As the California sunset paints the sky bright orange on a scorching August day, a caravan of luxury SUVs makes its way across the dirt roads outside Los Angeles that lead to Pico Rivera Sports Arena. When they arrive, the door of one pristine white Mercedes-Benz G-Class opens and 28-year-old Luis R Conriquez emerges. Clad in black jeans; a white, black and yellow-patterned button-down shirt; black boots; and a suede tejana adorned with feathers, he fits right in with the Instagram-ready aesthetic of the largely millennial crowd gathered here. The heavy silver chain resting on his chest is the only obvious signifier that Conriquez isn’t just another attendee of the inaugural Belicolandia: The singer-songwriter is one of today’s biggest corridos bélicos stars, and the thousands assembled here will soon see him close out the festival-like event produced by his label, Kartel Music.
As Conriquez makes his way to his trailer just behind the stage, an intimidating security detail follows — but the musician himself offers friendly smiles to everyone he encounters. Once settled inside the trailer, where he’ll spend the next hour or so, Conriquez really lets down his guard, cracking jokes with good friend Tony Aguirre about how early his fellow corridos singer (another Kartel signee) had performed that day. “That’s how we get along; it’s all jokes,” Conriquez says. “We like to have a good time.” The trailer becomes a revolving door as emerging and established regional Mexican artists alike pop in and out to say hello and snap a quick photo with, as Conriquez’s fans anointed him early in his career, the King of Corridos Bélicos. The moniker isn’t an overstatement: Since debuting in 2019, Conriquez has pioneered the Mexican subgenre that has gone global in the past couple of years thanks to him and peers like Peso Pluma.