Let’s start with the Edgar mullet: the haircut that has kids all across Mexico walking into barbershops and demanding the “Peso Pluma.” This is just one of the idiosyncrasies that has made Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija the man of the moment in mainstream Spanish-language music. There is the expensive jewelry and designer clothing—Richard Mille watches, Christian Dior shoes, Maison Margiela jackets—that he regularly namechecks in his songs. There is his lanky physique. And then there is his voice: a scratchy, sometimes grating croak or rasp, depending on his mood. That singular voice sings about lots of things: popping bottles of Dom, carrying bricks of coke, assassinating enemies, hooking up with Russian models. You know, an average Tuesday.
Over the last year, the 25-year-old Mexican singer of Lebanese descent has racked up a list of chart and streaming records as long as a CVS receipt, ushering música mexicana to unprecedented commercial heights. ÉXODO, his fourth studio album, is a victory lap of sorts; the LP celebrates how far the movement has come, with Pluma taking homies, cousins, and fellow trailblazers like Natanael Cano, Junior H, Tito Double P, and Eslabon Armado along for the ride. But the album is also a bona fide attempt to cement Peso Pluma’s versatility—and the longevity it promises—in the industry. ÉXODO confirms he’s one of the most charismatic corrido performers of our time, but as for his ability to shapeshift across genres and flows, Peso Pluma the pop star still has some convincing to do.
The crackle of Peso’s voice is the molten core of ÉXODO. Its peculiarity is a blessing, but in some moments, it can also be a curse. His coarse growl is especially effective on the bare-knuckle norteño “La People II,” which seems to be written from the perspective of Joel Enrique “El 19” Sandoval Romero, a sicario and security chief for the Sinaloa cartel who was arrested by the Mexican government in 2014. Pluma and his guests snarl viciously as they recount tales of battling police officers, the national guard, and the military to protect their bosses (ostensibly Ovidio Guzmán López, a high-ranking leader of the Sinaloa cartel and the son of El Chapo) from capture. Peso assumes the voice of El 19, asking his associates to take care of his “land, his family, and his parents,” presumably while he’s locked up.
The debate about artists’ roles in glamorizing narco culture didn’t start with—and won’t end with—Peso Pluma. Too often, narcocorrido stars have become ideological scapegoats for the federal government’s failure to curb violence; other times, artists have denied they have any sociocultural impact at all. The discourse is fraught, but one thing is certain: Pluma excels when he performs the mythos of narco culture, no holds barred. It places him firmly within the genealogy of his forebears, like his late idols Chalino Sánchez and Ariel Camacho, who showed a similar talent for passionate storytelling, even as they romanticized narratives of murder and revenge. La Doble P reimagines that tradition on “Put Em in the Fridge,” a cold corrido-trap beat built on a blaring horn loop. He tries on a squeaky but bellicose cadence for size, bragging with Cardi B about moving kilos and calling on shooters to put their enemies on ice. Cardi’s gift for rapping athletically in both Dominican Spanish and English makes her a natural collaborator here; the pair goes bar for bar in a thrilling, peacocking display. It’s also a sublime example of Pluma’s talent for redefining his musical heritage for the present day.
Sometimes, Peso’s vocal left turns are electrifying; other times, he struggles to hit the mark. On the eminently catchy “Bruce Wayne,” he likens himself to the superhero billionaire with gravelly self-assurance, only to switch into biting, Pusha T-style raps two minutes in. On “Me Activo,” he shifts his voice into a serenade-like tone reminiscent of his performance on Kali Uchis’ “Igual Que un Ángel.” But elsewhere, the elasticity of Peso’s voice is less convincing. Despite a superb Ric Flair sample, the ballad “Ice” suffers from the more abrasive, nasally textures of Peso’s voice when he strains to reach a higher register.
It’s particularly tough to hear La Doble P struggle in his ventures outside of corridos tumbados. That’s not to say he isn’t capable of adapting successfully. Take the single “Bellakeo,” a sexy reggaeton entanglement with a drilling dembow riddim that contains spiritual echoes of Plan B. But ÉXODO is littered with unfortunate miscalculations. “Gimme a Second,” with Rich the Kid, feels like a throwaway B-side from the already middling Future and Metro Boomin album; Pluma’s appearance starts off strong with a low, sinister bridge, but then he forcefully tries to squeeze his squeaky voice into one of Atlanta’s distinctive flows. “Pa No Pensar,” an emo trap ballad with corrido undertones, boasts a grippingly morose vocal performance, but it’s marred by cookie-cutter lines about overindulging in alcohol and weed to escape reality (I’ll stay for Quavo saying “This good mota,” though). And, “Peso Completo,” with the reggaeton legend Arcángel, falls into the trap of pure mimesis. Though the artists share a trademark rasp, one of Arcángel’s creative tics is artful over-enunciation; Pluma straight up apes that technique here, resulting in a poorly executed facsimile.
