On a bright, sunny day in May in the rural Santa Clarita Valley, a 45-minute drive north of Los Angeles, the quintet known as Fuerza Regida and its clan roll up in three luxury cars: a 2023 black Cadillac Escalade SUV, a graphite off-roader Lamborghini Urus and a white Chevrolet Corvette. As the band members made their way to the shaded area, sporting brands like Rhude and Dior along with custom-fitted Dodger caps, their necks and wrists sparkled, dripping in diamonds.
Given their style, one could easily label the members of Fuerza Regida as rappers. But the group from San Bernardino, Calif., is a trailblazer of the burgeoning música mexicana (or regional Mexican, as the music is also known) movement that has taken over the Billboard charts since the beginning of the year.
Born and raised in the United States, the members of Fuerza Regida — frontman and lead songwriter Jesús Ortiz Paz (known as JOP), lead guitarist Samuel Jaimez, second guitarist Khrystian Ramos, tuba player José García and tololoche player Moisés López — have become one of the main drivers of a homegrown music that celebrates Northern Mexican roots with a trap bravado. “We’re all American, so we like to dress with American swag. Whatever we sang about, it wasn’t the regular ranch stuff. It was about what’s going on in the hood, what’s going on in California, what’s going on in these different [U.S.] states. Then it just started growing,” JOP tells Billboard Español.
Read the full Fuerza Regida Billboard Español cover story here.
