miami’s Soulfrito Festival in the early 2000s while both were on the bill. They reconnected in 2005. By then Divine had already teamed with Puerto Rican MC Yeyo, who had stirred the island’s underground hip-hop circuit in 1999 with the politically charged single “Viequez”; the pair bonded so quickly that they cut a track the same night it met, which soon reached radio. Adopting the name the DEY, the trio convened in Yeyo’s Miami studio to shape a blend of urban R&B, Latin, hip-hop, and pop aimed at listeners across cultures and languages. After signing with Epic, they tracked material slated for both the 2007 EP The DEY Has Come and a subsequent full-length album, having already contributed songwriting and vocals to Paula DeAnda’s “Walk Away.”