The idea of flaunting his versatility is admirable. But that message might have been more efficiently conveyed if ÉXODO didn’t frequently feel like a slog. The first eight tracks are nearly indistinguishable, coalescing into a lyrical and melodic blur of tololoche strums, money, and women. Even if the album format has been downgraded in the streaming era, ÉXODO works neither as a coherent LP nor as a no-skips playlist. Like many other major pop albums of the 2020s, it would have benefited from a careful edit and a more varied track order.
But when Peso Pluma decides to shine, he’s radiant. “Vino Tinto,” with Natanael Cano and Gabito Ballesteros, is a graduate-level seminar in the corrido tumbado form. All three singers push their voices to the limit: They bellow, they growl, and they harmonize, transmitting the yearning and suffering that undergirds the best corridos—even if they are talking about drinking red wine and waiting for the molly to hit, not your local folk hero’s war battles. When Peso belts out “Ando relax,” he elongates and then punctuates the “a,” as if his vibeyness is some supernatural force rising from within. It’s the corrido prince at his most magnetic, capturing all the style’s thorny contradictions in a single breath.
It is hard to overstate Megan Thee Stallion’s success: She is not just a rap star, but the kind of supercharged celebrity who appears in commercials and movies and hobnobs with pop stars, all while serving as the new flagbearer of Houston rap heritage. On MEGAN, her newest album, you can feel the pressure on her to keep all those plates spinning—to maintain momentum, to not fuck it up. After Tina Snow, the 2018 EP that cemented Megan as a rapper who’s as raunchy, funny, and charismatic as anyone, all of her full-length projects have, to varying degrees, felt like exercises in becoming everything to everyone. But it’s never been as distracting as it is on MEGAN, an uneven album so preoccupied with giving every single type of fan exactly what they want that it might as well be crowdsourced.
Do you share Megan’s infatuation with anime? Then you will get a thrill out of “Otaku Hot Girl,” which samples a song from Jujutsu Kaisen and features an intro from one of the show’s voice actors. Bankroll Got It’s drum-heavy flip of the soundtrack is uninteresting—though it’s not like he’s working with an anime renowned for its music—and the character references are earnest but unbearably corny. The better song that leans into her fondness for Japanese culture is the multilingual “Mamushi,” which pulls off the theme without flattening her personality. Maybe instead you need new Megan to play at your Pilates class: She’s got you with the feel-good “Worthy,” a Lizzo-coded pop song. Those muscles are put to more effective use on “Spin,” where the silky Victoria Monét hook complements aggressively flirty Megan verses. The fluffy finger-snap beat sounds like it could have been on Love/Hate. (Come to think of it, Megan would have ripped “Shawty Is Da Shit.”)
Then there are the songs for those deeply invested in Megan’s beefs and squabbles. I can picture fans gathering in group chats, dissecting subliminals and clues like they’re in an Agatha Christie book club. After the last three months, I’m all feuded out, so I’m less interested in that game. Still, she lands a few good jokes on “Hiss,” where she calls out the misogynistic dudes in rap who can’t keep her name out of their mouths. (Drake has had a one-sided vendetta toward her for a while now; Megan hits back with some BBL Drizzy theories of her own.) “Rattle,” which has a fast, groovy beat that melodic South Florida rappers would eat up, leaves a sting. “’Cause the niggas don’t beef with the niggas/They scared of each other, but beat on the women,” she attacks; she could be talking about a dozen different rappers, which makes the song feel like a sharp indictment of hip-hop culture in general. As critical as that line is, she still has fun chanting, “Ain’t got no tea on me, this ho’ think she TMZ” while hitting a Harley Quinn cackle in the background.
Megan doesn’t fool around like that enough. Even tracks made to light up the club feel as if they’re satisfying expectations. On the would-be party anthem “Where Them Girls At,” Megan reworks the nostalgic Facebook-era twerk sound of Kansas City’s Kstylis. She doesn’t add anything new to his style; I can only imagine how TisaKorean, a Houston native who is always having a good-ass time tinkering with the past, would have sauced it up. Megan loosens up alongside Glorilla on “Accent,” capturing the tipsy bounce she’s always had in freestyles and features, like Latto’s “Sunday Service” remix. When she’s in that mode, she’s incredibly funny. “That ain’t my bae, he really more like my bidet,” she raps on “B.A.S.,” a Teena Marie-sampling club drill experiment that works because she’s all in. She’s even got a whole song (“Down Stairs DJ”) about masturbating before she falls asleep—not unexpected from Megan, but silly in a way her best music can be, going back to “Big Ole Freak.”
For all my reservations about MEGAN, I do understand the pressures, especially in rap, where hitmaking women have historically been discarded quickly. Foxy Brown got caught in label purgatory after 2001’s Broken Silence wasn’t as huge as Def Jam hoped; Trina had dirt thrown on her name when she did her own thing away from Trick Daddy. The stories are endless. The fears are real. If Lil Baby drops an album that makes zero cultural impact, he can go back to the drawing board. If Megan does? Who knows. She’s not trying to find out. This reality isn’t just depressing on a systemic level, but also because of the effect it has on an artist like Megan Thee Stallion. Even for one of the most celebrated Texas rappers of her generation, nurturing a fanbase takes priority over the music because it feels like a matter of time until the hip-hop industry finds an excuse to turn its back.
