Pitchfork Contributing Editor Isabelia Herrera’s column covers the most captivating songs, trends, and scenes coming out of Latin America and its diaspora.
On any given summer weekend in Brooklyn, you can roll up to a barbecue in Prospect Park and catch the magic of corridos up-close. On a dusty stretch of grass in the park’s southeast corner, families and friends celebrate birthdays, graduations, and good times with a slab of meat sizzling on the grill and a massive speaker on a plastic folding table blasting Peso Pluma. You can hear the 24-year-old’s voice at these daytime hangs, at the club, or, if you’re like me, at the after-parties where your friend insists on ending the night with drunken karaoke at 3 a.m. In 2023, the artist born Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija is everywhere, collecting billions of streams and spreading traditional Mexican sounds across the U.S. like never before.
Pluma is just one face in a much larger movement. Loosely assembled under the imprecise catchall term “regional Mexican,” artists like Fuerza Regida, Grupo Frontera, Eslabon Armado, Natanael Cano, and Yahritza y Su Esencia have been storming the charts. Decades after the category of regional Mexican emerged as a radio format in the middle of the 20th century, Pluma and Eslabon Armado’s “Ella baila sola” became the first regional Mexican Top 10 hit on Billboard’s all-genre Hot 100 in April; earlier this month, Pluma boasted 14 concurrent appearances on the same chart. While the subgenres that exist within the regional Mexican category—sierreño, corrido, norteño, banda, grupero, Duranguense, and others—have existed for decades (some for centuries), they have rarely appeared on the overall U.S. pop rankings.
And corridos tumbados, which have become the driving force of this commercial takeover, don’t sound like anything else on the charts either: Artists from both sides of the border are breaking through by combining the unabashed stunting of mainstream hip-hop and reggaeton with the rugged, sentimental sounds of traditional Mexican music. Instead of obvious pop hooks, you’ll hear trumpets, tubas, or a 12-string guitar, occasionally accompanied by trap snare rolls, a glossy dembow riddim, or a flurry of 808s. Rather than capitulating to the mainstream, they’re making the mainstream come to them.
The corrido is an oral tradition that dates back to the early 19th century; in the past, singers often used the style to narrate the realities of everyday rural and working-class people, chronicle military victories, or even document the stories of local heroes and criminals. As the genre evolved, a subgenre called narcocorridos, dedicated to lauding the infamy and exploits of drug traffickers, flourished. In the 1980s and ’90s, best-selling artists like Los Tigres del Norte, Los Tucanes de Tijuana, and Chalino Sánchez, whose songs sometimes immortalized smugglers and cartel leaders, helped popularize the music across the Mexican diaspora.
This generation includes many musicians who are Mexican American or grew up in border towns. Grupo Frontera, whose Bad Bunny collab “Un x100to” has more than 900 million streams on Spotify and YouTube combined, hails from Edinburg, Texas. Fuerza Regida formed in San Bernardino, California, and Eslabon Armado are also from the Golden State. Not only does this shift speak to the growth of bicultural, bilingual listeners in the U.S., it also represents the rare case of U.S.-born Latinx artists performing solely in Spanish. While this music has always had a place in diasporic Mexican communities, the current surge in U.S.-born artists making this music is refreshing.
These demographic changes are one ingredient in a much more complex recipe that has led to regional Mexican’s recent command of the pop charts. It helps that many corrido tumbado (also known as corrido bélico or trap corrido) artists have traded cowboy boots for Patek Philippe watches and limited-edition Nikes, updating the genre’s aesthetics for the present moment. And the usual suspects, like the decline of terrestrial radio and the transformative role that streaming platforms have played in the production and consumption of music over the last decade, have also been catalysts for its ascent. But like generations past, there’s still plenty of self-mythologizing—as well as the periodic lionization of a cartel leader.
The growth of other Spanish-language genres, like reggaeton, has likely pushed Spotify algorithms to introduce listeners to all kinds of sounds within another imprecise marketing category: Latin music. Moreover, global Latinx and English-language stars—including Snoop Dogg and Rauw Alejandro—have been co-signing regional Mexican acts over the last few years, undoubtedly contributing to its expansion.
