The 10 Best Narcocorrido Songs

Celebrate Cinco De Mayo with some classic Mexican narco ballads-think gangster rap with tubas and accordions.

Mexican corridos are a kind of story-song reaching back to the ballads of medieval Spain, which have been reborn as the theme music of the transnational drug trade. In the 1920s, corrido singers sang about brave Mexican bootleggers who defied the gringo border agents, and when Prohibition ended both the singers and their heroes turned to other products.

In the 1970s, Los Tigres del Norte became the biggest stars in the history of norteño music, the accordion-powered style of the Texas border region, thanks to gaudy tales of international smugglers that not only topped the charts but inspired a string of successful action movies, and gave birth to a new genre, the narcocorrido.

In the 1990s corridos caught on with urban youth in Los Angeles thanks to a smuggler and songwriter named Chalino Sánchez, who made national headlines when he got in a gun battle onstage in Southern California, and became a legend after he was assassinated in the drug smuggling center of Culiacan, Sinaloa, in 1992.

Sometimes described as a kind of Mexican Tupac Shakur, Chalino spawned a generation of imitators, many of whom sing over the upbeat brass bands, or bandas, popular on Mexico’s West Coast.

Banned on radio and television throughout most of Mexico, corridos tell true and imagined stories of brave smugglers, brutal drug cartels, and the wave of violence that is engulfing much of the country.

Hailed by some listeners as honest dispatches from the front lines of the drug world, they are despised by others for making heroes out of drug lords and hired killers. This list of songs is partly a “best of” selection and partly a survey of the genre’s evolution from its early days to the latest trends.

Written by Elijah Wald

Elijah Wald is a musician and author of Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas. His latest book is The Dozens: A History of Rap's Mama.

Los Alegres de Terán “Carga Blanca (White Cargo)” (1940s)

Label: Discos Falcon

Most loco lyric: "Cruzaron el Rió Grande ya casi al anochecer/Con bastante carga blanca que tenían que vender."

Translation: "They crossed the Rio Grande just as it was getting dark/With plenty of white cargo that they had to sell." 

The first narcocorrido hit, by the defining fathers of norteño music. It tells about a cross-border smuggling trip around 1940, carrying either heroin or cocaine, and is still sung all over Mexico and the United States.

Los Tigres del Norte “Contrabando y Traición (Smuggling and Betrayal)” (1972)

Label: (originally Discos Fama, now Fonovisa)

Most loco lyric: "Sonaron siete balazos, Camelia a Emilio mataba La policía sólo halló una pistola tirada/Del dinero y de Camelia, nunca más se supo nada."  

Translation: "Seven shots rang out, Camelia killed Emilio the police only found a pistol cast aside/Of the money and Camelia, nothing more was ever known."

This hit set off the narcocorrido craze in the 1970s. Often known as “Camelia la Tejana” (Camelia the Texan), it tells about a couple who travel to Los Angeles with their car tires full of marijuana. After they do the deal, the man tells the woman he is going to San Francisco to see his real sweetheart—so she shoots him, takes the money and splits. A huge success, this song spawned multiple sequels and a series of low-budget movies.

Antonio Aguilar “El Corrido de Lamberto Quintero” (1984)

Label: (Musart)

Most loco lyric: "Su compañero le dijo 'Nos sigue una camioneta'/Lamberto sonriendo dijo, 'Pa’ qué son las metralletas?”'"

Translation: "His companion said to him, 'There’s a pick-up following us.'/Lamberto, smiling, said, 'What are machine guns for?'"

Written by Paulino Vargas, the greatest corrido composer of the modern era, and recorded by the movie star Antonio Aguilar, this story of a murder in the Sinaloan sierra was one of the biggest hits of the 1980s and may be the most famous narcocorrido of all time. It was also one of the first international banda hits and set the pattern for thousands of later songs.

Chalino Sánchez: “Rigoberto Campos” (1991)

Label: Cintas Acuario/EMI Latin

Most loco lyric: "Con puros cuernos de chivo comenzaron a tirar Matando a Rigo al instante y a su guardia personal Hiriendo a gente inocente que cruzaba El boulevard." 

Translation: "With pure 'goat’s horns' [AK-47s] they began to fire/Killing Rigo instantly along with his bodyguards/Wounding innocent people who were crossing the boulevard."

Chalino is the gunslinging, raw-voiced, martyred icon of modern corrido singers. His flat, piercing singing perfectly displayed the stark realism of his lyrics, and gave the corrido new life as a Mexican equivalent to gangsta rap. His music was old-fashioned, but his stories came straight from the traffickers themselves, who hired him to write songs about colleagues and friends like the murdered Rigoberto Campos.

