How U.S. Construction Workers Fueled Luis R Conriquez’s Rise

There’s a uniqueness to Luis R Conriquez’s humble beginnings. The gas station worker-turned-hitmaker, now known as the king of corridos bélicos, began writing songs for an unlikely group of early listeners who turned into some of his first clients.

Soon after writing his first corridos in his early 20s, the Sonora-born artist started getting direct messages on Instagram from construction workers in the United States who were wondering if he could write corridos about them.

“If it wasn’t for Instagram I wouldn’t have been known. Instagram was how I got my first jobs,” Conriquez told Billboard‘s Griselda Flores in his latest cover story. While an odd request to get, it was, after all, a source of income for Conriquez, who worked at a gas station and made music on the side. “I asked them to send me a short summary describing themselves so I could get inspired,” he continued. “I’d write, record and send it to them.”

Conriquez admits he didn’t even know how much to charge them. At the time, he explained, “I was my own manager at the time, my own distributor, collecting my own money.” So, initially, he charged $150 per corrido, but as demand grew, he tripled his fee. “The most I asked for was $1,000 for a corrido.”

The “Si No Quieres No” singer-songwriter has since only fueled the regional Mexican music movement after catapulting to stardom once he signed with Kartel Music in 2019, an also up-and-coming indie label based out of Santa Maria, Calif. Its founders, Alfredo “Freddy” Becerra and Leonardo Soto, discovered Conriquez at an audition in Mexicali, Baja California.

Today, Conriquez has become a go-to collaborator for regional Mexican and nonregional Mexican acts alike, including Nicky Jam, Ryan Castro and Peso Pluma. With 1.42 billion on-demand official streams in the United States, according to Luminate, he has 20 entries on Hot Latin Songs, and most recently scored his first Billboard Hot 100 entry with “Si No Quieres No,” a collaboration with up-and-comer Neton Vega. His Corridos Bélicos, Vol. IV, released in January, earned him his first entry and top 10 on any albums chart, debuting at No. 5 on Top Latin Albums and No. 3 on Regional Mexican Albums. It also became Conriquez’s Billboard 200 entree with a No. 36 debut.

He is set to headline the RUMBAZO 2024 event in Las Vegas this weekend. Conriquez will perform on Saturday, Sept. 14. See the schedule here.

Billboard Latin Music Week is returning to Miami Beach on Oct. 14-18, with confirmed superstars Gloria Estefan, Alejandro Sanz and Peso Pluma, among many others. For tickets and more details, visit Billboardlatinmusicweek.com.