At only 22, Natanael Cano is the godfather of corridos tumbados. When he was 16 and living in Hermosillo, Mexico, he uploaded his first track to YouTube, hitting a million views in a matter of months. In 2019, he signed to Los Angeles-based label Rancho Humilde, an imprint that became a creative hotbed for many artists in the genre, including Junior H and Fuerza Regida. Cano enamored a younger generation of listeners by preserving the gritty spirit of corridos while dabbling in trap beats and donning chains covered in VVS diamonds. He barged through the doors, welcoming a parade of scions to join him.
As the leading figure of today’s scene, the Guadalajara-raised Peso Pluma is an unlikely ambassador. For one, he is not from northern Mexico, where many of these genres were born. And with his shaggy mullet and ratty features, he doesn’t exactly look like a conventional pop star. But he is uncannily versatile, able to sing with the coarseness required to brag about moving product or the warmth necessary to sell a love song. On “Ella baila sola,” Pluma lusts after a gorgeous woman who dances by herself at a party, the rasp of his voice adding depth to his come-ons. And on his remix of Yng Lvcas’ “La bebe,” he glides into a fluid melody, his voice sailing over the reggaeton-lite beat. This malleability is present all over Pluma’s blockbuster album, GÉNESIS, which became Billboard’s highest-charting regional Mexican LP ever, debuting at No. 3 last month. The record is a victory lap that invites other major players, like Junior H, Natanael Cano, Jasiel Nuñez, and Grupo Frontera, to luxuriate in the riches they have amassed.
Still, not everyone is applauding this music’s infiltration into the Anglo mainstream. While the corrido tumbado tracks that end up summiting the charts are usually about sex, romance, or one-off trysts, there are still plenty of odes to drugs and cartel leaders. At the end of June, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador denounced corrido tumbado artists, chiding them for glorifying narco violence and promoting drug use. “We’re not going to censor them; they’re free,” he said. “But we’re not going to stay quiet when they say… that they have a .50 caliber weapon, and that their idols are the most famous narcos.”
“GÁVILAN II,” from GÉNESIS, is a narcocorrido in the purest sense, where Pluma and his guest Tito Double P sing from the perspectives of Sinaloa cartel members. They flaunt their FN SCAR rifles, throw enemies’ bodies into a mass grave, and visit kidnapped adversaries. In the second verse, Pluma and Double P reminisce about the Battle of Culiacán, a failed military operation to capture Ovidio Guzmán López, the son of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. They recall rising to the challenge to defend the kingpin’s progeny, even referencing the Guzmán family by name.
Meanwhile, Cano and Fuerza Regida’s “Ch y la pizza” is a tribute to the same cartel; its title alludes to La Chapiza, a term for the children of El Chapo, who have assumed command of the Sinaloa cartel since authorities captured their father in 2016. And a line from Peso Pluma and Junior H’s “El Azul” was recently censored on Spotify for mentioning blue fentanyl pills.
Last October, Pluma addressed such controversial lyrics directly in a video interview. He explained that many artists in the movement are paid by messengers or even cartel leaders themselves to pen songs that canonize drug traffickers. “There are people who call us and are like, ‘Hey, how much do you charge for a corrido?’” he explained. “It’s not that we’re supporting, or being apologists. It’s just work.”
It is a longstanding tradition within the genre for narcos to commission tracks. Cartels desire visibility, while artists depend upon the money. Sometimes, musicians face the threat of violent retaliation if they refuse to participate or rankle their patrons. In 2006, 27-year-old singer Valentín Elizalde was allegedly murdered by members of the drug trafficking gang Los Zetas. The singer Javier Rosas has been shot multiple times. The attacks on both artists have been rumored to be connected to their recording and performing songs about rival gangs.
Corridos tumbados have revived age-old conversations about popular music’s role in normalizing violence. The issue is complex—many see El Chapo as a kind of Robin Hood figure who provided resources to communities when the federal government failed them; others cannot condone the mass murder that the Sinaloa cartel has engendered. One thing is certain: Narcocorridos are a reflection of the drug war’s realities, not the cause of them.
As this music continues to flourish in the mainstream, one can only hope that it won’t continue to be labeled a “novelty” or “niche” sound—a story about Spanish-language music that has been told too many times in this country. It isn’t some blip in visibility or a fleeting trend. These songs soundtrack millions of people’s everyday lives. As long as there are drunken nights, headlong romances, and devastating heartbreaks, this music will endure.