Los Tigres del Norte “Pacas de a Kilo (One-Kilo Packets)” (1993)

Label: Fonovisa

Most loco lyric: "Muy pegadito a la sierra tengo un rancho ganadero/Ganado sin garrapatas que llevo pa’l extranjero/Qué chulas se ven mis vacas con colitas de borrego."

Translation: "Right by the mountains I have a livestock ranch/Livestock without ticks, that I ship abroad/How nice my cows look with their little ram’s tails." [Ed. Note—"Ram’s tails” suggests clumped, drying marijuana stalks.]

When the Tigres asked Teodoro Bello, one of Mexico’s most successful songwriters, to invent a new kind of narcocorrido, his response was this intricately coded lyric, sung in the first person by a shadowy drug lord. It became a huge hit as listeners argued about its hidden meanings, such as a line saying the trafficker received “shade from the pines,” perhaps a reference to protection from the resident of Los Pinos, Mexico’s presidential mansion.

Los Tucanes de Tijuana “Mis Tres Animales (My Three Animals)” (1995)

Label: (EMI Latin)

Sample Lyric: Dicen que mis animales van a acabar con la gente, Pero no es obligación que se les pongan enfrente Mis animales son bravos, si no saben torear, pues no le entren. (It is said that my animals are going to destroy people But no one is being forced to get involved with them My animals are fierce; people don’t know how to fight bulls shouldn’t try)

Mario Quintero, leader of the Tucanes, is the only major corrido star to write all his own lyrics. He has penned dance hits and romantic songs, but by far his most famous composition is this upbeat song in which a drug lord boasts about the “three animals” he raises and sells to the gringos: his parakeet (cocaine), his rooster (marijuana), and his goat (heroin).

Jenni Rivera “La Chacalosa” (1995)

Label: Cintas Acuario

Most loco lyric: "Cuando cumplí los quince años, no me hicieron quinceañera/Me heredaron un negocio que buen billete me diera/Celular y también biper para que todo atendiera."

Translation: "When I turned fifteen, they didn’t give me a coming out party/I inherited a business that makes me heavy cash/A cell phone and beeper so I can take care of everything."

The only woman to become a major narcocorrido star, Rivera is huge on the L.A. scene. This was her first hit, a perky banda number about how she was raised to be an international drug queen. In fact, she was raised in the first family of the L.A. corrido world, daughter and sister to a dynasty of producers, songwriters, and singers. Along with her singing career, she has a cosmetics line and her own TV reality show.

Los Invasores de Nuevo León “Los Super Capos (The Super Capos)” (1998)

Label: (EMI Latin)

Most loco lyric: "La droga inunda sus calles, y el congreso lo sabe, Pero como es buen negocio, a los güeritos les vale."

Translation: "Drugs are flooding their streets, and congress knows it/But since it is good business, the little white guys couldn’t care less."

One of the few narcocorridos to deal with an event familiar to Anglos, this was Paulino Vargas’s epic of the Reagan era contra-cocaine scandal, with a dig at the U.S. government’s practice of “certifying” other countries as being sufficiently tough on drugs. “Wherever you go there’s corruption,” the lyric says, “whether it’s gringos or Mexicans.”

Valentín Elizalde “A Mis Enemigos (To My Enemies)” (2006)

Label: Universal Latino

Most loco lyric: "Sigan chillando culebras, las quitaré del camino Y a los que en verdad me aprecian, aquí tienen a un amigo Ya les canté este corrido a todos mis enemigos." 

Translation: "The snakes keep hissing, I’ll put them off the path/And to those who truly appreciate me, you have a friend here/Now I’ve sung this corrido to all my enemies."

This became a notorious hit of the 2000s after Elizalde, a popular Sinaloan singer, was assassinated and media reports blamed his death on a YouTube video that had used this song to challenge Los Zetas, the Juarez-based trafficking group that has raised the level of border violence to unprecedented heights. There’s no telling how true that is, but his death made the song an instant, tragic classic.

Movimiento Alterado: “Sanguinarios del M1” (Bloodthirsty Men of the M1)” (2010)

Label: LA Disco Music

Most loco lyric: "Con cuerno de chivo y bazooka en la nuca/Volando cabezas a quien se atraviesa/Somos sanguinarios, locos bien ondeados/Nos gusta matar."

Translation: "With “goat’s horn” and bazooka at our necks/Sending heads flying if anyone tries anything/We’re bloodthirsty, crazies deep in the scene/We enjoy killing."

I don’t expect this to become an enduring favorite, but it’s a perfect sampler of what’s happening right now, bringing together a dozen singers from the “Movimiento Alterado,” the new wave of hyper-violent, post-gangsta-rap corridos. Hailing from Sinaloa and Los Angeles, these performers are chronicling the current wave of gore and cartel feuds, and dominate the current scene with their mix of dramatic lyrics and banda-norteño fusions.