While Mexican Bands Get Banned For Glorifying Banditos, Rappers Get Richer From It

Rapper YoungBoy Never Broke Again performs onstage in Atlanta, Georgia on November 29, 2018 (Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images)

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If you’re a Latin music star, you need to play the United States. Sure, Bad Bunny is skipping the mainland on his current tour – excluding the Super Bowl halftime show – but he’ll be back.

“The U.S. is still the most lucrative touring market, especially with more acceptance of higher ticket prices” than other places, says Jarred Arfa, head of global music at Independent Artist Group (IAG), which books tours for 50 Cent, Billy Joel, Metallica, Neil Young, and other top talent.

So if you’re a big act south of the border and you want to take your tour past the Rio Grande, you better keep contraband out of your luggage and banned lyrics out of your playlist.

Case in point: Julión Álvarez, a Grammy-nominated Mexican singer reportedly had his US visa revoked on the day before his May 24th sold-out 50,000 seat show at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, apparently because of Narcorrido lyrics extoling drug cartels and an alleged connection to organized crime, which he has denied.

Another act stopped at the Rio Grande was Los Alegres del Barranco, a Norteño band from Sinaloa, banned from entering the U.S. after a concert in Guadalajara where the group displayed a portrait of Nemesio (El Mencho) Oseguera Cervantes, kingpin of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. In that case, it wasn’t U.S. authorities but Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum who condemned the band and spurred a criminal investigation.

When the band reportedly agreed to record and perform anti-Narcorridos – songs with lyrics critical of drug cartels – charges were dropped in Mexico. But U.S. authorities, catching wind of the situation, revoked the band’s visas anyway and they’ve not been allowed to play in the States since last April.

Many Mexican and other Latin acts nowadays don’t need to be censored by the government, because they’re doing it themselves.

“Sometimes the artists will change their mind about whether or not to release a song, or whether or not to perform a certain popular song live, because he or she isn’t a U.S. resident or their visa isn’t cleared yet or is expiring soon,” says John Baldivia, an attorney for Latin superstars Peso Pluma, Karol G and Bad Bunny’s record label, Rimas Entertainment.

But no worries for American rappers, whose rhymes about thug life, drug strife and drive-by strafing are topping charts not toppling careers.

Good Times For Rhymes About Crimes … For Some

In May, President Trump pardoned rapper Kentrell Gaulden, stage name YoungBoy Never Broke Again, who had pleaded guilty to illegally possessing a Glock 21 .45-caliber pistol, a Masterpiece Arms MPA30T 9mm and a Sig Sauer 9mm semi-automatic pistol. He had a prior felony conviction for aggravated assault with a firearm and also had pled guilty to a role in a prescription drug fraud ring.

Before those convictions, the rapper reportedly had about 17 million monthly listeners on Spotify. As of this writing, that count has climbed to over 20 million monthly Spotify listeners.

His 2020 track “Murder Business” is about gang members doing drive-by shootings, with lines such as: “… kill a witness … you know that headshot was me … we’ll f-ing spin again and see who got good aim … I’m a real Blood …” The song has more than 70 million plays on Spotify.

A new single “What You Is,” released in 2025, is a bit more cryptic in references to gangs and guns, but still has lyrics suggesting gangland-style murders:

“I’m a boss, I ain’t no worker, I’ll have them dirt you for me
Got plenty knots off in my pockets, come try take it and see
Bitch heard that cutter pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop
Make her body drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop.”

Rappers in America feel free to spit bloody gang references, especially since the release from jail earlier this year of rap star Jeffery “Young Thug” Williams after the dismissal of District Attorney Fani Willis’ R.I.C.O. case, which largely relied on rap rhymes to try to prove a criminal enterprise behind Young Thug’s record label.

President Trump has courted some of the most popular gangsta rappers for political gain. On the last day of his first term, Trump pardonned Lil Wayne (Dwayne Michael Carter Jr.), one of the most influential rappers in history, from a felony weapons charges conviction. The rapper reportedly admits to being a member of the Bloods organized crime syndicate, Lil Wayne appeared to endorse Trump in his 2020 campaign.

