Rap Mexicano

Rap Mexicano is Spanish-language hip-hop made inside Mexico, distinct from the English-and-Spanglish Chicano rap of Mexican-American Los Angeles. It comes from the country’s own barrios and is largely made by artists who never left their home towns. Its historic centre is the northern industrial city of Monterrey where in 1996 Control Machete emerged as part of the Avanzada Regia, the wave that gave Mexico rock, rap and electronic scenes outside the capital. Control Machete’s heavy beats and blunt delivery established the form while Cartel de Santa, from the same city and year, took it harder, importing the West Coast gangsta-rap blueprint. Characteristically its producers build beats from regional Mexican music like cumbia, norteño, banda and corridos as well as from American trap. Rap Mexicano’s lyrics centre on el barrio, la familia, cannabis culture, Santa Muerte and the codes and violence of the street. Spread by YouTube rather than radio, it produced a mass-audience generation led by Santa Fe Klan. Its current frontier is its merger with corridos tumbados, the trap-corrido hybrid that emerged around 2019.