In Peso Pluma’s ‘Éxodo’ he outgrows his regional Mexican roots

Leading up to his fourth studio album, Exodo, Mexican hitmaker Peso Pluma chopped off his famous mullet hairstyle. He went to a songwriting camp in Miami. And to the chagrin of his fans, he canceled and postponed several tour dates in the US and Latin America. If he wanted to maintain his status as the chief ambassador of regional Mexican music and surpass the success of his 2023 breakthrough – the Grammy-winning LP Genesiswhich ranked at number 3, the highest of any other Mexican album on the list Billboard 200 – he should improve his craft.

Exodo arrived last Thursday evening as a data dump of 24 songs spread across 16 classic corridos tumbados and eight rousing hip-hop and reggaetón-infused tracks, with cameos from Cardi B, Quavo, Anitta and Rich the Kid. Here Pluma picks up where he left off Genesis: with sharp narcocorridos that demystify the ordinary (albeit precarious) lives of those working in the drug trade, now interspersed with boastful messages from his expensive new life as a pop star.

While Pluma’s fans vow to top his latest record, they’ll still have to deal with Taylor Swift. Now active at number 1 for nine weeks Billboard 200 chart, she has maintained her status by releasing limited edition versions of songs The department of tortured poets, including remixes and even voice memos, in the same weeks that pop stars like Billie Eilish and Charli XCX were releasing highly anticipated records. You could imagine her eleventh hour release of “Fortnight” in Spanish – “Quincena” with Christian Nodal? – but it would have been far too blatant a step to thwart Pluma’s rise to the top.

The analysis of the rising star’s career is often overshadowed by superlatives that begin and end with ‘The first Mexican to…’. But given the stark lyrical content of Exodo — and the death threats that led him to cancel a performance in Tijuana last year – Pluma’s nationalist pride appears increasingly at odds with a government, led by outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, that would prefer not to claim him. What does it mean for a young artist like Peso Pluma to wave the flag of a country where he is criticized and endangered for his performances? Where are songs, censored in multiple cities in Mexico, taking the blame for the rampant crime and violence that inspired them?

Such tensions set the stage for his great exodus, as the album’s title suggests; but the artist remains too reticent to discuss them directly. For his performance at Coachella this year, Pluma commissioned actor Morgan Freeman to defend his songs and the people whose stories they tell, including those working for imprisoned Sinaloan King Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Pluma argued through his proxy, “The vicious circle they are born into serves as their protection and as punishment. That is why they will always be on trial.”

Pluma exposes this dilemma in the pensive new guitar ballad ‘Hollywood’. Starring the San Diego-born ballad Estevan Plazola, this is the most politically charged release from Pluma’s oeuvre. However, Plazola does the honors by singing his sharpest lines: “Our generation thinks differently / Look at the president, another for the list of corrupt people / Absolute power, they live in pure luxury / While we are worth nothing here.”

“But I’ll keep going,” interjects Pluma, singing about walking through Hollywood, and seemingly into a more internationally oriented chapter of his career.

Any champion of regionalism risks curtailing his creativity by identifying too closely with tradition. Pluma’s commercial success now requires him to do more than just promote Mexican music across the border. (After all, the Grammy-winning norteño band Los Tigres del Norte did that been they’ve been exporting narcocorridos since they released “Contrabando y Traición” in 1974.) Pluma’s contemporaries Natanael Cano and Fuerza Regida, who pioneered the trap-inspired “corridos tumbados” in the late 2010s, have since turned to EDM to further innovate their sounds . Pluma boards their band with a volatile DJ Snake collab, ‘Teka’, but he shows more enthusiasm as he indulges his taste for American hip-hop.

Pluma’s outlaw sensibility was fueled by corridos, but in American rappers Pluma sees like-minded people. That’s no surprise given the government’s crackdown on rappers in the United States, where songs by Atlanta MC Young Thug and his crew are being levied as evidence of gang-related activity. With sharp input from Cardi B, Pluma tells his own gangster fantasies in the Spanglish song ‘Put Em In the Fridge’. He then drops his guard into the dissociative haze of “Pa No Pensar,” a somber duet with Quavo. “I had to lose family / I had to make money,” Pluma says in Spanish, “Don’t go with appearances / They think I have what I want / ‘Cause sometimes I party.”

Fans needn’t worry that Pluma has given up on the cause of regional Mexican music; ultimately, his vulnerable corridos remain his strongest works Exodo. Requinto guitarists move their fingers with quick dexterity in “Bruce Wayne” – and a wistful piano melody sees him transition from the devious, Mexican Spider-Man character he was playing. Genesis, to a brooding Batman in the dark. His loneliness increases and his shabbiness softens in ‘Reloj’, a well-made sad film sierreño anthem, co-directed by Ivan Cornejo, the poster child of the emotional subgenre.

In Exodo, Pluma offers listeners a taste of his burgeoning potential as a multi-genre star. Even if some collaborations seem driven more by wish fulfillment than the spirit of artistic risk, the road ahead for Pluma looks much more open and brighter than before.