Jimmy Humilde
Jimmy Humildeâs first foray into the music business was a party at his sisterâs house in Venice, Calif., that he promoted with street flyers. The entrance fee was $5, and Humilde, then 13 years old, made $300. He was hooked.
It was the early 1990s, and the soundtrack of the streets was trance, techno and hip-hop. But Humilde (born Jaime Alejandro to immigrants from MichoacĂĄn, Mexico) soon started to include the music of his home in his flyer parties, adding Vicente FernĂĄndez and Mexican cumbias into the mix. Then a cousin introduced him to the music of Chalino SĂĄnchez, the underground corrido singer from CuliacĂĄn, Mexico, who was kidnapped and murdered at 32 years old in 1992 in what presumably was a revenge killing.
âI didnât know who Chalino SĂĄnchez was. I didnât know what a corrido was,â says Humilde, 43, of the songs that narrate the exploits of real and mythical heroes and antiheroes, from 19th century revolutionaries to current-day drug dealers. âBut when I met his music, he became part of my soul. He wrote corridos not only for Mexican people but for people who lived in the U.S. that I could relate to.â SĂĄnchezâs songs, combined with his swaggering attitude and combustible persona, planted a seed for Humilde: Why couldnât there be more music like his, rooted in Mexican culture and appealing to a young, U.S.-born audience?
Nearly 20 years later, his label, Rancho Humilde, is at the forefront of a global explosion of regional Mexican music â the umbrella term for several subgenres that include brass-driven banda, accordion-inflected norteĂąo, traditional mariachi and, increasingly, traditional music that incorporates hip-hop.
Since Rancho Humilde, which translates to âHumble Ranch,â began releasing music in 2017, the label has logged 18 titles on Billboardâs Top Latin Albums chart, including six top 10s, and 41 tracks on Hot Latin Songs. Out of those, seven reached the top 10, including the two-week champ âBebe Dame.â The label has also placed six songs on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100. Five of them were on the May 6 chart that featured 14 regional Mexican songs, two of them in the top 10 â a breakthrough week for the genre. Fuerza Regida, Natanael Cano and Junior H are among the Rancho Humilde acts that charted.
A friend used canvas from Humildeâs Louis Vuitton travel bags to create this saddle and mount. âJust for decoration!â he says.
Michael Tyrone Delaney
Humilde and his partners, JosĂŠ Becerra and Rocky Venegas, built the label through unorthodox means, relying almost solely on social media over radio and TV to promote their acts and by working with multiple labels and distributors, which enabled their roster to collaborate with a wider array of artists from different genres at a time when Mexican acts were notoriously averse to the practice.
Almost six years after Rancho Humilde was founded, the label is opening new offices in Paramount, Calif., just outside Los Angeles. Not coincidentally, itâs the exact location where SĂĄnchez once ran his own pager store.
âIâm in it for the future of our culture,â Humilde says. âFrom the beginning, I wanted to be the door-opener.â
What was it like growing up in Venice in the â90s?
Hip-hop was my heart. I was a huge fan of LL Cool J, Kool Moe Dee, EPMD â old-school hip-hop. To this day, I still listen to hip-hop a lot. I grew up in a multiracial area. There were a lot of Mexicans, but also a lot of Asians and whites. Corridos and Mexican music were not it. They called me âJimmy the Paisa,â which in our neighborhood meant âstraight Mexican.â So while I did raves and hip-hop events for many years, I was the only one in Venice listening to Mexican music. I was the guy known for tejanas.
This Kobe Bryant bobblehead âis the only one in the worldâ in its size, says Humilde. âI love Dodgers, Lakers, Raiders and Rams memorabilia.â
Michael Tyrone Delaney
With that multicultural atmosphere, why did you enter the regional Mexican business?
Iâve been in the business since I was 14, when I started working as a gopher with another Mexican artist who sang corridos, Jessie Morales, El Original de la Sierra. I realized that we were losing our Mexican culture. The kids werenât speaking Spanish. It wasnât cool. Iâve always thought itâs so cool to be Mexican, to have immigrant parents and to speak both languages. I thought I could introduce others to this life. I had to find a way to mix my culture, my Chicano culture, with the Mexican culture. And I did.
What was Rancho Humildeâs breakthrough moment?
