Four black vans with tinted windows take the Tres Cruces street in Madrid as if a President of the Government had just arrived.
Three strong guys get out of the first vehicle and are concerned about clearing traffic from the barely six meters that separate the vehicles from the door of the building.
The narrow artery of Gran Vía seems to become a setting for a
Hollywood
thriller in a matter of seconds.
The autumn sun shines on a Friday in November and a handful of tourists and onlookers stop in front of the movie landing.
"What's happening?".
"Who is it?".
The questions are fired.
With sunglasses and his hands in his pants pockets, a thin, pale guy gets out of the car, crowned by a dark cap that almost seems to swallow him.
He walks slowly and listlessly behind the bodyguards.
He doesn't smile, he doesn't gesture, he doesn't greet.
Under the cap hides Peso Pluma, the latest great phenomenon in Latin music.
He arrives late, very late, to
the Resistance show,
but he doesn't seem stressed.
Nothing seems to go with him and yet everyone is watching his steps.
Inside the building, on the set of the Príncipe Gran Vía theater, David Broncano, presenter of
The Resistance,
has excused the guest's delay and said that the wait will be worth it.
The delay amounts to more than an hour and a half.
None of the more than 100 attendees at the interview and humor
show
know that the guest is Peso Pluma (Jalisco, Mexico, 24 years old), the musician who weeks later—on February 4—will win his first Grammy in the category in Los Angeles. best Mexican music album with his album
Génesis,
an award that he will receive accompanied by his girlfriend, the Argentine rapper Nicki Nicole, who this week broke up with him after finding out about an infidelity on social networks.
The award from the American Academy of Music serves to crown a year in which it has unseated Bad Bunny and Miley Cyrus from world number one, has garnered billions of views on streaming platforms
and
has converted regional Mexican music in a global fashion.
“I am part of the Mexican music revolution like Pancho Villa or Porfirio Díaz of the Mexican revolution,” he says in an interview with
El País Semanal
via videoconference (for which he also makes us wait almost an hour).
To say Featherweight is to refer to one of the most inaccessible musicians on the current scene.
A twenty-something who has climbed to the top of world music in just three years.
His overwhelming success is accompanied by all kinds of controversies, the largest and most complex being the one that relates him to drug trafficking due to lyrics that refer to drugs and violence.
“And if the order is to kill, / that is not questioned… I depend on the Guzmán… Two guns and a SCAR,” he sings in 'Gavilán II', from his latest album, and which has some verses censored by Spotify.
Los Guzmán would be a reference to Joaquín Guzmán,
El Chapo,
and his children at the head of the Sinaloa cartel.
However, he had to cancel six concerts in October in Mexico due to being threatened by the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel.
More recently, neighborhood associations and a far-right deputy from Viña del Mar asked that he not participate in the Chilean city's famous festival for being “a promoter of drug culture.”
Featherweight is in the eye of the hurricane.
The musician is not only accompanied by bodyguards on the street.
He also has them in interviews.
Up to four people supervise the videoconference talk on a November afternoon.
From their team they warn: “No questions about drug traffickers.”
A lanky young man, with a cap turned inside out and sitting on a sofa, appears on the screen and appears affable but few in words.
When he is asked about his controversies with drug trafficking, at the risk of ending the interview, one of the four security guards intervenes to say that time is running out.
The musician, relaxed and smiling, answers on tiptoe: “Everywhere there is corruption and problems, but music is above that.
Music has always been a very important part of what happens in the country [Mexico].
Many children see me and many will want to be like me.
I see that in part as a responsibility to sow a seed so that more Mexicans fight for their dreams and not for their problems.”
Featherweight's dreams have come far.
Last 2023 was the year of its enormous success.
A true milestone.
Her third album,
Génesis,
debuted last July at number 3 on the Billboard chart, the highest position ever achieved by an album of regional Mexican music in the most important classification of the global pop industry.
It remained for weeks in the top 10. Also the song 'She dances alone', in collaboration with the group Eslabón Armado and with that modern air of Sierreño Sinaloa, was the first to reach the top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100 list, which includes the 100 most listened to songs in the world.
She has put up to six compositions in this classification.
