BARRIO (The Washington Post) – When did Peso Pluma realize he’d made it? Was it performing alongside Becky G at Coachella? Singing “Ella Baila Sola,” his collab with the group Eslabon Armado, on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”? Was it at his sold-out April show — his first stateside performance — in Ontario, Calif., where he beamed as thousands of fans sang the lyrics of “Por Las Noches,” an early hit, back to him?

Or perhaps it hasn’t completely sunk in yet.The Guadalajara native is a swiftly rising star of regional Mexican music, which includes corridos, norteño, banda and other genres that have long been popular across Mexico and the Southwestern United States. Groups such as Los Tigres del Norte and Los Bukis routinely sold out arenas around Latin America and in the United States (particularly in heavily Latino Texas and California) in the decades leading up to the early aughts.In the streaming era, regional Mexican music has become increasingly popular beyond those borders, thanks to a new generation of artists eager to collaborate across genres. But it’s never really had a global star.

Peso Pluma, whose moniker translates to “featherweight” in Spanish, has emerged as a likely contender for that title just three years after he began releasing music through Los Angeles-based indie label El Cártel De Los Ángeles. (He’s now signed to Prajin Music Group, where he launched his own indie label, Double P Records, in April.) This year, eight of his songs have landed on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, where “Ella Baila Sola”(“She Dances Alone”)— written by Eslabon Armado’s Pedro Tovar — became the first regional Mexican song to reach the chart’s Top 10. (It is currently No. 1 on the global pop chart and, according to Spotify, has been streamed more than 465 million times.) His most successful tracks include collaborations with Natanael Cano, whose 2019 breakout via Los Angeles indie label Rancho Humilde introduced “corridos tumbados” — a trap-infused approach to traditional corridos, narrative-based songs that have been popular since the Mexican revolution — and Mexican American pop singer Becky G.

“This is just the beginning for us,” Peso Pluma says in a brief interview with The Washington Post. Though the name “Peso Pluma” — sometimes shortened to “Doble P” (“Double P”) — refers to the singer himself, he tends to talk about Peso Pluma as “a project” or “team” that includes his cousin, songwriter-producer Jesús Roberto Laija García, and other frequent collaborators. This has added an air of mystery to the musician (real name: Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija) and his strong presence on the pop charts.

Peso Pluma is “one of the most explosive and exponential growth stories in the era of music streaming,” said Antonio Vázquez, head of U.S. Latin editorial at Spotify.

Latin music has seen tremendous growth in the streaming era (the Recording Industry Association of America said in a recent report that Latin music revenue reached a record $1.1 billion last year) and regional Mexican is a particularly vast genre that lends itself well to curated playlists designed to help users discover more music.