Charanga Habanera’s early albums are dominated by songs written by three composers who would later become the leaders of three of timba’s greatest bands, yet another testament to Calzado’s ability to spot talent. After Piloto’s "Me Sube la Fiebre", Limonta’s "Extraños Ateos", and a change of pace bolero, "Felicidad", we come to the first contribution of Manuel González Hernández, who would later attain supreme popularity in Cuba as "Manolín, el Médico de la Salsa". We’ll have a lot more to say about Manolín when we get to his pages, but in 1992, still over two years from his meteoric rise to stardom, he was simply a medical student who had written an obscure but beautiful song for NG La Banda ("Vuela Paloma") and was about to write four of Charanga Habanera’s greatest hits, the first being "Te La Voy a Liquidar".

Manolín was not blessed with great singing ability, but from the start he had a genius for turning a phrase, whether it be a lyric or a melody. As Pablo Menéndez of Mezcla puts it, “he has a nose for a hit”. The cuerpo of "Te la voy a liquidar", beautifully rendered by Vera, is full of grace and hooks. Listen to the phrase at 0:42 ("Tú fuiste, mi vida, mi esperanza") - most writers would go down a note on the final note of "esperanza" and let that nice, but overused sequence play itself out to create a pleasant but predictable melody. But Manolín keeps the final note the same and then repeats the phrase yet a third time before turning it into something really beautiful at 0:50. At 1:06 the first coro and bloque lift us from melodic pop into pure timba. The second coro, "Ya tú no eres na’ " [audio example 10] is an early ancestor of one of the coros from "Todo Fue Mental" [audio example 11] from Manolín’s 1997 masterpiece, "De buena fe". Vera masterfully rides the energy level up and down through a great series of vocal breakdowns and coros, the last of which, “vuélvela a liquidar" [audio example 12] shows the influence of NG La Banda’s "Por que tú sufres con lo que yo gozo".[audio example 13] While it's interesting to find these similarites, it's actually more amazing that Charanga Habanera and NG had so little in common, being as they were the first two major proponents of timba. This trend continued with Paulito, Issac, Manolín, Klimax, Bamboleo, Manolito, Azúcar Negra, and of course Van Van. Each has a drastically different flavor and unique creative approach.