Though the trio of musicians who make up the DEY didn't grow up together, their interests, both personal and musical, were similar enough that when they eventually met they knew immediately that they should work together. MC Divine, who was born and spent much of his life in the South Bronx but moved to Puerto Rico in 1998, had first met singer Élan Luz Rivera (who grew up in New York and made her first appearance on Broadway by age 16, when she played Cookie in the musical The Capeman) at Miami's Soulfrito Festival in the early 2000s, where they were both performing, but it wasn't until 2005 that they were introduced again. By this time, Divine had already hooked up with Yeyo, a Puerto Rican MC who had made splashes in the island's underground hip-hop scene in 1999 when he released the politically charged "Viequez," and with whom he had connected instantly (the night they met they recorded a song that ended up on the radio). Calling themselves the DEY, the three went into Yeyo's Miami studio, where they began working on their own material, a combination of urban R&B, Latin, hip-hop, and pop meant to have cross-cultural (and language) appeal. Signed to Epic, they began recording the tracks that would end up on both their EP, The DEY Has Come (2007), and their debut full-length, but not before co-writing and performing in singer Paula DeAnda's song "Walk Away." ~ Marisa Brown