How Reggaetón and Regional Mexican Music Found Surprising Common Ground

Back in October 2019, Bad Bunny, already a huge star, posted a video of himself on Instagram, drinking tequila and singing along to a song in Spanish set to strumming guitars. It was “Soy el Diablo” by Natanael Cano, the then-18-year-old making waves in regional Mexican music with his corridos tumbados, a subgenre blending hip-hop swagger with traditional música mexicana instrumentation.

That Bad Bunny would gravitate toward the sound at first seemed counterintuitive: Reggaetón, built on beats, tracks and loops, ostensibly has little to do with regional Mexican music, which is created mostly with live instruments.

But upon further consideration, it made complete sense. Corridos tumbados, like Bad Bunny’s blend of trap and reggaetón, are as much about attitude and lifestyle as they are about music. Within weeks, a remix of “Soy el Diablo,” featuring Bad Bunny, hit No. 16 on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart.

The unlikely pairing at the time was revolutionary, and it set off a wave of collaborations between reggaetón and Mexican music acts that’s still going. Since “Soy el Diablo,” at least 14 songs that blend both genres have entered Hot Latin Songs — including Karol G and Peso Pluma’s “Qlona,” which shot to No. 1 in September 2023. And now, this year’s Rumbazo festival — taking place Sept. 13-14 in Las Vegas in partnership with Billboard — will reflect the kinship between the two genres; headliners Nicky Jam and Luis R Conriquez released a single together, “Como el Viento,” in 2023.

For Jimmy Humilde, the founder and CEO of powerhouse indie label Rancho Humilde (home to Cano and Fuerza Regida, among other Mexican music artists), Mexican and urban music are like brothers from another mother, and the new wave of Mexican music, much of it spawned on the West Coast, is inextricably linked to hip-hop and, by extension, to reggaetón.

“Hip-hop was my heart,” Humilde told Billboard last year of his upbringing, like that of many of his artists, in Los Angeles. “I was a huge fan of old-school hip-hop.” But Humilde was also a huge fan of bad boy Mexican corridos sung by the likes of Chalino Sánchez. Early in his career, when he started working with corridos singer Jessie Morales (also raised in L.A.), he had a simple yet brilliant idea: Instead of donning the traditional garb of boots and cowboy hat, “I told him, ‘Bro, why don’t you dress hip-hop, how you really dress? You don’t have to come out with a hat or a suit.’ ”

The notion of inserting hip-hop style into Mexican music slowly but surely became the norm for a new generation of artists that now includes Cano, Fuerza Regida, Junior H, Peso Pluma, Eslabon Armado and Yahritza y Su Esencia, who all dress more like rappers than singers of traditional Mexican music.

Actual cross-genre collaborations, however, only began in earnest after the Bad Bunny-Cano remix. In 2020, they went even further when Snoop Dogg (another Angeleno and a longtime fan of banda music) recorded “Que Maldición” with Banda MS (which went to No. 4 on Hot Latin Songs) and later joined the group onstage in L.A.

Then, in 2021, Colombian superstar Karol G released “200 Copas,” a veritable ranchera ballad. Colombians in general (and Medellín natives like Karol, in particular) have long been die-hard fans of ranchera and mariachi music — and later that year, Karol’s fellow paisa and reggaetón star Maluma also recorded a ranchera: “Cada Quien,” with Grupo Firme, which became his first No. 1 on the Regional Mexican Airplay chart.

“Being on a Mexican chart in the U.S., well, that’s a big deal,” Maluma told Billboard at the time. “I always dreamt of that. When I travel to Mexico, it’s like being at home. I feel part of it, and I am very grateful to Grupo Firme for making this possible.”

The growing list of urban/Mexican collaborations also includes the cover stars of this issue of Billboard. And while Nicky Jam and Conriquez’s “Como el Viento” didn’t chart, for Conriquez, it’s a sign of the future.

“If we’re intelligent about it, there will be more songs like this, because it’s an opportunity to bring the two genres together and for one to get into the other’s world,” says Conriquez, who has also already recorded with reggaetonero Ryan Castro. “I always thought reggaetón was global. But now, regional Mexican is global too.”

Billboard Latin Music Week is returning to Miami Beach on Oct. 14-18, with confirmed superstars including Gloria Estefan, Alejandro Sanz and Peso Pluma, among many others. For tickets and more details, visit Billboardlatinmusicweek.com.

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