Peso Pluma ignites crowd in rare SXSW 2024 performance in Austin: 'Que vivan los corridos'

In at least one way, Peso Pluma is what he says: a boxer in the ring.

As the headline act of Rolling Stone's Future of Music showcase at the South by Southwest Music Festival on Wednesday night, Mexican superstar Hasaan Emilio Kamande Laija, better known by his stage name Peso Pluma, danced around the stage with his quick footwork. He crouched and ducked. He bobbed his head. Play-sparred with his back band of guitarists, horn players, a bassist and a drummer. He didn't swing. But his arms swatted and cranked as he slid through his rapid-fire lines.

His 50-minute set at ACL Live at Moody Theater capped a night of emerging Latin American artists. Dominican rapper J Noa, the 18-year-old who signed with Sony Music Entertainment a year ago, had gone before. So too had Kevin Kaarl, the "it" boy of the bedroom pop, acoustic singer-songwriters who have sprouted out of Mexico’s desert northwest, and Young Miko, the newest queen of reggaeton.

But for Peso more than anyone else, the term "future" seemed a bit idiosyncratic. For Peso is the present. The exuberance, grittiness, sensuality and bravado of his persona, mixed with his signature raspy voice and his talented backing band and production team, have put him on top of Spanish-language music's moment in the United States and farther away. It has attracted acclaim and controversy. Peso has retracted from live appearances as criticism among Latin American politicos grows and as he works on his fourth studio album. His Austin performance was only his second of the year.

His set appeared a response to past months. Wearing a ski mask at the start to seemingly evoke a sicario, he leaned heavily on his narcocorridos like "Zapata," "Galivan II," "and "El Rapido" and "Rosa Pastel," skipping the fawning "Ella Baila Sola" and "Luna." He ran through abridged versions of the reggaeton, pop and dembow songs that he's featured in, like "Igual que un Ángel" and "Plegada," flexing how many styles he's captured. The crowd sang loudly throughout.

"I want this to be a night you remember for the rest of your lives," he said in Spanish.

It can be difficult to remember where Peso was a year ago. Laija found his first viral hits, like “AMG,” in 2022, but remained, in most regards, within the ring of Mexican regional music. Last year, though, was historic. What he touched turned platinum, and the world’s markets opened before him. Riding worldwide sensation “Ella Baila Sola,” the 24-year-old musician was the fifth most streamed artist on Spotify. The reggaeton, club and pop tracks he featured in dominated. He became the first Mexican artist to perform at the MTV Video Music Awards.

Then, in February, he won the “Best Música Mexicana Album” Grammy for his album “Génesis."

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A turbulent end of last year

Peso’s massive fame has brought attention to his original and most frequent genre: corridos tumberos. It’s a mix of trap and corridos, Mexico’s tradition of guitar-dominant songs that often eulogize the dead. The tradition has narrativized the accounts of revolutionaries, migrants, politicians and, in the past 60 years, those working the drug trade.

Since late last year, numerous Mexican politicians have condemned corridos tumberos (past political leaders have rallied against other previous generations of similarly themed music). President Andrés Manuel López Obrador charged it with romanticizing drug use and violence, and said it was his responsibility to offer a counter-message to the country’s youth that the glamour of the narcotrade “is fleeting.” Northern Mexican cities like Tijuana and Chihuahua placed hefty fines on performing music that espoused violence or drug use.

In January, the Chilean government asked the Viña del Mar festival, one of Latin America’s biggest and most storied, to remove Peso as an act. Organizers refused, but Peso eventually canceled that and other Latin American performance dates, claiming “personal reasons.”

So far, only Dallas and Austin have seen “Doble P” in concert this year.

Peso and his team have for the most part refused to address the content of his music.

“The reality is that they’re entertainers, right?” Peso’s manager George Prajin said to Rolling Stone. “And they’re singing songs, and their songs mirror what people live on a daily basis. There’s good things in the world and there’s bad things in the world.”

In a YouTube interview last year, Peso said he understands that as the most popular interpreter of narcocorridos, he will receive the same pushback that the previous generations of stars, like Los Tigres del Norte and Los Tucanes de Tijuana, also confronted.

His hope, he said, was that the public would come to see that for artists, "It's not like we're supporting or making excuses" for the content of the music. "It's just work."

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Large crowds spend day in line

Fans arrived early in the morning to try to squeeze a free spot at the showcase. The line wrapped around City Hall and trailed onto Lavaca, Third and Guadalupe streets.

The chance to see Peso, multiple fans who spoke to the American-Statesman said, justified the seven- to nine-hour wait.

Many credited Peso with getting them into the regional genre, or Spanish-language music more broadly. Daniel Rodriguez, 29, said he "hadn't been keeping up" with Mexican music before Peso. His girlfriend, Jessica Albiter, 30, said she’d mostly listened to Latin rock and pop before.

The appeal, Rodriguez said, was that he's "our parents’ music for our generation."

The collaboration and crossover is what drew Cesar Olivo, 37, to Peso's music. The artist's work makes him proud that the corrido and regional music he's listened to since his youth has a larger audience, that it's transforming. He credits many of the tumbado artists, but thinks Peso is currently at the cutting edge.

“As a Mexican, he’s putting our flag up there,” Olivo said.

In collaborating with reggaetoneros, Latin pop stars and música urbana rappers, Peso Pluma and other Mexican regional artists have found their strongest footing yet in the American market. It makes them firmly part of the "Latin" music understood north of the border.

Besides, the dissolution of genre is appealing to new fans, like Shirley Franco, 37, who long identified as a rockera but says Peso got her into many new sounds.

And for fans like Olivo and Franco, separating lyrics one disagrees with or is disinterested in is nothing new. Franco compared it to reggaeton, which she said sexualizes women but that she and others still dance to.

She sees some of Peso's songs as apologisms for the drug trade, but said that at the end of the day, “you don’t dance the lyrics. You dance the rhythms."

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Peso Pluma pushes forth

And they danced. For the most part, Peso danced with them. He jolted between stage sides. He sparred playfully with his musicians and crouched to sing with fans or nab a security guard’s sunglasses. He skipped and skipped.

As with any bout, the spectacle of each round was fragmented with breaks. Sometimes between songs, other times between long interludes of guitar and carchetas (alto horns), Peso climbed onto speaker boxes or a DJ table that jutted out into the crowd and stared out with his dogged contrarianism.

For 10, 20 seconds, carchetas forced a dance rhythm and deafening quiet. Peso was still. The band jostled onstage and looked up. The crowd below pushed forth. The mezzanine attendees stood on their feet.

And Peso was still. Some sign of a blushing confessionalism would appear on his face but then vanish.

It was he against whom? Certainly not everyone. The crowd was in frenzy. In a frenzy for him.

He broke. He wagged his tongue. He fist-pumped, twisted his arms, thrusted his hips.

Halfway through his encore performance of “Lady Gaga,” he finally spoke: a response to the recent controversy.

“I’m here on the stage — for you all,” he said in Spanish. His voice cracked. He directed his attacks at the press. They “can keep running their mouths," he said explicitly.

“For as long as I am alive and this band is going, we will keep breaking into every **** scene, no matter what happens. We’re going to keep representing our Mexican flag.

“Que vivan los corridos. Que viva México. Y que siempre, pero siempre y para siempre, viva la **** doble P.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Mexican superstar Peso Pluma comes to Austin for SXSW 2024