Grupo Frontera on Excursion Ambitions, TikTok, Songs & What is Subsequent

On an overcast iciness afternoon in McAllen, Texas, all six participants of Grupo Frontera are huddled round an oversize white field, staring gleefully at its contents. They peel again the tissue paper wrapping to expose a gift their stylist has talented them only a few days shy of Christmas — a mound of plush Polo Ralph Lauren bathrobes, one for every member, with a brassy commentary stitched onto the again: “B–ch, I were given a Grammy!”

The participants of the norteño and cumbia band — which received the Latin Grammy for perfect norteño album in 2024 — are status inside of their palatial Frontera HQ in McAllen, a house that they bought final yr. Constructed within the mid-2000s, the sprawling property is an excessively specific imaginative and prescient of turn-of-the-Twenty first-century luxurious (see: the Tuscan kitchen replete with darkish picket cabinetry). A minimalist house recording studio, the place the band has laid down a number of tracks, sits simply previous the outside trail wending across the pool and sizzling bath, in a backyard expansive sufficient to park their fleet of excursion buses.

Privateness and practicality alike spurred the band to centralize its operations right here. When its big name started emerging about 3 years in the past, after its duvet of Colombian pop-rockers Morat’s “No Se Va” surged to life-altering virality on TikTok, Grupo Frontera would steadily file track on this South Texas enclave of the Rio Grande Valley the place its participants grew up and nonetheless live — till some locals found out the place the gang was once recording and began appearing as much as the studio unannounced. “Folks would deadass simply open the door, stroll in and concentrate to no matter we had been recording,” says frontman Adelaido “Payo” Solís in between sips of a briny michelada. “They’d simply look ahead to us to complete. Then we got here out, we noticed folks, and we had been like, ‘Hello?’ ”

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Crucially, the home is decidedly “party-ful,” as Julian Peña Jr., the band’s affable percussionist and hype guy, places it. Grupo Frontera has held a tequila-fueled carne asada (a fish fry cling) or two right here, together with a toddler bathe for accordionist Juan Javier Cantú, who not too long ago welcomed a daughter together with his spouse. The gang — which additionally contains drummer Carlos Guerrero, bassist Brian Ortega and guitarist/bajo quinto participant Beto Acosta — hopes to ultimately open up the distance for visiting collaborators and buddies to crash there. However for the reason that the home remains to be slightly furnished, the ones plans are on dangle for the instant. There aren’t many puts to take a seat, save for a couple of folding chairs and tables right here and there; just a handful of the house’s six bedrooms have mattresses in them propped up in opposition to partitions. Tellingly, the only piece of artwork inside of is a framed {photograph} of the band mugging with famous person Dangerous Bunny — who collaborated with Grupo Frontera on its Billboard Sizzling 100 damage “un x100to,” peaking at No. 5 at the chart — splattered with globs of brilliant paint.

Internal adorning was once admittedly low at the band’s precedence checklist in 2024 — a yr through which Grupo Frontera launched its punchy set Jugando a Que No Pasa Nada, which reached the highest 10 of the Best Latin Albums chart. An formidable excursion round america, Mexico and one date in Spain adopted at amphitheaters and arenas, with presentations that includes pyrotechnic prospers and stretching about two hours. Come what may, Grupo Frontera additionally discovered time to free up Mala Mía, a joint EP with fellow música mexicana stalwarts and collaborators Fuerza Regida, earlier than the yr ended. Then in past due November, the gang received its first-ever Latin Grammy for its 2023 debut album, El Comienzo.

Within the 3 transient years it’s been in combination, Grupo Frontera has reworked from a cohort taking part in covers at quinceañeras right into a Mexican American boy band commanding one of the most international’s greatest levels — the place it’s every so often accompanied through legends its participants seemed as much as whilst rising up, like Ramón Ayala, and different massive stars it has now recorded with, like Peso Pluma, Maluma and Nicki Nicole. By way of melding the norteño and cumbia in their childhoods with their micro-generation’s penchant for embracing style swerves (lots of the band participants are younger millennials, save for Solís, who’s about to show 22), Grupo Frontera has helped bring in a brand new technology of música mexicana.

“I believe that they’ve created a formidable motion and opened the trail for extra bands and for the general public to reconnect with a style that have been beneath the radar a number of years,” says Edgar Barrera, the Grammy- and Latin Grammy-winning songwriter who has written dozens of songs for the gang and has been a mentor to it. For the reason that seven of the band’s singles and either one of its studio albums have reached the highest 10 at the Sizzling Latin Songs and Best Latin Albums charts, respectively, the way appears to be operating.

