The featherweight phenomenon can be unraveled in all its complexity by paying just a little attention to her dress. The white leather jacket with Louis Vuitton embroidery that she chose for her presentation at Jimmy Fallon’s show, her special fondness for wide sports shorts or expensive brands like Balenciaga and Burberry, the bizarre Spiderman-shaped jewelry by Mexican jewelry Baglio, his love for Iconic caps from the DSquareD2 brand or the Alicia Keys collection for Moncler speak softly of the diversity of elements that inhabit it and survive in its lying corridors.
Featherweight with Jimmy Fallon.Rosalind O’Connor/NBC
Each of these decisions bears witness, for example, to his own path in life: before music, to his passion for sport. No one in the metropolitan area has worn shorts this hard on stage, but Featherweight, who came from the Las Chivas de Guadalajara youth base, makes them a must-have.
His style also speaks of those underground connections that have always linked the African-American slums of the United States, the cradle of gangsta rap, with the Mexican immigrant population, who always had corridos in their luggage and whose immigration routes took them there neighborhoods. .
Just look at his head, one that defies the almost canonical mandate of singing corridos, always protected by the good brim of his hat. Despite the fact that many had transcended the forms of the corrido in their sounds and narratives, such as Ariel Camacho did, the aesthetic of the Texan boot and pitiado headband had remained intact. According to Professor Martín Mulligan, a University of Missouri-Columbia physician and expert on corridos and Mexico’s transnational culture, everything changed when groups like Herencia de Patrones performed in Los Angeles, “a kind of gangsta rap but with corridos.” ” . This aesthetic departure from the cowboy was cemented with the fame of Natanael Cano, who exacerbated an urban aesthetic of tattoos, chains, and sneakers.
Featherweight, during one of his presentations.ING: Featherweight
If the true market for Mexican corridos is Los Angeles rather than Mexico itself, then it’s no surprise that a phenomenon like Featherweight opts for the line of those without a hat who are better off wearing a Hunter wool ski mask their insignia. . “We cannot ignore the fact that the region has been subsisting on gangsta rap since the 1980s, particularly since Mexican communities coexisted with African American communities in suburban Los Angeles, such as Inglewood, as was the case with Chalino Sánchez. ‘ This phenomenon later spread to the rest of California’s cities and eventually to the entire United States. “Snoop Dogg has stated that he’s been listening to band music since the ’90s,” Mulligan explains.
Hip-hop style has its origins in part in the aesthetic that young Afro descendants adopted—in protest—from the looks of the black inmates who swarmed United States prisons for racial persecution in the late 1970s. Prisoners were given uniforms that did not fit them because they had previously belonged to someone else. In addition, they were chained and had their cords removed so that they would not constitute lethal weapons in prison. The free youth dressed like their brothers, with baggy pants, tongue-out tennis shoes, and the manufacture of gleaming gold chains to give new meaning to those who restricted those who had no freedom.
However, this influence of oversized clothing, sneakers and gold chains studded with diamonds, which materializes in the style of Featherweight, is not only due to the territorial coincidence that led to the mixing of both genres, hip hop and corridos. Professor Juan Carlos Ramírez-Pimienta of San Diego State University-Imperial Valley School of Border Studies finds this coincidence has to do with an ontological similarity in the narrative of the two subcultures wanting to dress to empower themselves. “The genre of the corrido is and will always be a kind of reckoning, an empowerment, a search for solace,” explains Ramírez-Pimienta.
Featherweight wears the Louis Vuitton jacket before the show with Jimmy Fallon. Rosalind O’Connor/NBC
Whoever gets the corrido sung – the genre has always been sung in the third person – or in the most recent version of Featherweight, whoever sings it, who stars in the epic, “is and embodies the role” of that vigilante , who, like Gregorio Cortez, folk hero of the US-Mexico border communities, challenged a sheriff with pistol in hand. Of course, this reckoning no longer takes place in the context of the Mexican revolution, there are no longer horses or sheriffs, but the corrido wants to continue to refer to this place of retaking power,” adds the expert.
Narco Juniors style
Of course, he sings lying down as Featherweight Corridos — according to University of Arizona expert Dr. Celestino Fernández, “a subgenre of the subgenre of narcocorridos that many would not even recognize as corridos, but rather as autobiographical songs.” and hymns. hedonists” – he tries that this empowerment is influenced by the lifestyles of figures who cannot be separated from their corridist sagas: the narcos.
The penchant for flaunting the expensive watches he wears, singing to him in his songs “Diamantón”, this lack of modesty in revealing his outfits at every public appearance, all made by the most exclusive European brands , is, according to Professor Martín Mulligan, a mechanism that the singer imitates through the characters he sings about in his songs.
Light as a feather in one of his backstage photos with the top brand balaclavas.
“There is aesthetic precedent here in Ramón Arellano Félix, a member of the family that founded the Tijuana cartel and was killed at the 2002 Mazatlán carnival. With him, the concept of the Narco Junior was born. He was the first to abandon the narco’s cowboy aesthetic and embrace the new wave aesthetic. Tijuana’s proximity to San Diego and Los Angeles allowed him to catch up on fashion,” Mulligan explains, adding, “But it was El Chino Ántrax, who was killed in Culiacán in 2020, that changed the aesthetic of drug culture. “It changed everything,” Geovani Cabrera (one of his leading corridistas) told me at the time. His corridos had new elements: although they all told his epic saga as a killer boss, they too were shot through with a non-stop celebration that featured the names of exclusive European clothing and footwear brands, sports cars, yachts, jets, jewelery and spirits . In addition, he was the first time a drug dealer who was deterritorialized, meaning he traveled around the world. And this was not only proved by his corridos, but he himself posted his private life on his Instagram account. The style of disseminating his life actually led to his being captured by Interpol in Amsterdam in 2013. In summary, this aesthetic had an impact on a philosophy of life: Live little but live intensely. There is no future for young people, they are here and now,” explains Mulligan.
However, genre expert Juan Carlos Ramírez-Pimienta has a caveat: “However, the phenomenon is very similar to what happened with gangsta rap, which, despite its origins, has had the most audiences. among the upper class.” —Middle-class whites who would mimic the thug signals and vandalism song lyrics, then exit the bar and head to school or work. The same thing is happening here, it’s a culture that’s modeled after the symbolic, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone who sings or listens to it is connected to the narco.”
Bizarre rap and featherweight posing in Mexico City.33 Productions (EFE/33 Productions)
So, with a bit of sport on top, a lot of hip-hop – a formula also used by reggaeton singers – that emulate the manners of excessive luxury and the ongoing celebration of the protagonists of the genre of their songs, with a charisma featherweight mixes everything and creates his own style that many corridos experts in the United States consider unique. “Many years ago I interviewed the great composer of Los Tigres del Norte, Enrique Franco, the composer of ‘La jaula de oro’, and he said: ‘Global musical phenomena arise when even those who are not familiar with music ‘know it.’ “Featherweight is the equivalent of what Los Tigres del Norte were back then, but with the potential of the Tik Tok era,” confirms Ramírez-Pimienta.
While singing Ella baila sola, the Mexican makes fashionable pastel colors, Bermuda shorts with the same print, men wear sophisticated and long necklaces, and has all the Latino barbers in the United States christening her haircut “The Featherweight,” even though the “mullet type.” “Edgar” was in the slums decades ago.
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