Peso Pluma Is Leading A Mexican Regional Moment On The Charts
Rihanna Cruz: We've seen a steady stream of Latin music on the Hot 100 for several years, but recent Hot 100 releases have seen particular growth in one particular category of Latin music, namely the Mexican region. . Twelve songs on the Hot 100 are now regionally Mexican. Anna, before we get to the heart of the matter, can you start with a brief explanation of what is considered regional Mexican?
Annamaria Sayer: Sure, start with the hard question. That's why some may call him a man. Actually it is not. It's literally what it sounds like: it refers to a group of species endemic to certain parts of Mexico. Here in the US it is easier to group them under one term that covers all species from northern Mexico as well as the southern US.
But what really ? A marketing term used by American record companies and executives who don't know what to do with music. These include nortinos , pandas , and corridos . These are species that have lived in northern Mexico for a long time. I think people are more aware of the difference now, but it's mostly a general term.
Charlie Harding: Anna, you call it simple. What is this radio format? A way to group different music into some sort of stream?
AS: Yes, exactly. You'll also hear people refer to it in different ways depending on where you are in the US. If you talk to anyone in Mexico, they would never introduce it like that because it doesn't mean anything to them.
Chris: While it's not a genre, is there a distinct sound we hear in regional Mexican music?
AS: You can hear an accordion, you can hear trumpets and trumpets and lots of brass sounds like that. 12-string guitars are quite different, and those vocal melodies come into play when you have more range.
One thing I would add is that the lyricism is generally very strong. There are always many descriptions. Heart Story In straight ranchera terms, you're drinking your man at the bar and he's wearing El Rancho shoes: "You left me blah blah blah." So the genre is in focus.
RC: There are many different subdivisions of common regional Mexican words. Can some of them be crushed?
AS: Yes, there are many. So you have a Band that sounds like the biggest thing, like when you think of Grupo Farm and 20 people on stage and they have a whole horn section and all the guitars.
RC: Matching suits.
AS: If you heard, you knew. It's kind of a big word. You have the Sierreño , which is a more simplified guitar base. If you know the artist Danilux, he has been doing a lot lately.
People will argue with me about it, my host Felix argues with me about it all the time, but Tejano technically fits the bill. You can think of many Tejanas, the most famous of course, Selena, who is more electric in style.
You have nortino, which is very mellow, but also kind of a cumbia sound. So there's really a lot of variety. Many of them are related to specific states of Mexico. It is associated with a people from a certain place, a region, a history and a heart.
Chris: It helps to hear what's going on in the charts because it's not just "12% of this music in all of Mexico," it's actually coming from different styles and sounds.
AS: It's been my goal for a long time to try to break it down a little more. It's interesting to see the different streaming platforms and how things react. Apple has a great playlist of what they call "Mexican Music." As they call it Mexican music. And like Mexican music was huge. It's just pieces.
Chris: There's definitely a variety of metal, punk, electronic music, all kinds of music in Mexico. So, yeah, it sounds like a loose blanket.
AS: Yeah, don't even get me started on the Chilango music scene . It's something else entirely.
RC: Mom, now before we get to the songs on the charts: why do you think regional Mexican music is having a moment? What is the reason for this momentum on the radio and charts?
AS: Partly it's because of the airwaves and young artists that make this genre so great, but my theory is that it's mostly because of the huge growth of this young Latino generation in the US, many of whom were born in the US. . . You have a whole young Latino generation listening to this music in the US. That is why we see such huge constructions.
Featherweight, for example, is now on tour and has been to Texas and California five times. It is about what happened in this country and how it gave birth to Mexico.
RC: Well, speaking of featherweights, that brings us to our first single, which peaked at #4 on the charts. It's called "Ella Baila Sola" and is a collaboration between Peso Pluma and another band called Eslabon Armado. Anna, how would you do it in the first place?
AS: The sleeper sits very comfortably in the bucket in the hallway.
