In recent years, a prominent Mexican music genre has risen to iconic status, garnering global recognition through chart-topping hits such as “Ella Baila Sola” by Eslabon Armado and “X100to” by Grupo Frontera and Bad Bunny. This musical revolution, known as Corridos Tumbados, has taken the world by storm, with Eslabon Armando’s “Ella Baila Sola” maintaining its position at the pinnacle of Spotify charts for several months. This revolution of Latin American music has come out of nowhere. 

This genre was created by an artist called Nathanael Cano from Sonora in the north of Mexico; it is a mix of the old and iconic music of northern Mexico known as rancheras or corridos, that were merged with hip hop influences coming from the border of the USA. This new style of music paints a good image of the Mexican-US border and the melting pot of cultures that it has become. The rhythmic foundations of traditional north Mexican music is combined with a modern style mixing modern beats and instruments that are commonly used in hip hop, giving birth to the distinct sounds called Corridos Tumbados.

At the moment, Corridos Tumbados are the new big thing. Due to the sudden popularity of this emerging sound, artists such as Bad Bunny, 50 Cent, Karol G and even six-nine have made their own versions or collaborated with Mexican artists. Bad Bunny, currently the biggest artist on the planet, famous for his reggaeton, came out with a new song exploring a completely new genre. Famously Bad Bunny came out with his single X100to, bringing the emerging genre into the limelight. The Bad Bunny single, though important, wasn’t the spark that brought this Mexican genre to the mainstream.

Peso Pluma, an emerging artist in Mexico, has also gained significant recognition in the genre of Corridos Tumbados. Notably, his songs “Ella Baila Sola” and “AMG” have challenged the dominance of Bad Bunny on Spotify’s charts, which led Bad Bunny to create the iconic song X100to with grupo frontera. Peso Pluma is the face of this new genre and has gone on to become the first Mexican artist to reach the Billboard global top 100 and stay there for weeks at a time. The unprecedented dominance and uproar of Peso Pluma has caused a style of music that was almost shunned before, due to it being considered as music only for the ranchers, and making it mainstream Spanish music.  

We all remember Selena, the chicano wondergirl, famous for breaking strides and revolutionizing Mexican music and popularizing a genre or style of music that was shunned previously. Even through her short stardom, she never completed the feats that Mexico’s new wonderkid has, leaving us to imagine what’s next in the uncharted waters of pop culture. Peso Pluma’s unprecedented strides forward have created a path for other artists to follow his success, while also popularizing a new genre of Latin American music and also pushing Mexican music to the modern canon for the first time in its history.