âDe PeriĂłdico un Gallito,â a song by LEGADO 7 we released in 2017. [It peaked at No. 38 on the Regional Mexican Airplay chart.] That corrido talks about a guy who grew up on the streets of Los Angeles and was a drug dealer. Thatâs the corrido that opened the doors to our music. We basically did a hip-hop song in Spanish. Then we signed Arsenal Efectivo, El de la Guitarra, Fuerza Regida, then Natanael Cano.
Peso Pluma is dominating the charts. He sounds very similar to Cano, with whom he has collaborated.
Peso Pluma calls Natanael âThe GOAT.â Natanael Cano opened the lane for everyone. If Nata, Junior H, Fuerza Regida hadnât existed, this wouldnât be where itâs at today. Natanael brought swag. He brought that kid that didnât give a fuck. He brought that, âIâm going to do whatever the fuck I want, and I donât careâ attitude. When I first asked Nata what tumbao was, he said: âI am tumbao.â Before, corridos were listened to by fans with cowboy hats and boots. Today, youâll see 13-, 14-year-old kids in Jordans listening to corridos tumbaos.
Humilde explains that the liquor store, which was built as a prop âfor our music videos,â is a replica of a corner from his old Venice neighborhood.
Michael Tyrone Delaney
Your artists werenât the first to blend Mexican and hip-hop sounds, but acts like Akwid in the 2000s didnât reach the level of success that Rancho Humildeâs artists are having now. Is it simply a matter of timing?
It didnât work before because the people behind it werenât real. They werenât from the streets. They were copying what other people were doing. Akwid is from the streets, but the people behind them werenât.
What is your strategy for working with multiple distributors? Most labels usually strike a deal with just one. For example, Cano with Warner; Fuerza Regida with Sony.
Iâm not committed to just one. Me, along with my attorneys â George Prajin and Anthony Lopez â structured our own contract and our own way of doing business. I donât have exclusivity with anyone. I donât think anyone should have exclusivity with anyone. I donât believe in licenses because thereâs only one person that owns our music, and itâs [us]. And Iâm also business partners with our artists. We restructured our whole company, and we donât sign artists to a royalty fee. We sign artists as business partners, we help them build their own labels and businesses, and we do a [joint venture] between labels.
Youâre so indie-minded. Why distribute with Warnerâs Alternative Distribution Alliance and Sonyâs Orchard versus another indie?
My whole goal was to [go global]. And I finally realized that the only people I was going to be able to do it with was with a global company. Thatâs why I chose Warner at first, then Sony, then Universal; I did a one-off deal with Republic and Universal. I needed the reach. I needed people to learn about this and realize it was different. It wasnât only about us being banda.
Medals given to the owners of Rancho Humilde when they visited the White House.
Michael Tyrone Delaney
How important is social media to Rancho Humildeâs success?
Social media is Rancho Humilde. We were born in social media. We started with Myspace all the way down to Facebook, all the way down to Instagram and TikTok. But our biggest [avenue] was YouTube. YouTube is huge for us revenuewise, bigger than the other platforms. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are our main marketing channels. We were never on radio until the most recent hit by Fuerza Regida. The only work we outsource is with our publicist, Monica Escobar, who does everything we donât do on marketing on our end.
One of the biggest challenges facing successful industries in Mexico are the drug cartels. In recent years, theyâve taken over the trade of limes, avocados and other produce. As music becomes an exponentially more valuable export, how do you protect your business from that influence?
I just feel that certain people got their help as they could. Thatâs one of the things that kept Rancho Humilde from becoming the most successful label [quickly], because we never had any investors. It was always JB, Rocky and myself. I donât care who it is. I just donât believe in investors. Have other companies used that? I donât know. Iâve never asked. I know drug cartels exist, and my dad always told me the biggest cartel was the government and the church. I agree with that. I donât fight it. I donât criticize anyone for what they do. I donât care what they do.
Rancho Humildeâs 2019 release of Canoâs âSoy el Diabloâ remix with Bad Bunny was groundbreaking at the time. Now mainstream labels are signing Mexican acts. What do you think of that?
I donât see why they wouldnât, but itâs going to be hard for them to catch up to all the indies already performing at a high level.
What does it mean to you that this music is now popular in places far from Mexico?
I knew this was going to happen. Right before Peso Pluma came in, Nata was already a global artist. He was known in Spain, Chile, Argentina, but the music wasnât charting as high as it is today. Peso Pluma wonât be the biggest artist. Thereâs a whole lot coming who will be huge. [But] Peso is like the Daddy Yankee of our genre. He went and opened the doors worldwide, but here come more monsters. If youâre not focused on Mexican music right now, I suggest you do.
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