DELACiiO Morphs From Rapper to Regional Mexican Music Standout

It’s Thursday night and DELACiiO is packing his bags for Vegas, where he’s MCing a reggaeton party at the Hard Rock Hotel. The following week, he’ll be back in the Bay to host the official Bad Bunny afterparty in San Francisco. Gigs like these have been a part of his hustle for the past couple of years. It’s how the vocalist stays on his grind, and gets to travel and build community in the process — a natural evolution for the former protégé of Oakland’s Grammy-nominated Panamanian rap crew, Los Rakas.

Hip-hop always made sense for DELACiiO, who was born in Oakland to Mexican parents from Michoacán. He came up in Oakland’s Youth UpRising Center, where he got his first taste of working in a studio. He never looked back, and it’s shaped his life. Now 27, he’s at the age when people typically strive to better understand their history, identity and heritage.

So in what feels like an unpredictable 180 on the surface, DELACiiO is beginning to stand out as a regional Mexican music artist. But it’s more than just a whim.

“I wanted to be embedded in my roots and embrace that,” says DELACiiO. He stayed connected to Mexico by going back every summer growing up. “My parents gave me that culture. Even if there were hard times, I still went back to Mexico on the regular, and it kept me rooted in who I am.”

In 2021 he released one of his first corridos, “En La Bahía,” a paean to the Bay Area that touts crossing the bridge from East Oakland to San Pancho (Frisco), the style, the weed and how it’s “hella diferente” out here. It’s a locally inspired take on the genre’s anecdotal lyrical style — the song’s title translates to “In the Bay.”

In 2022, he sharpened his pen on the ballad “Te Falle” (“I Failed You”), where he laments breaking a lover’s heart and begging for another chance. (His backing band, Estilo Improvisado, is made up of his cousins.) He took cues from the Mexican telenovelas he watched with family growing up; the response from fans (especially ladies) juiced him up to make more regional music.

“I feel like I’m a desperado … like my life is a novela, with these love stories that happened in my life now incorporated into my music,” he says.

It’s on his latest cut, “Humo,” that DELACiiO really comes into his own. It’s a different kind of love story, one about weed, and a different kind of corrido altogether. Not to be confused with narcocorridos, which tell often perilous tales of the border-crossing drug trade, DELACiiO calls “Humo” a corrido verde — a legal narcocorrido, if you will, that serves as a theme song of sorts for a Salinas-based, Latinx-owned cannabis company of the same name. The video features DELACiiO along with a slew of the cannabis farm workers in their element.

“I really like his awareness to connect, in any environment really,” says DELACiiO’s producer Stylolive, who was behind the boards for “Humo” and “Te Falle.” “He’s aware of his surroundings and he knows what to pull, how to impact the moment and the people around it.”

Both songs were released via Succo Sounds, the Latin music label Stylo co-founded that puts his multi-dimensional aesthetics at the forefront. The pair met when Stylo was producing for Los Rakas as a core member of the group. He’s since moved to Los Angeles, where he’s positioned himself in the eye of the storm that has made regional Mexican music stars like Peso Pluma household names in the U.S.

Peso Pluma’s ascent has been significant, and parallels how Puerto Rico’s Bad Bunny quickly rose in the ranks of reggaeton to become today’s alpha artist in the genre. Both DELACiiO and Stylo cite Peso Pluma as a primary influence in how they’re approaching this endeavor, and they’ve even gone a step beyond just inspiration. Guitarist Leo Gama and bassist Mark Kram, who played on Peso Pluma’s Grammy-winning album, Génesis (and on Xavi’s massive hit “La Diabla“), appear on DELACiiO’s upcoming EP, Color.

Color is predicated on DELACiiO’s regional Mexican music, but also flashes his full breadth of styles too. And there’s something from “la Bahía” that’s setting him apart.

“His urbano and reggaeton top lines, and the life that he and his family lived out here, is unique from what you might find in L.A.,” Stylo says. “If you dive deep into what’s happening musically in Mexico right now, it’s gonna be the new Puerto Rico or new Colombia. This is where the industry is headed, and DELACiiO can really be that catalyst who makes a mark as a homegrown Bay Area artist.”