“I love the original Mexicans, but this is the new wave,” frontman Jesus Ortiz tells Apple Music about Fuerza Regida’s approach to the regional genre. If 2019’s Del Barrio Hasta Aquí cemented the Southern California-based group as some of the boldest players in the burgeoning hybrid urbano style and Pisteando Con La Regida showed their respect for their musical forefathers, Adicto puts them on the path to greatness regardless of genre expectations. Informed by car culture, trap music, and the life stories of earners on both sides of the border, the album offers up tales of criminal enterprise and personal desires while playing with format and instrumentation in sometimes surprising ways. “I feel 10 times better about this album,” Ortiz says. A lot of this has to do with the level of control he took to make Adicto indicative of what Fuerza Regida can achieve. Rather than relying on outside collaborators, Fuerza Regida wrote all the tracks themselves, a number of which came out of paid commissions to Ortiz from well-off fans looking to be immortalized biographically in song. Furthermore, Ortiz largely took the reins himself in the recording and mixing process. “This album, I put a lot of time into it,” he says, describing long hours at work side by side with his engineer, tinkering and retooling together to get it just right. “I changed so much stuff. I would go bump it in the car and be like, ‘We got to call the tuba guy back.’” Below, Ortiz discusses every track on Adicto, including its high-profile collaborations with Natanael Cano, Grupo Codiciado, and Herencia de Patrones. Intro/Adicto “I was laying down in my bed. I had just got better from a fever, and I see a message from Samuel [Jaimez], my requinto guy. He sent me a video of him playing the melody and the intro; it was just an idea he had. We start finishing it, me and Khrystian [Ramos]. Everybody's addicted to something, to a phone, to whatever you want. Everybody's going to identify with it, but I’m talking about a girl on the song.” 18 Llantas “Let's say there’s a guy, he has money, he has his business, and he wants his own song. Some are for me, but I compose songs for other people. I charge them this much money, they pay me, and I make them their song. This one is made for someone that drives trucks, the 18-wheelers. They made a business out of it and they're very, very wealthy. They have containers crossing to different countries. The beauty about that is I'm getting paid not even just to make them a song. At the end of the day, it's still my song and I'm still going to get all the credit for it. It's a beauty.” Tiacentral (feat. Grupo Codiciado) “I started making that melody, but I didn't finish it. I saved that song for Codiciado. Probably two months later, we had to go to Mazatlán—we had a show out there, and I was going to see them that day. I showed him the song and he loved it. We finished it in Tijuana. Then we each went home and I recorded it, sent it over, they recorded it, boom. I was really hands-on with the music so we had some crazy outros and intros. The song that made us was 'Radicamos En South Central.' We named this song 'Tiacentral'—we combined their city with South Central, with the song I created. The song is just talking about some drug dealers, stuff like that. It's like fiction. It talks about the government. People have been asking for that feature for a long time, and we finally gave it to them.” Agusto “GTR" “It’s about pretty much a guy that likes racing cars. Again, that one's for one of my clients that asked me for a song and asked me to write his story. His life is a pretty cool story, about a kid that had a Honda and he loved to race it. He grew up and he got big, started doing things, started getting money in the races. He bought a GT-R. It shows you that you go through things in life. It talks about his grandma passing away. I even give a little speech on it. I like that one a lot.” Ando Contento (feat. Natanael Cano) “That's like trap right there. You know what song inspired me to make that? Roddy Ricch and DJ Mustard, ‘Ballin.'’ I would bump that rap song every day in my car. So I sat down one day, and I was going to buy a Tesla the next day but they weren't approving me because I don't have a long history on credit. So I was like, 'You know what? I’m going to make a song about that same vibe.' The next day, I bought the car.” P town “Again, one of my clients asked me to make a song. It’s really cool because I did something different that nobody does. I can't explain too much, but I did something different. I moved it around, something that you don't really do in the industry that much. It just talks about a pharmacy guy. I wrote it and then I named it 'P town' because the guy lives in Pomona [California]. I'm from probably 30 minutes out from Pomona. That's the hood right there.” Tiempo de Brillar (feat. Herencia de Patrones) “That's one of my oldest songs. It's talking about a dude that was doing bad in gangs. He's all tatted up. But now he's good. The song says, 'It's my time to shine'—tiempo de brillar. I was looking for features, but I really liked Herencia de Patrones' music. It fits them because it's talking about just being hood. I see Herencia like that; they’re like the hood people in this industry. That song's really unique because Fuerza Regida don't come in until halfway in the song. It's something different. In this genre, people sing verse and verse, verse and verse. So what I did with this song, I put their whole style in, their instruments, and they sing half the song. And then my style comes in the next half.” (S)enor “That's the oldest song I had. I've had it for over a year. That’s just talking about some dude that was in jail for 18 years. It’s a crazy story, talking about trapping. That's the old style of Fuerza Regida. You're going to feel the vibes with that. 'He's still representing, he didn’t change, he still has the same style.'” Somos Mexicanos “This talks about Mexicans and Latinos. United, we can do better, all the Latins. It’s an inspirational song. Mexicans, they see us in a nice car or in nice clothes with chains, they think we're drug dealers right away and don't even know if we have a business, you know? I went to jail and I got beat up by the cops. It was all unlawful, man. I got a big lawsuit going against the San Bernardino Police Department right now. It was my birthday party and I had all my chains on. I went outside and the cops were there. We weren't turning the music down. They did an illegal stop. They messed up all my face. You think just because I'm Mexican and I got a good car and I got some money, you think I'm drug dealing. The song says some cross the border and some were born over here. We’re American and we're Mexican, but we're still here. 'Somos Mexicanos.' That song feels very commercial because it doesn't talk about bad things. It brings in more positivity.” Estoy Aquí (Bonus Track) “People that travel are away from home, like myself and other artists. This talks about just coming back home, being happy, and drinking with my friends. Estoy aquí, I'm here—don't forget about me just because I'm gone to do a show in Atlanta or something, There’s a part in that song that I really like; it says, 'When I come back home, my dad's still on the sofa and my mom's still cooking.' I showed it to my parents, and then me and my dad started crying because everything I was saying in that song was true. That song is real deep, and it's a different style with some crazy stuff. That's why it was a bonus track—check this new style we got going on. Again, end with positivity and happiness.”