When did Peso Pluma realize he’d made it? Was it performing alongside Becky G at Coachella? Singing “Ella Baila Sola,” his collab with the group Eslabon Armado, on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon?” Was it at his sold-out April show — his first stateside performance — in Ontario, Calif., where he beamed as thousands of fans sang the lyrics of “Por Las Noches,” an early hit, back to him?
Or, perhaps, it hasn’t completely sunk in yet. The Guadalajara native is a swiftly rising star of regional Mexican music, which includes corridos, norteño, banda and other genres that have long been popular across Mexico and the Southwestern United States. Groups such as Los Tigres del Norte and Los Bukis routinely sold out arenas around Latin America and in the United States (particularly in heavily Latino Texas and California) in the decades leading up to the early aughts. In the streaming era, regional Mexican music has become increasingly popular beyond those borders, thanks to a new generation of artists eager to collaborate across genres. But it’s never really had a global star.
Peso Pluma, whose moniker translates to “featherweight” in Spanish, has emerged a likely contender for that title just three years after he began releasing music through Los Angeles-based indie label, El Cártel De Los Ángeles. (He’s now signed to Prajin Music Group, where he launched his own indie label, Double P Records, in April.) This year, eight of his songs have landed on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, where “Ella Baila Sola” (“She Dances Alone”) — written by Eslabon Armado’s Pedro Tovar — became the first regional Mexican song to reach the chart’s Top 10. (It is currently No. 1 on the global pop chart and, according to Spotify, has been streamed more than 465 million times). His most successful tracks include collaborations with Natanael Cano, whose 2019 breakout via Los Angeles indie label Rancho Humilde introduced “corridos tumbados” — a trap-infused approach to traditional corridos, narrative-based songs that have been popular since the Mexican revolution — and Mexican American pop singer Becky G.
“This is just the beginning for us,” Peso Pluma says in a brief interview with The Washington Post. Though the name “Peso Pluma” — sometimes shortened to “Doble P” (“Double P”) — refers to the singer himself, he tends to talk about Peso Pluma as “a project” or “team” that includes his cousin, songwriter-producer Jesús Roberto Laija García, and other frequent collaborators. This has added an air of mystery to the musician — real name: Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija — and his strong presence on the pop charts.
Peso Pluma is “one of the most explosive and exponential growth stories in the era of music streaming,” said Antonio Vázquez, head of U.S. Latin editorial at Spotify.
The singer’s rapid ascent can be attributed in part to the algorithm. Latin music has seen tremendous growth in the streaming era — the Recording Industry Association of America said in a recent report that Latin music revenue reached a record $1.1 billion last year — and regional Mexican is a particularly vast genre that lends itself well to curated playlists designed to help users discover more music. On Spotify, there are dozens of regional Mexican playlists that skew as niche as “corridos about horses.” TikTok has also been a boon for the evolving genre: “Ella Baila Sola” went viral on the platform following its release in March.
Peso Pluma stands out because of his distinctive voice — raspy beyond his 23 years and prone to trombone-like bursts. His verse on “Ella Baila Sola” begins with a hearty “Bella” that has inspired a slew of TikToks: “Say ‘Bella’ like Peso Pluma,” video creators beckon in various settings — with often hilarious results. Other videos on the platform seem to exist solely to unpack the mystery around Doble P, who somehow looks like both Will and Mike from “Stranger Things,” and sports a mullet that some fans clamor to copy. The artist doesn’t pay close attention to the memes but, he says, “I’m aware of what’s happening and I think it’s a big movement.”
The reach and aesthetic of regional Mexican music has expanded in the hands of Gen Z-ers who — like the genre’s newest artists — grew up listening to regional Mexican music and hip-hop, including (but not limited to) reggaeton. Fans and artists are coming from both sides of the border (Peso Pluma attended high school in San Antonio). “More than 50 percent of Latin music listeners are below the age of 30 years,” Vázquez said. “It’s a really young audience with a lot of purchasing power and a lot of consumption power.”
That power was on display this year at Coachella, which has continued to add more regional Mexican artists since 2019, when norteño group Los Tucanes de Tijuana became the first regional Mexican act to perform at the festival. Last year’s lineup included Cano (of Rancho Humilde fame), Grupo Firme and Banda MS. This year, Conexión Divina and Danny Lux took the stage. Becky G’s set featured appearances by several collaborators including Peso Pluma, Marca MP and Fuerza Regida’s Jesús Ortiz Paz.
Just days after Becky G and Peso Pluma performed their duet “Chanel” for the Coachella crowd, festival co-headliner Bad Bunny released a song with Grupo Frontera, a norteño band from McAllen, Tex. “Un x100to” (“One percent”), a tequila-drowned message to a lost love, quickly joined “Ella Baila Sola” on the Top 100 chart.
Bad Bunny previously teamed up with Cano for a remix of the Sonora native’s “Soy El Diablo.” Regional Mexican musician Danny Felix, who produced that track, has credited the Puerto Rican rapper with helping to popularize trap corridos. “That’s when the corridos tumbados picked up,” Felix told culture site Remezcla earlier this year. “It’s thanks to Bad Bunny because since then everybody was like, ‘It’s ok for us to do it because Bad Bunny did it already.’”
Cano later worked with veteran reggaetonero Nicky Jam on “Billetes,” which was produced by Play-N-Skillz, a production duo from Dallas. Felix co-wrote “200 Copas,” a corrido-style track that appeared on Colombian singer Karol G’s 2021 album “KG0516.” Her latest album, “Mañana Será Bonito” channels the singer’s love of mariachi into “Gucci Los Paños,” a song about heartbreak and very expensive tissues.
