On a blustery October night in Brooklyn, an unusual crowd gathered outside the opulent Kings Theatre. Bedecked in embroidered black hoodies and sleek suede baseball caps, much of the assembled also wore $ad Boyz streetwear — a brand many of them touted not only on their clothing but permanently, on their skin. Take Omar, an undocumented Peruvian immigrant and construction worker based in the city, whose neck bears a “$ad Boyz” tattoo — and who spoke of the star headlining that night, Junior H, with the reverence often reserved for religious icons or childhood heroes.
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He was far from alone. Inside, the ornately elegant venue may have seemed like an unlikely setting for Junior H’s melancholy corridos tumbados. But as the lights dimmed and the $ad Boy himself took the stage, he transformed the historic space into something entirely his own. The crowd turned electric, belting nearly every agonizingly confessional lyric.
“2023 was a very different year,” Junior H says today, reminiscing about the Brooklyn show as he sits in a Los Angeles studio. “You could say that we began to see the fruits of our labor.” He’s just stepped off a plane from Paris Fashion Week, and though he’s far from the stage he’s still dressed like an emo rock star: snakeskin leather jacket, crisp white shirt, black tie and boots, his shaggy hair neatly shaved on the sides. “We started to get a lot of very important shows at very important venues. From there, you could say, we made it to the big leagues.”
The connection between Junior H and his followers has always transcended the usual artist-fan dynamic, and though his shows are far less frenetic than those of contemporaries Peso Pluma and Fuerza Regida, he’s built up a movement that’s anything but quiet. With his deeply introspective songs, he cuts directly to his listeners’ hearts, offering the kind of vulnerability that’s rare in the typically more brash world of música mexicana.
Read the full Junior H cover story here.