Fuerza Régida’s corridos have turn into so widespread that the California band by no means is aware of who may name them up subsequent trying to collaborate. A number of weeks in the past, it was Marshmello. Right this moment, it’s Myke Towers.
Fuerza Régida’s lead singer Jesús Ortiz Paz had talked about the Puerto Rican rapper simply moments earlier when abruptly, he glances down and holds up his cellphone. “Talking of the homie, look!” he exclaims. Inside seconds, Towers is on the road. “No te vas a morir pronto, compa,” Ortiz tells him. “I used to be simply speaking about you.”
Towers’ name comes proper as Ortiz is catching Rolling Stone up on main information: Fuerza Régida has not one however two new albums out, each launched this week. There’s the extremely anticipated Pa Que Hablen (So Y’all Can Discuss), which the band introduced earlier this month, and its shock companion, Sigan Hablando (Hold Speaking), a venture listeners weren’t anticipating in any respect. Ortiz smiles as he explains how he stored the second album a secret from followers and the way he proud he’s of the brand new music. “That is the very best work I’ve achieved to this point in my profession,” he says. “These albums are it.”
The 2 albums, because the titles recommend, are supposed to show anybody who’s ever doubted the band flawed. The group, which is comprised of Ortiz, bass participant José Garcia, requinto participant Samuel Jaimez, and six-string guitarist Khrystian Ramos, have been at it for seven years, rising to the highest of the Mexican-American music scene with a mode of city corridos that blend the vitality of lure and hip-hop with Mexican traditions.
It wasn’t that way back that Ortiz was working as a promoter, throwing flyer events “within the hoods” of SoCal and shutting his occasions with the band. Now, the group is filling arenas, connecting with a youthful era of U.S.-born Mexicans by fashionable storytelling and a social media presence that showcases their dedication and grind. The band’s forward-thinking sound has positioned them on the forefront of a motion of Gen Z acts who straddle each cultures and who’ve been gaining followers internationally.
A lot of Fuerza Régida’s music has been about embracing their pocho id, a time period for teenagers who have been born within the U.S. however raised on Mexican tradition, typically toggling between listening to Chalino Sanchez at house and bumping rap with pals. Ortiz, who normally dons heavy, diamond-encrusted chains and sneakers you’d anticipate to see on rappers like Lil Child and Roddy Ricch, doesn’t shrink back from the truth that he grew up talking English and imperfect Spanish. He’s impressed by his upbringing in San Bernardino, the place he was raised on a sort of SoCal biculturalism that shapes the band’s perspective and aesthetic. “We’re only a new fucking era,” he says. “It’s speaking concerning the streets from over right here. It’s [like] lure music, however we introduced our roots into it.”
Fuerza Régida has already turned heads with their surprising American references over Mexican preparations. Their 2018 breakout hit “Radicamos en South Central,” for instance, tells the story of a drug supplier dominating the streets of the L.A. neighborhood. It makes use of the same narrative format of Mexico’s nice narcocorridos, however from a U.S. perspective. Their new albums present how rather more they wish to do: Pa Que Hablen opens with “Mi Vecindario,” a typical Régida corrido tumbado that tells Ortiz’s story of creating his means out of his San Bernardino hometown regardless of criticism and setbacks. Ortiz constructed his means up as an area barber in his low-income neighborhood earlier than he began performing with the band and turning into a part of a serious act to observe.
“Mi Vecindario” goes again to his roots and celebrates the place he got here from. “I did it for the folks. For everybody that lives within the hood that is aware of the struggles,” he says, earlier than singing a verse over Zoom: “Not many make it out alive, many much less turn into millionaires.”
There are conventional touches throughout each initiatives: The album cowl for Sigan Hablando exhibits the band sporting old-school tejana cowboy hats, an enormous change from their typical streetwear model. (“I don’t actually gown like that,” Ortiz says.) The shift can also be notable in a number of the songs on the second document, which incorporates collaborations with well-known Mexican acts. Calibre 50’s revered former frontman Edén Muñóz seems on “Ya Verán,” and Fuerza Régida groups up with Grupo Frontera for the left-field cumbia, “Bebé Dame.”
However the albums, Ortiz says, are additionally for Latinos who’re into American lure and who may initially really feel turned off by the tuba or the string-picking sounds of the requinto. “Individuals simply shut their minds as a result of they hear the devices and so they assume it’s just a few Mexican whack shit,” he says. “However they’ve received to sit down down and actually take heed to the lyrics. After they pay attention, they’re going to know: It’s the identical tradition. It’s the identical factor, simply from a special place.”
Except for the in-person events that gave the band its begin, Ortiz was capable of construct an enormous fanbase on-line. Within the group’s early days, Ortiz spent quite a lot of his time posting vlogs on YouTube, the place he’s approaching a million followers. It helped him join with followers of Régida’s music, but additionally with those that recognized along with his down-to-earth perspective and who loved watching the group’s weed-infused shenanigans on-line. “That shit labored, bro,” he says of posting vlogs virtually each different day. “If we had 500 followers, now we had 1,000. They’d come by to exhibits and say all these little slogans that I’d say within the vlogs.” As a result of viewers linked with him, they began listening to the group.
The movies additionally confirmed a extra human facet of the singer. He has an in depth relationship along with his mother and father and typically options them in his vlogs, displaying moments the place he accomplishes the immigrant little one dream of giving again to them. In one in all his most viral movies, Ortiz shocked his dad with a brand-new Toyota Tacoma “simply because” he might. (He additionally wrote “Igualito a Mi Apá” on the brand new album for his father.)
However over the pandemic, Ortiz determined to drop the digicam for a bit and leap again within the studio. He says he had gone virtually a 12 months with out making new music due to his vlogs. The band began specializing in new work, although they nonetheless share movies on TikTok, the place they’ve 4 million followers mixed, and are recognized to submit the occasional peek into their tour life. “We received our ft on the bottom and we’re simply not going to cease from right here. We received the method already,” Ortiz says. “We simply need to be what [we are].”
That drive has additionally impressed the band to collaborate with artists exterior of their style, together with Towers. Ortiz met up with him in Miami after studying that the Puerto Rican singer “fucks with my music.” Earlier than that, the DJ and producer Marshmello welcomed Ortiz to the studio. “We’re making an attempt to try this EDC rave stuff,” Ortiz explains.
The ambitions don’t cease there: “I’ve a purpose,” he provides, earlier than taking a pause: “I desire a function with Lil Child. I respect the best way he strikes and the best way he does his shit. He’s American, bro. I’m American. We simply come from completely different locations.”
These are the sort of dangers the band is able to take: They wish to combine genres, strive fully new issues, and “go international, bro.” After promoting out arenas and topping the charts, they’re in a spot the place they’ll accomplish all of it. “Now I can do that Marshmello shit. Now I can do that Myke Towers shit,” Ortiz says. “My individuals are going to respect it after which we’re going to go loopy and alter the sport.”