Corridos have always been among the oldest, something your grandparents listened to. More melodic, smaller songs. Popularized in recent years by Nathanael Cano. He was the first young artist to introduce Tumbado to a wider audience. It's basically a mix of old hip hop and rap screams and vibes, mixed up and fast. Most of them have this da da da trumpet and you get the chorido tombado, which surprisingly is really nice.
Chris: I think it's amazing that a song can spend so many weeks in the top 10 of the Hot 100 and not actually feature pop production. We don't have electronics. There is no bass 808, not even a chorus or any actual repetition of words.
Obviously very anecdotal. As if my ears were full of hooks, oh I heard that hook. But it's always in the compilation of new songs and rarely in the charts. Modern listening is production. It's totally in your face: bright, aggressive. It sounds like a mash-up of a pop song, but it doesn't try to overdo it by taking the already great ones from the Hot 100. It is on its way.
AS: One hundred percent. The only surprising thing about the explosion in the region is that the last time we saw anything with a significant American presence in this space, people thought Selena. Because you think about '90s Latin pop and people in the US listening to Selena and doing this kind of techno-cumbia. He almost had to make his music pop to appeal to people. He has nothing on this music.
RC: He even has a song called “Techno Cumbia” in the title. It is a bridge over cultural gaps. What stands out to me on "Ella Byla Sola" is the feathery sound that Vulture music editor Alex Susskind once described as "passing through a sieve," you know? And it doesn't seem very interesting to listen to me, but somehow it works.
You can hear it more clearly in the last lightweight session with Bizzrap I think. It has a distinct texture that I think brings a lot to the production of any song I'm involved with.
AS: Chalino Sánchez was one of Narcocorrido's favorite artists. And his voice was noticeably scratchy. I think historically this type of sound is not always the most direct and smooth to listen to. This is part of his rudeness. If you tell stories from the heart, sometimes you tell stories of heartbreak.
I mean, it's a heartbreaking genre of music that often has flawed vocals. You just want it to be as intense, intense and passionate as possible. Sometimes an imperfect voice is the best way to communicate it.
CH: Yes, there is a lot of noise in the nasal cavity. It's avant-garde, and I think another reason is that the production here is very intense. There are many tools that take up a lot of space. If you want to listen, you have to hack.
AS: It has to be a sound you can't ignore. You can't look away.
RC: Featherweight and Armed Link make "She Dances Alone" for the first time. How important are they and their cooperation, Ana?
AS: Weight explodes with a feather. He started making music a year ago and it's been a wild ride for him. He's from Guadalajara, which isn't a city in northern Mexico where this music usually comes from. He attended high school in San Antonio, Texas and is half-Lebanese.
So he represents different things that are not typical of a regional Mexican artist, but maybe that's why he represents him. It is important to recognize this phenomenon as a Mexican-American thing in many ways. It made sense for him to spend this time in Texas.
Armed Link is from Paterson, California. Likewise, it's a group of Mexican-American kids who gave birth to this music. Although they started a few years ago, these two artists are very young. Weight 23 years. That's something really special about this explosion. Everyone involved is super young.
CA: They are bridge builders between cultures.
RC: I mean, it's been proven to work. Featherweight now has eight songs on the Hot 100. This is a number dedicated to the world's Taylor Swift, the world's Rihanna.
AS: You have to understand that lightweights in Mexico are like Beyoncé levels. He is a famous star.
Rotterdam: Speaking of stardom, let's meet none other than international superstar Bad Bunny for his collaboration with Grupo Frontera on One x 100 To.
CH: Different atmospheres.
RC: This track peaked at number five on the Hot 100. Charlie, what do you think?
Chris: Well, it makes me want to know what regional style we're listening to here, because it sounds so different.
AS: Yes. I was surprised to hear (a) that Bad Bunny would be on the regional track and (b) what it was. He is a collaborator with another Mexican-American conglomerate, Grupo Frontera. They come to us from Texas. And this song is Norteño, maybe with a little cumbia mixed in.
