2022 was Bad Bunny’s year. The Puerto Rican artist, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, had already seen some fame before in the realm of Latin trap, but the release of his sixth album “Un Verano Sin Ti” solidified the already-growing genre into the cultural mainstream in the U.S.— it was the best performing album on the Billboard 200, the first ever Spanish-language album to receive a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year, and allowed Bad Bunny to achieve the highest grossing tour of the year with over $435 million in profits. Some could say he was the blueprint.

“Bad Bunny might be the biggest reggaeton musician currently,” ethnomusicologist Laura Schnitker said. “Being an activist, I think he’s reached a lot of people, including myself, who might not listen to reggaeton but are interested in his protest messages.”

Schnitker teaches World Popular Musics and Identity at the University of Maryland. She noticed Bad Bunny for not just his virality online, but also his vocal stance on police brutality, LGBTQ+ rights and other social issues in his native country of Puerto Rico.

She believes that it’s this— his authenticity and trueness to his Puerto Rican roots, in addition to relentless collaboration with popular artists— that contributed most to his fame. It hasn’t just affected his popularity, though, but rather caused a resurgence in the genre as a whole.

“[Latin music] has gotten even more popular in the past few years,” she said. “Because it’s popular, it’s inspiring more musicians to release music.”

As a result, in the last year, the genre has only grown in popularity. According to entertainment industry database Luminate, it was the fifth largest major genre in the U.S.— its online engagement increasing by over 19 billion streams. This also caused revenue in the Latin genre to skyrocket. In the Recording Industry Association of America’s mid-year revenue report, profits for Latin music in the U.S. increased to over $600 million in the first half of 2023.

“One thing that I think people have always underestimated is how much you can still love a certain kind of music or a certain song, even if it's not in English. [The industry has] always kind of assumed American audiences just wouldn't show up for a song that was not in English, but they've been wrong the whole time,” said Schnitker.

One subgenre, musíca Mexicana, marked by inspiration from the sounds of the Texas-Mexico border like mariachi and northern cumbia, saw a sharp increase in popularity in the last year. Musíca Mexicana streaming increased by 60% in 2023, finishing out with just short of 22 billion streams according to Luminate’s year-end report.

One musíca Mexicana artist in particular, Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija, professionally known as Peso Pluma, was making waves in the music industry last year. Data from Spotify shows his 2023 release, "GÉNESIS," amassed nearly 3 billion collective streams on Spotify alone, contributing to the artist’s total 9 billion Spotify streams.

In addition to the album's popularity, a single featuring Peso Pluma and fellow Mexican artist Eslabon Armado released last March called “Ella Baila Sola” became the fifth-most streamed song globally on Spotify, the streaming platform reported. As of this March, the track has over a billion Spotify streams.

Other artists across the Latin genre have seen career growth in the last year. Karol G’s 2023 release, "Mañana Será Bonito,"" was the fifth-most streamed album across all genres globally on Spotify and, according to Luminate, she amassed 1.3 billion audio streams across all platforms last year. More women saw increased success in the genre like ROSALÍA and Shakira, who saw a spike in her already-booming popularity due to her 2023 crossover track with Argentine powerhouse producer and musician Bizzarap. For Schnitker, this explosion of Latin music in the popular canon of American music comes as no surprise.

“We're neighbors. [Latin music] was always coming into the U.S. through sound recordings and touring musicians and also people traveling,” she said. Now, with the added mainstream popularity and easy access to streaming, Schnitker said, “the borders are more permeable than they’ve ever been.”