But it isn’t only Trump who has no problem with rappers boasting about gun violence. An Obama-appointed federal judge recently fiercely advocated for freedom of speech involving rap boasts about shooting people in the head.

U.S. District Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall, during the trial earlier this year of two men convicted of murdering Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell of the iconic hip hop act Run-DMC, blocked the jury from hearing one of the defendant’s lyrics that suggested he was the murderer.

Judge DeArcy Hall would not allow any of that into evidence. She wrote that “rap artists have become increasingly incentivized to create music about drugs and violence to gain commercial success, and will exaggerate or fabricate the contents of their music in pursuit of that success.”

She also stated that “the Court must remain cognizant that ‘hip hop is fundamentally an art form that traffics in hyperbole, parody, kitsch, dramatic license, double entendres, signification, and other literary and artistic conventions to get it[’s] point across,’” quoting author and academic Michael Eric Dyson.

Prosecutors tried to admit Jordan’s rap song “Aim For The Head,” including the line “we aim for the head, no body shots, and we stick around just to see the body drop.” Jordan was charged with shooting Mizell in the head and watching him drop dead.

But Judge DeArcy Hall blocked the jury from hearing it, opining: “The lyrics from Jordan’s song have the same nexus to any other headshot murder that took place before the lyrics were written. But, of course, Jordan is not on trial for those crimes.”

So Jordan may have shot a lot of people in the head, but since he didn’t name Mizell in the song, it’s inadmissible, the judge ruled.

The judge also excluded from evidence a music video Jordan shot of himself dancing in front of a mural of Mizell, bragging about crimes but not specifically mentioning Mizell’s murder. “Music artists should be free to create without fear that their lyrics could be unfairly used against them at a trial,” the judge wrote. “Juries, too, should not be placed in the unenviable position of divining a defendant’s guilt, in whole or in part, from a musical exposition with only a tenuous relationship to the criminal conduct alleged.”

Meanwhile South Of The Border

The narcorrido that got Los Alegres del Barranco punished both at home and in the US was “El del Palenque,” performed during a major concert at the Telmex Auditorium in Guadalajara, while images of “El Mencho” were projected on stage.

Some of the lyrics translate as: “I have fighting roosters, who battle for my side…We’ve swapped the blades for R’s and goat horns (an alleged reference to AK-47s)… For .50-calibers, anti-aircraft guns, and monsters for the roads (an alleged reference to armored trucks used by cartels)… All under orders from Mencho.”

Like with YoungBoy NBA’s lyrics, the performer here uses first person narravite, but unlike the American rapper, he names the head of the cartel in a manner that pays homage to him. Whether that’s the line that can’t be crossed for Mexican or American performers is unclear. Lil Wayne or Cardi B admitting to Blood organized crime ties doesn’t seem to matter other than perhaps making them more appealing to an audience that finds references to danger and bloody gang violence to be cool.

That’s true north and south of the border.

If a Mexican artist backs down from performing a famous narcorrido at home, they might expect rioting, as happened when Luis R. Conriquez told his fans he wasn’t going to play songs that violated a law against singing pro-cartel lyrics at the Texcoco Fair just Northeast of Mexico City. Upset attendees reportedly booed, threw punches, and trashed the stage and venue.

Mexican artists’ caution is understandable, even at the risk of angering some fans.

“What I’ve seen, particularly recently, is is that sometimes the artists will change their mind about whether or not to release a song, or whether or not to perform a certain song live,” says Baldivia. “He or she isn’t a U.S. resident or the visa status isn’t cleared or is expiring, so there’s a bit of curbing of speech because of the impact it might have on their visa status.”

Fear by musicians of government crackdowns on lyrics isn’t just north and south of the Rio Grande. Police in St. Petersburg and other Russian cities reportedly have begun arresting street musicians who play to increasingly large crowds of young people songs banned by the regime, including songs against the war in Ukraine and one particular song called “Swan Lake,” a piece by exiled rapper Noize MC that seems to reference Putin’s death.

One universal truth about song lyrics is that the more dangerous they are, the more popular and prosperous they may be. But for acts from outside the United States, it’s a tightrope walk between building massive audiences and falling into a world of trouble.