Grupo Frontera’s luck tale is all of the extra astonishing taking into account the unorthodox selections its participants have made alongside the way in which. For something, they’ve no real interest in shifting from the somewhat quiet McAllen (inhabitants: kind of 150,000) to a Latin track city like Miami or Los Angeles to be nearer to attainable alternatives. “We truly take it to coronary heart after they say, ‘Stay your ft at the floor,’ ” Guerrero says. “Us being humble is what’s going to take us farther.”

As an alternative, they’re bullish about staying just about house within the valley, a area that has made nationwide headlines not too long ago as one of the most spaces the Trump management has focused for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. The Rio Grande Valley could also be house to Intocable, one of the crucial a hit norteño bands ever, and the area has traditionally produced gifted musicians or even a handful of leap forward stars — Bobby Pulido, Duelo and Freddy Fender amongst them — despite missing the infrastructure that is helping teams take the following large step.

In any other not likely flip, the band has launched its track independently; indie label VHR Tune put out its debut album, and the band self-released Jugando. However don’t mistake those selections for ambivalence — the gang is cautious of staying in the similar position, metaphorically talking. “It’s now not OK so that you can be too comfy and really feel like what you’re doing presently goes to figure out endlessly,” Solís says. And now Grupo Frontera unearths itself at a brand new crossroads because it strategizes how to succeed in the following degree of stardom — particularly, increasing its target market past america and Mexico, bringing its heart-tugging cumbias to new ears.

“We wish to cross sooner or later to Japan,” Cantú says. “Anyplace shall we play that’s other. Brazil is a purpose we have now … We wish to put out our Mexican roots to the entire international.”

Grupo Frontera’s foundation tale is certain up in TikTok’s inscrutable set of rules. In early 2022, one in all its first singles, the ebullient “No Se Va,” become ubiquitous at the platform, debuting at No. 50 on Sizzling Latin Songs and ultimately hiking to the highest 10. The blokes had simply began taking part in track in combination all through off-hours from their day jobs as automotive dealership finance managers and ranchers. They cobbled in combination early movies for a couple of hundred bucks and realized concerning the track business through looking out “the right way to” tutorials on YouTube. When the TikTok highlight all at once shone on them, they seized the instant. The act quickly set to work with Barrera, and in mere months, it had launched any other hit, then any other. “If it wasn’t for TikTok after we launched ‘No Se Va,’ it most likely would have stayed in our fatherland of the valley,” Solís says.

Barrera — who has written and produced for megastars together with Shakira and Maluma — has a particular sensibility that has surely helped Grupo Frontera’s sound evolve through the years. His steering was once a boon in the ones early days, and he particularly helped the act see a larger image. “We had been eager about, ‘How will we do the most important wedding ceremony right here within the valley?’ And [Barrera] is going, ‘Wedding ceremony? How are you able to do the most important stadiums in the entire international? That’s how it’s a must to assume,’ ” Peña recalls. “And we’re like, ‘All proper, let’s assume that method.’ After which bit by bit, after we would free up a track, we’d do it pondering that this track was once going to head viral, this track was once going to assist us out. And it could paintings.”

It’s been almost 3 years to the day since Grupo Frontera first went nuclear on TikTok, again when communicate of an outright ban wasn’t forthcoming. But one of the most band participants deleted their private TikTok accounts not too long ago and haven’t redownloaded the app because it returned on-line in mid-January following a temporary ban. (The band’s skilled TikTok remains to be lively.) They don’t precisely pass over it, individually. “I believe like I’m a brand new guy,” Cantú says with a grin. This present day, Solís has centered the eye he would have spent scrolling via TikTok on Splice, an app for sampling and developing songs. Whilst Solís doesn’t believe himself a depressing individual, he admittedly gravitates towards “depression, unhappy, miserable chords” whilst writing. “That’s what evokes me, to be truthful: the ones sadder chords.”

Whilst Solís’ voice is his primary tool, he infrequently performs guitar, piano and accordion through ear. He’d love to recuperate at nailing down precisely what he needs to listen to from the tool he’s taking part in so the ones sounds can assist him with songwriting — one thing he has been doing extra of since final yr’s Jugando (the place he was once credited with co-writing the track “Ibiza,” which is set in need of to provide a lover anything else their coronary heart wants).

