In 2018, Regional Mexican radio chilled out. Amid the ever-shifting blend of genres that comprises the format, the two “new” styles that commanded the most attention sounded remarkably blase about their surging popularity. In fact, “command” seems like the wrong word for the genres of cumbia and corridos verdes, since they were just sitting around in a smoky haze, waiting for audiences to trip over them.
As Elias Leight explained in a spring Rolling Stone feature, cumbias have been around for decades, having traveled from South America throughout the Spanish-speaking diaspora over the last 70-or-so years. Turn-of-the-millennium hits from Los Angeles Azules, a swanky Mexican big band, have never outgrown their use as commercial bumper music on U.S. radio. The band’s recent resurgence culminated in a 2018 Coachella performance, dug by none other than Justin Bieber, and a current hit rearrangement of Natalia LaFourcade’s tune “Nunca Es Suficiente.” And that’s just the acoustic stuff.
The electronic technocumbia scene, pioneered by Selena and her producer brother A.B. Quintanilla in the mid ‘90s, got new energy from former nano-satellite engineer Edmundo Gómez Moreno, aka Raymix, and his unkillable singles “Oye Mujer” and “¿Dónde Estarás?” The Blog admires the mysterious modality of these singles and admits they don’t really sound like anyone else.The Blog also never wants to listen to them. Like the band Low, for whose 2018 album Double Negative I also didn’t have much time, Raymix zeros in on precisely one mood and hits his mark. It’s a feat that demands acknowledgement rather than repeated listening.
If Raymix songs seem like they might sound better stoned, corridos verdes make that theme explicit. Praised by Snoop, played mostly by young sierreño bands who weave hypnotic patterns from acoustic guitars and either bass or tuba, these songs can get sort of samey. If you thought shoutouts to narcos were getting old, or if you were having trouble differentiating weeping meditations on drinking away lost amors, wait until you hear a bunch of young dudes sing about how high they are. These guys stick to themes. Their songs are sometimes hilarious, though, and the tubists and lead guitarists occasionally stumble across moments that’ll legitimately drop your jaw, regardless of how much THC is in your blood. As with so much else, it depends which strain you get.
Corridos about smoking weed aren’t new, either, but they do represent a shift, at least in terms of mainstream radio fare. A boyband like T3R Elemento might occasionally sing about real-life narcos and the marijuana production business, but unlike the older generation of corrideros — Gerardo Ortiz, El Komander, Noel Torres — they make no pretense that they’re singing from experience or proximity. Born and raised in the U.S., T3R Elemento sings about weed from a bilingual suburban U.S. high school point of view, a vantage their video iconography reinforces. It’s similar to what we saw with the Bay Area’s hyphy movimiento a decade ago. That movement also focused on drug and alcohol consumption, with little reference to Mexico or the drug production narratives that had long dominated corridos. Call these movements “assimilation” if you want, but they represent wilder, less predictable patterns of assimilation than political discourse or radio programmers have led us to expect.
Of course, Regional Mexican radio still plays frantic dressage polkas from Marco Flores, and plenty of maudlin slow jams from the likes of Banda MS. Old narcocorridos from Los Tigres rub shoulders with new ones from El Fantasma. Frantic emotions and spirited boasts will never die; but neither will the phenomenon of getting really baked, and then singing about it.
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Having accounted for trends, here are 11 Regional Mexican albums the Blog recommends, genre by genre — in several cases paired with their higher profile inferiors.
Continue reading “¡Lo Mejor de 2018!”
T3R Elemento – “Ojitos de Conejo” (from the DEL album The Green Trip)
Those seeking to avoid Los Últimos’ sexist clickbait scheme are directed instead to their 
We last caught up with Dallas’s bestselling La Energia Norteña in late 2016, when their dull fifth album for the Azteca label was topping Billboard‘s Regional Mexican album chart. They’ve since released album #6, El Sueño Americano (suggested title: El Sueño Saxual), which is no less dull and sadly is not a sax-and-accordion-driven concept album about the plight of immigrants, although the 
And then there’s the new joint from Lenin Ramirez ft. T3R Elemento: 
Drowing his sorrows with a different drug, at #39 on the radio we find the new sierreño weeper from hatless 20-year-old lothario Virlán García, who asks the pitiful musical question 
At #7 we find 
They could take heartbreak lessons from Alejandro Fernandez ft. Los Tigres del Norte, who present an entire heart cauterization program in their duet 
NorteñoBlog has held off talking about 
2. “‘I would define cumbia, whether people like it or not, as the most popular Latin genre all over the Americas and perhaps the world,’ says Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste, a professor at Georgia State University who co-edited and contributed to the essay collection Cumbia! Scenes of a Migrant Latin American Music Genre.” (The Blog is exploring interlibrary loan possibilities.) Cumbia gets plenty of play on regional Mexican radio, often in mixes or accompanying DJ patter, but its electrified version — as played by Raymix, 3Ball MTY, the Kumbia Kings, etc. — has always seemed like an outlier in the mostly acoustic, polka-based format. (
NorteñoBlog is always hungry for some polémica, but in this case we need to award Jason Ankeny with a well-earned [citation needed], because I can’t find any evidence of the controversy to which he alludes. Furthermore, Pesado’s song 
I mention all this because Pesado has a new album, Los Ángeles Existen (Remex). Its 
While at the conference, I caught a fascinating presentation by Yessica Garcia Hernandez, a doctoral candidate at UCSD who’s done extensive work studying Jenni Rivera fandom. You can read some of her papers, for the prestigious likes of NANO and the Journal of Popular Music Studies, 
And, surprise surprise, the Riveras aren’t the only women on the radio this week. At #37 we find Becky G’s heartwarming paean to sexy older dudes, “Mayores,” off the top of my head the only instance of a non-regional song lingering on Mexican regional radio after it’s fallen off the all-encompassing Hot Latin chart. And at #31 we find Marilyn Odessa, aka Marilyn, with the snoozy (but well-sung) banda ballad “No Sé.” Marilyn is on Lizos Records, home to the equally snoozy (but huge) Banda MS. Like Chiquis, Marilyn also has a famous Mom, the pop singer Marisela; you can watch the two madres perform together 
Today’s Pick to Click goes to none of the above. Rather, the Blog hands the coveted award to a different Chiquis song from her new album Entre Botellas (Sweet Sound). 
NorteñoBlog 