Like Tejano Cumbia in front of you, if nothing else. It's very characteristic of South Texas and the music that came out of it - including Selena.
CH: I can hear the harmonica, you have a cha-cha-cha- cumbia beat. But yes, this kind of slow poetry.
AS: Yes, poetry is key to every Nortino. That's something you get with a song like this that has a certain feel to it. It's an interesting marriage, and I'm impressed that this is the path Bad Bunny chose.
CH: Right? Because he's definitely Puerto Rican, and that's outside the realm of reggaeton or Latin trap as we know it.
AS: That's right. I mean, it's no surprise that it's a regional hit because so many artists are coming on board now. This is common. Karol Ji had a regional theme in his latest album. However, despite everything you can do, the northerners won't really budge. As we said, these are stories.
Chris: Maybe the reason Bad Bunny fits this song so well is because the cumbia beat blends so well with the dembo beat. Although cumbia and reggaeton don't originate from the same place, there's this rhythmic overlap that makes sense for a Bad Bunny track, even if you come from different cultures.
AS: Cambia is originally a Colombian variety and before that came from Africa in the slave trade. But it has become one of the most popular voices in Latin America. You have Cumbia from Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America... Cumbia is all over the map.
His influence is present in much Latin music due to the prevalence of the genre. When you look at the regionalism of polkas and waltzes and different things like that, Nortino is almost cumbia, but a little mixed. So it makes sense. I would say there is definitely a bridge.
Fun Facts About Cumbia Rhythm: It's a dance beat, right? In fact, this is a step backwards. As I mentioned, it originates from the slave trade and was designed as something people could dance to while chained. It's original and that's what makes it so intense. It is very different from other tunes from northern Mexico.
CH: Great.
RC: Another exciting thing about this song to me is that it leans more towards a conventional pop production. Right off the bat, we have an echo and a simple guitar intro. In the realm of other More Stories pop songs, it feels right.
CH: And when Bad Bani comes, the song changes and becomes very contemporary.
AS: Yes. Another thing to keep in mind thematically is how contemporary it is. Just like the title, 1%, sing a song on your phone 1% and talk to this girl. What could be more contemporary than that? They don't just update the word, they update the theme.
Chris: They even do it the way they sing it: the tunes sound like they could be sung by Post Malone or, of course, Bad Bunny. They have 2020 sensitivity to sound.
RC: Okay, let's continue with the chart. Peak 35 in our "Total Quality Management" by Fuerza Rigida.
RC: From the beginning, we heard a lot of what we talked about before: grit, synth vocals and sophisticated production. Anne, what do you think of that?
AS: I start again with Corrido Tomato. it has all these different words that we talked about before "அலை போலை சாலை". You got that horn sound. You have a 12-string guitar there. And we talk a lot about vocals, and it's very relevant here: almost all Mexican mixes, I would say, are very direct on the vocals. it's something everyone does. This is how Mexicans like to listen to their music.
CH: It's popular.
AS: Exactly. and it is also a question of lyricism. You got some fun stuff here again, these guys say, "When I drive my BMW, you take care of me, blah blah blah."
And when you're talking hip-hop mash-up arcade, they're not in their traditional panda guise. They are great designers and they want the whole world to know about it. This is a music feature.
I love these guys. Форжа Ригида: They released a song earlier this year that blew them away, "Bebe Dem," which we're talking about with our friends, Group Frontera. It amazes me that these songs work so well and work so well. I know the guy who wrote this song and I heard him do it with only 12 chords. Hold up to 100 percent. The way these songs play, the way the melodies are written, it's so powerful. It still works no matter how much you produce.
Chris: That's what usually defines a great song. Does it hold together when you pull it by its bones? And of course it is.
RC: Now we're going to move away from the Mexican territory and see what else is happening on the Hot 100...
