From Corridos to Global Charts: The Evolution of Regional Mexican Music and the Appeal of Blending Tradition with Pop, Rap, and Other Genres
Latin music has been growing in the global market over the past decade, culminating this year with Bad Bunny’s halftime performance at the Super Bowl, and Karol G headlining Coachella. But while those two artists are from Puerto Rico and Colombia, respectively, Mexican artists have been playing a central role in the genre’s expansion. At the 2026 Grammy Awards, Natalia Lafourcade won the Best Latin Pop Album, continuing the legacies of Luis Miguel, Pepe Aguilar, Vicente Fernández, and many more Mexican Grammy winners. Modern artists like Peso Pluma, Netón Vega, Grupo Frontera, and Fuerza Regida have reached global recognition by bringing regional Mexican music to international audiences. Today, Mexican music has become such an important aspect of Latin culture that it holds its own categories at the Latin Billboard Awards and the Grammys, reflecting its cultural and commercial impact worldwide.
Mac Clark, an agent at Creative Artists Agency, recently provided insights on the globalization of Latin touring at the 2025 Latin Billboard Week. “I think that Mexico has become the most important market,” he said. “From a streaming perspective and from a sales perspective of building an artist, it speaks to the US, but it also pushes down into Central and Latin America. I think, if you can achieve success in Mexico, you are going to see much broader success both throughout the US and certainly in Latin America.”
Innovating Traditional Mexican Music
Traditional genres such as mariachis and rancheras are the essence of Mexican music and have become the foundation for much of the new music that is emerging. What makes Mexican music stand out is its innovative approach, combining traditional sounds with other contemporary genres like rap, reggaeton, trap, and pop. Other traditional genres like corridos, norteño, and banda have gained international recognition after Peso Pluma’s and Eslabon Armado’s hit song “Ella Baila Sola,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Global Top 100 charts and won several awards in 2023.
Leila Cobo, the chief content officer at Latin Billboard, explains the importance of this milestone: “‘Ella Baila Sola’ was the first time a regional Mexican song got into the top five, if I’m not mistaken, ever! It’s just that Peso was a really important figure. Peso was kind of like the poster child for this. He was the first big figure that put everything on the map and put it more in the foreground.”
Another artist who transformed his cultural identity through music by placing other genres into the spotlight is Mexican rapper Natanael Cano. Mixing corridos with hip-hop, he has attracted notable collaborators like Bad Bunny (for a remix of “Soy el Diablo”). Such crossover increased Cano’s audience inside the urban Latin market and seemed to encourage an ongoing shift.
Collaborations with international artists are a big part of what helps expand the audience and fanbase across borders. Bad Bunny with Grupo Frontera and Natanael Cano, Peso Pluma’s collaboration with Bizarrap, and Snoop Dogg with Banda MS are just a few examples of how Mexican music has been gaining popularity outside of Mexico.
“Regional Mexican music has really become the forefront of what my friends are listening to, especially in Texas. Born and raised there and my parents coming from Mexico, a lot of us deal with this bicultural entity,” says Isabela Elizondo, the treasurer of the Latin Management Club at Berklee. “Norteño music has been really present, especially in the younger generations. People are starting to fuse with trap and other styles, so it has been really interesting to see that trajectory.”
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While history shows us that merging musical styles has often led to brand new styles, what makes this movement unique is the way that many of these Mexican artists are also remaining authentic to their roots. The merging of trombones and trumpets played alongside rap offers a new sound while preserving Mexican culture through storytelling.
“This whole idea of connecting to the roots of your music,” says Juan J. Arroyo, a reporter at Rolling Stone magazine, “once they start doing that, it starts feeling more authentic. It starts feeling more personal not just to the artist, but also personal to the listeners.”
On her award-winning album, Cancionera, Natalia Lafourcade presents the listener with pop-rock and alternative pop sounds, but also drawing from Latin American folk roots. Lafourcade is an example of an artist who preserves more traditional styles, but is still able to achieve global visibility.
“It’s not just something sampled in a computer with loops; it’s strong, meaty, beautiful music, and I think that’s part of the reason that it connects,” says Cobo. “I also think that Mexican music is maybe a richer musical experience.”
Appealing to International Audiences
The spread of regional Mexican music is not unlike the way the musicians and the fans have migrated, says Arroyo.
“Musica regional, the corridos and all that stuff are very innately and intrinsically Mexican,” he says. “They’re not a diaspora genre. They are a Mexican genre. I think also the fact that the migration of people from Mexico to California and Texas, brought their music with them. So then they just started spreading it between their communities and these artists started becoming big in Mexico.”
As these newer genres become more established, new Mexican artists are beginning to take the spotlight in the wider Latin genre. American-Mexican singer-songwriter Xavi has secured a place in the industry at only 18 years old after being invited to collaborate on the World Cup song alongside Carlos Vives, Emilia, and Wisin.
Challenges Mexican Artists Face
Despite this genre’s rise in global markets, Mexican artists have been facing challenges when it comes to immigration policies. This becomes a barrier for these artists to engage with audiences and foster fan connections beyond the borders of their country, hindering their ability to enter or stay inside the United States for tours and live shows.
“Mexican music was always big, but it started to have this resurgence, I would say four years ago. I actually spoke to Peso Pluma about this at length,” says Cobo. “When he put out the new album with Tito, he said it better than I could ever say it: With this whole immigration thing, they’re being really targeted in terms of visas and going in and out, so that’s a challenge for them.”
The challenges that Mexican artists have been facing with visas haven’t stopped them from growing a fanbase outside of Mexico, but it has made touring more difficult.
“I think all these artists have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder,” says Cobo. “Like I think they feel it’s harder for them to prove their worth because people are used to stigmatizing Mexican music and Mexicans. Especially now with all these attacks on immigrants, the most affected group really are Mexicans because they’re the biggest immigrant group in the country.”
Even with restrictive immigration policies in the US, streaming and social media platforms have opened doors for Mexican artists to be heard all over the world. Peso Pluma’s greatest hit gained more than 1 billion streams on Spotify and he has a current audience of 43 million monthly listeners. And although Natalia Lafourcade and Fuerza Regida release music in different genres of Latin music, they have also gained global acclaim.
“I think that Mexico has always had the best fans in the world,” says Leizer Guss, director of Festivals at OCESA at one of the 2025 Latin Billboard week’s panels. “It was just a matter of maturing the live music business by having the artists pay more attention to Latin America and having infrastructure.”
‘Playing on the Border’
There are a combination of factors that might contribute to the reason why regional Mexican music is appealing to people, even to those who do not have a direct connection with Mexican culture. Cobo, who has interviewed many Latin artists, says that these new artists are resonating with a new audience not only due to their music, but also because of the way they present themselves to their listeners.
“Peso Pluma, to me, is like a pop star,” she says. “He behaves like a pop star. He speaks like a pop star. I just think they see who they are differently. They are very Mexican and very proud of being Mexican, but they also see themselves as pop stars to the world. …They do unexpected things. They play on the border.”
