How HBO Max’s ‘VGLY’ Captures the Current Zeitgeist of Mexican Music
Written by djfrosty on July 13, 2023
When the producers of VGLY first came up with the idea in 2018 for a series that would capture the ever-evolving landscape of Mexican music, they may have been ahead of their time.
Produced by Candle Media’s Exile Content Studio and directed by Sebastián Sariñana, the 13-episode series made its debut over the summer on HBO Max, with renowned Mexican artist Camilo Lara (Mexican Institute of Sound) as its music producer.
Season one follows a crew of young visionaries (from rappers to producers and creative directors) on their quest to stand out in a crowded field of emerging urbano artists in Mexico City’s neighborhood “La Guerrero.” The journey to the top is anything but smooth sailing. Along the way, the aspiring rapper- singer VGLY (Benny Emmanuel) and his friends learn how to navigate the industry the hard way. He even starts beef with nemesis Lil Vato, played by corridos tumbados pioneer Natanael Cano, which only leads to back-and-forth diss tracks.
The series — renewed this month for a season two — is soundtracked by original music overseen by Lara and songs licensed by Exile Music (which also marketed and distributed the soundtrack), which perfectly capture the zeitgeist of música mexciana today. Featuring trap, cumbia, reggaetón and corridos tumbados, “this series came at the right moment,” says Lara, who’s produced music for award-winning films such as Coco and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. “We all knew there were huge things happening in Mexico with new producers and artists — trap was bubbling and so were corridos tumbados — so this series is polaroid of what’s been happening and that’s really beautiful.”
For the series’ original music soundtrack, Lara worked with a handful of emerging producers and artists in Mexico to create a wide-ranging album powered by hip-hop, trap and corridos featuring Cano, VGLY and other emerging acts from the series including Triana and Trippy B. “The idea for the music was to have these songs that were produced by young producers that are actually working in the hip-hop world and are part of the landscape,” explains Lara. “Mexico City also serves as a canvas because if you think about it, everything is a key player in that city so we wanted to deconstruct the sounds to create our own universe.”
VGLY‘s universe is a reflection of not only the versatile new generation of Mexican artists but the spotlight that the country has today with Mexican music reaching global masses. “I would say it’s about time,” Lara says categorically. “It’s something I would fight in the early days. Back then I was trying to convince the world that cumbia was cool, then it happened. The same with regional Mexican music. This new generation of artists, they live in both worlds: the digital and the traditional. They understood that music is popular art so you have to reshape it, remodel it, change it. That’s the beauty of it. I couldn’t be more proud of what is happening.”