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DJ Laz Put Miami’s Sound on the Radio
He made records that sounded like the city around him. Then, from behind the microphone at Power 96, he helped more Miami artists find an audience.
A Miami bass record and a merengue song might have belonged to different radio worlds. DJ Laz heard a way to bring them together.
While working at Power 96, Laz mixed Clay D’s bass-driven “Boot the Booty” with Wilfrido Vargas’s “El Africano.” The combination caught on with listeners. In 1991, he developed the idea into “Mami El Negro,” adding a sample of Cuban comedian Álvarez Guedes and a rap performed by Danny D. Laz was the DJ and producer behind the record, not its rapper.
That distinction matters because it gets at what Lazaro Mendez did particularly well. He recognized sounds Miami already knew, put them in conversation and gave the result a place to be heard. “Mami El Negro” found an audience in Florida and Texas. It did not need to become a nationwide hit to prove that a record rooted in Miami’s mix of cultures could travel beyond it.
Laz grew up in a Cuban family in South Florida and began DJing as a teenager. Over more than two decades at Power 96, he became a familiar voice on the station. His records and his radio work fed each other: He understood what it took to make a track, and he had a daily connection to the people deciding what they wanted to hear again.
He kept experimenting. For 1996’s “Esa Morena,” Laz worked with rappers Daddy Celo and Trick Dog, who later performed as Truko. The track carried his blend of bass and Latin rhythms to listeners in Florida and Texas. He followed it with “Sabrosura” in 1998. These were dance records made for a local crowd, yet their reach showed how readily that sound could move.
His role in other artists’ careers deserves care. A radio DJ can put a record in front of thousands of people; the artist still has to make something they want to keep hearing. Trinere has recalled Laz as one of the Power 96 figures who supported her music. In 2001, Luther Campbell brought a young Pitbull to the station, where Laz recognized his potential and helped bring him to listeners. Those are meaningful connections without turning any one person into the sole author of another artist’s success.
The connection with Pitbull later came full circle. Pitbull’s 2007 song “The Anthem” drew on “Mami El Negro,” and the two collaborated on Laz’s 2008 single “Move Shake Drop.” A sound Laz had helped shape in the early 1990s was still finding its way into new Miami records.
For years, radio was one of the places where a city could hear its own music become part of everyday life. Laz used that reach as a performer, a producer and a DJ willing to make room for local artists. His contribution to Miami music history lives in the records he made, and in the records more people heard because he played them.