For these achievements he has received a title: king of the corrido tumbado, a modern version of traditional Mexican music that is born from the combination of traditional corridos and current urban music.
“I don't know if I've put the corridos tumbados on the world map, but I do think I've put them in the group of Mexican music,” he says.
At least, his collaborations, all successful, do point to the Spanish-speaking map: he has recorded with the Puerto Rican rapper Eladio Carrión, the Dominican star El Alfa, the Argentine superproducer Bizarrap and, recently, the Mexican icon of the new mariachi Christian Nodal.
“It is important that we all help each other and have unity so that Mexican and Latin music continue to move forward,” says Peso Pluma, stage name of Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija.
Peso Pluma, with his ex-partner, Argentine rapper Nicki Nicole, on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards, where he won in the category of best Mexican music album.Gilbert Flores (Getty Images)
Its story began 24 years ago in Zapopan, a town in Jalisco, western Mexico.
He grew up in a humble family whose father was of Lebanese descent.
He began playing guitar with YouTube videos, although he was slow to write songs.
At first, he just wrote down random things in his personal diary as “therapy.”
“At 14 and 15 years old he was a very introverted boy and I didn't like to talk about what was happening with me and my feelings.
My way of getting it out was to write it all down in a journal.
Then I realized that some things rhymed and that he could start composing.
It was my way of letting go of a weight,” he says.
“My classmates at school laughed at me.
It was normal.
It was always like that because writing in a diary was a girl's thing.
At first, there was a lot of ridicule and criticism, but I was always like that and I didn't want to change.
It helped me to write my things in the diary and ignore the mockery.
“I liked doing it and that was more important.”
That teenager went from diary and mockery to songs.
And with the songs he began to like each other, although he had to face a new challenge: living in the United States.
His family moved to San Antonio, where he belonged to a Chicano community.
His existence was complicated by language, but, while he continued experimenting with the guitar and regional Mexican sounds, his experience allowed him to adopt musical influences from rappers like Drake and Kanye West.
“I was never afraid to accept new sounds and mix cultures,” he says.
Shortly after starting to record his first songs, he looked for a stage name and this was given to him by former boxer Marco Antonio Barrera, who joked about his physical appearance and told him that, with that scrawny body, he would be perfect to compete in the weight category. feather.
“I like boxing, but there is nothing like the show.
Boxing characters are all very special.
The
show
is the best,” says this musician from Jalisco whose stage name, he says, also refers to the musical project and the band as a whole.
The young man from Jalisco jumped into the ring and his career began with real heavyweight hooks.
His first songs in 2021 worked very well.
They were inspired by the narcocorridos of Chalino Sánchez, who was murdered in 1992. Like him, he included stories in his lyrics that recount drug trafficking.
In less than two years and with only two albums, the new
fighter
of Mexican music reached a massive audience in his country.
At the beginning of 2023, the success crossed borders and became international.
It happened after collaborating with his “compas” Natanael Cano and Junior H, the other two young talents who have broken the glass ceiling of Mexican music with corridos tumbados and have reached enormous audiences in the rest of the world.
“The corrido tumbado is, ultimately, a branch of the tree of Mexican music,” explains Peso Pluma.
“The corrido tumbado is, ultimately, a branch of the tree of Mexican music,” explains Peso Pluma.
“All artists are contributing our specialty to the genre.
If you like to listen to bad guys lying down, you can listen to Nathanael.
If you like the crying thing, as my friend Junior calls it, you can do it with Junior himself.
And, if you like a little bit of everything, you can listen to Peso Pluma.”
The three form what could be called the golden triad of the corrido tumbado, a territory with many more names.
“We have done nothing more than follow a tradition and contribute to evolution.
“We are very grateful and happy with what is happening,” he says.
Tradition, precisely, has rebelled against his success and that of his companions in the corridos tumbados.
A good part of the veteran public does not like to be compared to the big names of Mexican song, a space full of icons such as Chavela Vargas, José Alfredo Jiménez, Jorge Negrete, Juan Gabriel, Joan Sebastian, Ariel Camacho or Chalino Sánchez.
“There are people who see the new generations and the new musical waves and are afraid.