Bad Bunny’s collaboration with Grupo Frontera highlights the rate at which these not-so-regional genres are evolving. Grupo Frontera was just months out from their indie-released debut EP when the band’s lovesick “No Se Va” (“Won’t Go Away”) — a cover of a 2019 single by Colombian folk-pop group Morat — became only the fifth song by a regional Mexican act to reach the Hot 100.
“I think it was the seasoning that we put with the congas,” vocalist Juan Javier Cantú told Billboard of the song’s runaway success. “It doesn’t sound like your typical norteño song; in fact, it sounds like something fresh with that reggaeton vibe.”
“Un x100to” similarly melds norteño and cumbia rhythms with Bad Bunny’s rap-leaning vocals. Though regional Mexican and reggaeton are vastly different genres, it’s clear that música Mexicana is benefiting from cross-genre collabs similar to those that helped reggaeton and its offshoots Latin trap and urbano reach mass appeal.
“Regional Mexican was kind of the last genre to embrace that collaboration that is now standard in Latin music,” said Cobo. “The first ones to do that were the reggaetoneros, then kind of grudgingly, pop came aboard.”
Gerardo López, partner and president of programming at Costa Media, said he has seen increasing overlap between audiences consuming reggaeton and regional Mexican. That led López, a longtime programmer who has worked in both Mexico and U.S. radio, to experiment with a hybrid radio format that embraced both genres. Last year, Costa Media acquired the AM station WFAX, which now broadcasts Costa’s “La Pantera” station through an FM translator.
López said the most popular songs on La Pantera last month were “Ella Baila Sola,” “Un x100to” and Christian Nodal’s “Un Cumbión dolido,” which incorporates elements of cumbia ranchera and norteño.
Of the eight songs Peso Pluma currently has on the Hot 100, seven are collaborations. His solo hit, “Por Las Noches,” landed on the chart in March, nearly two years after the song’s initial release, boosted by a remix featuring Argentine rapper Nicki Nicole. After Peso Pluma hopped on a remix of fellow Guadalajara native Yng Lvcas’s reggaeton track “La Bebe,” that track surged in popularity, giving Yng Lvcas his first Billboard Hot 100 hit. Peso Pluma’s latest collab — with in-demand Argentine producer Bizarrap — was released on Wednesday.
A 10-minute Zoom call — sans camera because of a spotty connection from Mexico City — does little to dissolve the mystique around Peso Pluma. He cites Daddy Yankee, Tupac, Biggie, Kendrick Lamar and Jay-Z as artists he listened to growing up, along with regional Mexican icons including Ariel Camacho of Los Plebes del Rancho and corridos pioneer Chalino Sanchez. “And Nata,” he says, referencing Cano.
Though they rose to fame a generation apart, Sanchez and Camacho are both considered influential in narcocorridos, a controversial subset of the corridos genre that revolves around the drug trade in Mexico. Narcocorridos have been the subject of ongoing debate over whether they glorify cartel violence, and artists across the decades have been challenged about their contributions to the genre. “The corridos have always been very attacked and very demonized,” Peso Pluma told the Associated Press in April. “At the end of the day, it’s music ― you see it in rap, you see it in hip-hop, you see it in reggaeton.”
Peso Pluma has garnered criticism for his “corridos bélicones,” a term that refers to songs about war. In “El Belicón,” a collaboration with Raúl Vega that went viral on TikTok last year, Doble P sings about a collection of “carros deportivos” (sports cars) and “Minimis, Bazucas y Kalashnikovs.” “Siempre Pendientes” (“Always On Alert”) references “Señor Guzman” (as in Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, whose initials also appear in the song’s lyrics.) But those songs are only a portion of his proliferating catalogue: he can sing a romantic ballad such as “Por Las Noches,” elevate a reggaeton track like “La Bebe,” or cheekily bid farewell to a cooled relationship as he does on “Bye,” released Friday ahead of his forthcoming album, expected to drop this summer.
Vázquez, the Spotify executive, thinks that versatility is a large part of the reason Doble P is resonating with so many listeners. “I think Peso is just extremely authentic. He brings something new to the table — not only with his very particular voice — but also the songs that he’s making,” he said. “He can float around corridos with different themes — from rags to riches to telling stories about certain people in the culture … to a more romantic lyricism.”
Peso Pluma’s accomplishments have led to comparisons to Bad Bunny for obvious reasons — the Puerto Rican rapper, who broke out in 2018, has also achieved unprecedented accolades, including the first album of the year Grammy nomination for an all-Spanish album. But their music is very different, and there’s room for more than one star in the ever-growing Latin music landscape.
And, arguably, regional Mexican music now has more stars than ever: Nodal and Gera MX were the first regional Mexican act to reach the Hot 100 with “Botella Tras Botella.” Yahritza y Su Esencia, a trio of siblings from Yakima, Wash., have made waves with the viral hit “Soy El Único” and recently collaborated with Grupo Frontera on “Frágil.” The group is anchored by the powerhouse voice of 16-year-old Yahritza Martinez, one of few women working in regional Mexican decades after Tejano legend Selena and banda icon Jenni Rivera left their marks on the genre. Becky G is slated to release a regional Mexican album later this year.
“It’s great when one person does great because you have these shining lights on the chart. But when you have a movement, then you have a movement,” Cobo said. “It makes a big difference between something that’s sustainable and something that’s just like a flash in the pan.”
Peso Pluma will launch his first U.S. tour — the “Doble P Tour” — next week with a show in Seattle. He counts himself just “one of the Mexican artists” who have attracted singers from outside Mexican genres to collaborate. “I’m just so glad that our music is popping globally,” he says.
