Everybody knows that foreign artists can only have a hit in the States as long as they sing in English. Conversely, Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony are credited with spearheading a "Latin boom" not only in America, but all over the world, by singing poppish variations of Afro-Cuban styles in English, not Spanish. Think about it, especially if, like me, you don't trust any "Latin boom" that doesn't include Los Van Van.

Which is why we need Proyecto Uno now more than ever. All four members of this hip-hop merengue unit are New Yorkers who sing and rap in a dense mixture of Spanish and English but mostly the former, and it hasn't prevented them from becoming one of the hottest acts on dance-oriented radio, both Latin and non-Latin, in the northeastern U.S. Though merengue fans would prefer they stick to Spanish, and conventional radio programmers say they'd slot their singles if they put out more English versions, Proyecto Uno stick to their linguistic guns. And as any hip-hopper will tell you, being real is what it's all about.

More than half the crowd at the group's Shinjuku Liquid Room concert Nov. 21 was Latin American, ranging in age from teenagers to fiftysomethings. Several times, leader Nelson Zapata shouted out to the various nations of the Caribbean and Central and South America, and each call got a response, but the loudest came when Zapata mentioned his own birthplace, the Dominican Republic, which, after all, is the birthplace of merengue.