Maybe they don't want to criticize or belittle him, but they are afraid that we have done things so quickly that they couldn't do,” he explains.
“We see for the first time a Mexican artist on the MTVs, which are totally American.
We see a Mexican being the most nominated and winner at the Latin Billboard Awards.
And we see that Mexican music is now heard in China.
“That’s all new.”
In some way, the generational gap has opened in Mexican music, as it has happened in Spanish music after the enormous success of Rosalía and C. Tangana, among others.
Peso Pluma talks about “purists” when referring to those who are “afraid” of new trends, but ends up giving them other qualifiers: “Old people are people who have always listened to old things.
I see it in my family in Sinaloa: they only listen to Los Tucanes de Tijuana, Los Tigres del Norte and Chalino Sánchez.
The
old school
, as I call them, will always listen to the music from when they were young and will always be loyal to their tastes and ideals.
"They don't understand hearing something new with different lyrics and things that don't talk about what was talked about 20 years ago."
And he adds: “But all those previous artists paved the way for us and we were already able to get the car moving.
“We are all part of the same thing.”
“Everywhere there is corruption and problems, but music is above that,” says Peso Pluma.Josefina Santos (The New York Ti
The
Agushto Papa
podcast
has been covering the rise of Mexican music for two years and has become a benchmark for the urban genre.
All the new figures have passed through their programs.
“The success of Peso Pluma has forced the entire new generation of musicians to demand more of themselves,” said Ángel López, one of the program's hosts, in one of the episodes.
“They can't just stand in front of a microphone, play their instrument or sing.
They have to offer something more.
Featherweight has the most powerful
flow
on the scene.”
Unlike Chalino Sánchez and other representatives of the corridos, Peso Pluma does not dress like a cowboy.
He has his own aesthetic to him.
He has dispensed with the embroidered suits, boots and hats and has fit the rapper mold: extravagant clothing, jewelry and watches.
A mold that ends up leading to one of the most criticized vices of rap: ostentation.
Featherweight is a gold-plated boxer.
Only the cap, which covers his characteristic mullet
haircut
and a good part of his face on the set of
The Resistance,
is a Givenchy visor, embroidered with cotton, which costs 450 euros.
Upon entering the set, the musician gave David Broncano a bottle of his favorite tequila valued at 220 euros.
These are details that can go unnoticed and that would not be so significant if the Mexican star did not boast so often about how he likes to spend his money in a big way.
On the show
Sneaker Shopping
, a YouTube series in which rappers and celebrities squander his wealth in luxury stores, he spent 32,000 euros on sneakers for his entire gang.
Last summer he made a Bagliori necklace with the Spiderman figurine that cost him about 462,000 euros.
After an awards gala, Christoosmoove, a content creator for TikTok famous for asking banal questions, encouraged him to participate in his challenge to say how much everything he was wearing cost.
The result was the following: the sunglasses were valued at 931 euros, the earrings at 9,310, the necklace at 37,265, the down jacket at 3,726, the t-shirt at 465, the watch at 65,214, the pants at 1,117, the sneakers at 1,117 and the gloves at 465. In total, a hanger of almost 120,000 euros.
Featherweight could well be renamed Diamondweight.
The Resistance
program
comes to an end, but first the Mexican musician invites the entire public to the concert that he will end up giving on November 21 at the WiZink in Madrid.
“I pay for the tickets!” he exclaims.
It is unknown how many people accepted the invitation and whether the musician kept his promise.
“I'm not worried about setting the bar high,” he says.
“I am very happy for the success we have had and being at number one, but someone else will always come along to break the record that you achieved.
I don't care where I am.
The important thing is to be there.
Hitting the sides and seeing that I'm competing with Travis Scott's album and on the other side with Olivia Rodrigo's.
It's not fulfilling to win over anyone in numbers, but rather to be contributing.
"As artists, we like to wait for something really badass to happen to motivate us."
When he goes out onto the street, the vans wait and the bodyguards surround him again during the few meters of the walk.
He walks in silence, with his hands in his pants pockets and sunglasses, as if living threatened by drug traffickers, always with controversy on his back and dressed in gold like a millionaire rooster, were the most normal thing in the world.
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