Even though Barrera has written maximum of Grupo Frontera’s songs to this point, together with different writers like Ríos, the band feared turning into complacent through all the time yielding the ones ingenious tasks to somebody else. “We had been ok with the truth that [Barrera] would ship us a track and that’s it,” Solís says. “However at a definite level, we felt like we weren’t operating for it.” The gang began inviting different songwriters into the combo, and Solís started chipping in additional after a generative writing camp with Barrera.

The band sees taking calculated sonic dangers as pivotal to its subsequent section. In past due January, for example, Grupo Frontera hopped on a track with Spanish icon Alejandro Sanz, “Hoy no me siento bien,” that marked two milestones: It was once the gang’s first-ever salsa track and its farthest-afield collaborator to this point. “I’m now not too positive if a bajo quinto has ever performed salsa earlier than, however Beto was once attempting his perfect,” Solís jokes. In contrast to the band’s same old fare, the track doesn’t deal with being in (or out of) love, both. “However I like the message,” Solís says. “It’s like, ‘Lately, I don’t really feel OK and that’s OK.’ ”

“Yeah, like feeling unhealthy is OK, too,” Cantú interjects. “That’s badass.”

On its contemporary collaborative EP with Fuerza Regida, Grupo Frontera moved in but any other path: attempting corridos imbued with a Tejano bent, together with its cumbias. Whilst those tasks were well-received industrial successes, the chance of doubtless now not hitting the mark, and even perhaps failing, doesn’t appear to discourage the act. “That’s what we wish to do — to inform the arena that Frontera can collaborate with other artists and that shall we additionally make other types of track,” Cantú says. “That’s our purpose, possibly, for this yr. To not break out from cumbia or norteño — that’s our base. But additionally like, ‘Hi there, shall we additionally play and sing this.’ ”

The morning after catching a transatlantic flight from Spain, the participants of Grupo Frontera arrive at an area sports activities membership in McAllen with rackets in tow. They’re right here to play padel, a recreation similar to tennis and squash, that they were given addicted to because of its low likelihood of damage. As they come one after the other, the blokes appear in just right spirits if a little bit bleary-eyed. They start warming up through bouncing balls in opposition to glass partitions surrounding the court docket. Acosta arrives final, walking in with a sheepish grin. “The tardy one,” the band’s publicist says with a watch roll. “You’ll be able to put that within the article.”

Since best 4 gamers can also be at the court docket at any given time, the boys rotate units. Acosta rolls up one pant leg to get his head within the recreation, then forcefully serves the yellow ball. It lands with a thwack at the court docket’s blue turf, and Cantú bursts out making a song the keyboard riff from “The Ultimate Countdown.” S–t-talking abounds. Guerrero, who suffered an damage after lacking the final step of a few stairs, is shifting with some hesitation — however after taking part in a couple of centered rounds, he and Acosta win the impromptu event.

Whilst they could be combatants at the court docket at this second, they have a tendency to function as a unmarried organism within the band’s day by day decision-making. They use a democratic procedure and any arguments are cleared up at once: “When one individual is unsuitable, the remainder of the gang notices it and so they simply inform them directly up,” Solís says.

Solís sees a via line between the band’s padel dependancy and the heightened power it unleashed on final yr’s Reside Country-promoted Jugando excursion. In 2023, when it first began traveling broadly, Solís admits that he would have a tendency to stick in the similar spot whilst making a song onstage. “Then this yr, I might, like, run round and bounce around the level and stuff.” The blokes get started chortling, speaking over one any other as they believe how they could carry their level presence in 2025: “Backflips! Shirtless concert events! Splits!”

Must the band understand its stadium goals, the gang’s penchant for showmanship will most probably nonetheless want to be amped up additional. “The display wishes an improve at the technical and musical facets,” explains Raymond Acosta, the director of skill control at Habibi who works with the band there. (The band has been signed to the control department of Rimas Leisure since 2023.) “The bigger house calls for a better providing to enthusiasts. It must be a novel enjoy the place enthusiasts really feel a part of one thing larger than only a display. It’s a problem to connect to each unmarried individual in that stadium.” However as Acosta sees it, a band like Grupo Frontera is up for that problem: The act “can draw in all varieties of crowds, which makes a vital distinction.”

For the instant, Grupo Frontera is embarking on one thing else it hasn’t ever finished earlier than: taking a monthlong damage to recalibrate from its breakneck traveling agenda, proper earlier than delving into writing new track. The very last thing on its calendar in December comes to distributing loose vacation toys for a block get together at Edinburg, Texas’ Bert Ogden Enviornment, the place it held a spur-of-the-moment loose efficiency for the group.

Grupo Frontera is cognizant of the way it represents the Rio Grande Valley each out at the highway and at house. And whilst it has all the time eschewed any communicate of politics, it has inherently transform a part of any dialogue of the place the band comes from, because the U.S.-Mexico border is now a flash level for discussions about immigration, xenophobia and racism. Once I ask in December in the event that they’ve been feeling the reverberations of this actual political second — with the vocally anti-immigrant Trump management then about to go into the White Space — and if their enthusiasts way them in need of to speak about politics, the band deflects. “I imply, our staff identify, Grupo Frontera, I believe it feels herbal for folks to be like, ‘You’re from the border,’ stuff like that,” Guerrero says. “We all the time attempt to stay that personal.” Peña chimes in, announcing that they try to “speak about track, that’s it.” (Their publicist shuts down any more dialogue of the subject.)

However not too long ago, the band had to reply to for a political controversy of its personal, when a video of Solís’ grandmother (referred to as “Los angeles Abuela Frontera” on-line) dancing to “Y.M.C.A.,” a track that Trump performed steadily at the marketing campaign path, circulated on-line. Coupled with a now-deleted TikTok video of the band jamming to the similar track, it brought about outrage from enthusiasts who perceived it as the gang celebrating Trump’s election win. The backlash has since resulted in boycotts and a petition calling for Grupo Frontera to be taken off the lineup for Sueños, a Chicago musical competition the place it’s slated to accomplish in Would possibly.

In reaction, the band wrote in a commentary that “Grupo Frontera has NO association nor alliance with any political get together that’s in opposition to immigrants and the Latino group. Like lots of you, our households and [group] participants have fought and struggled for a greater long run, and we can all the time take our folks’s facet, protecting our roots and values. It’s essential you realize that the evaluations of our family and friends don’t constitute Grupo Frontera. We’re immigrants, we’re from the border, and Grupo Frontera will all the time be through and for the folk.” The band additionally posted a video in past due February declaring that the “Y.M.C.A.” video have been a part of a regimen it had on its final excursion, the place it danced to another track earlier than every display; in it, Acosta lamented how a swirl of “pretend information” have been “placing us in opposition to our personal folks.”

As they see it, their primary legal responsibility is to carry the valley within the eyes of the arena, particularly the musicians who hail from their similar stomping grounds. “There’s numerous skill,” Guerrero says of musicians within the valley. “Higher than us,” Acosta provides. To them, what prevents musicians from creating a a hit dwelling in track here’s a loss of recording studios — however they wish to depart in the back of a “path for everyone to do it,” Cantú says. That would possibly ultimately contain having bands file at their very own studio. As the blokes see it, it’s now not such a lot that they “made it” out of the valley, however reasonably that they’re “looking to make the valley develop,” as Solís places it.

It was once that very same roughly enhance that first satisfied Grupo Frontera to stick unbiased, after listening to cautionary stories from Acosta’s brother and different native musicians who had signed destructive file offers. Since then, it has made as a lot of an effort to be told the again finish of the track trade because it does fine-tuning chord progressions, steadily searching for Barrera’s suggest. Even after it was once first approached through a couple of large labels, the band had “a intestine feeling that it was once now not the fitting selection on the time,” Cantú says, a grin rising throughout his face. “And it labored out lovely just right.”

The participants imagine those incremental steps, together with their unconventional way, will take them the place they ultimately plan to be. “We’re looking to transform superstars,” Peña says. “One thing that 30 years from now, any individual’s going to seem again [and say], ‘Dude, you have in mind Frontera?’ ”

Some time again, Peña recollects, somebody in Grupo Frontera (he doesn’t have in mind who) discussed in need of to transform like AC/DC or Queen — a undying band steeped in mythos. To start with, Peña scoffed on the thought. “I have in mind announcing, ‘Dude, close up. Like, what the hell?’ ” he says. “And now I take into accounts it like, ‘Why now not?’ I imply, why can’t we be that?”

This tale seems within the March 8, 2025, factor of Billboard.