When Becky G started preparing her Coachella performance, she wanted to make sure her show embodied her full evolution since debuting in 2013 with “Becky From the Block.” What came with honoring that, she says, is a “rebirth” in her life and career.
On Friday afternoon, Becky G pulled out all the stops during her main stage performance at Coachella. Her colorful, minimalist set design took influence from Mexican architect Luis Barragán. She paid homage to her early career by closing with a surprise performance of “Shower.” And, most importantly to her, she shared the stage with her fellow mexicanos Peso Pluma, Marca MP, and Fuerza Régida’s Jesús Ortiz Paz in an inspiring show of pride.
“If I walk on that stage and those 15 minutes are crickets, I don’t give a fuck,” she told Rolling Stone the night before her set. “Why? Because I’ll look back on this performance 10 years from now and I’m going to be so proud that I shared it with my people.”
Everything about Becky’s set was intentional. She opened her show with “Mayores,” the Bad Bunny collaboration that propelled her from a teen pop star to an empowered young artist in reggaetón. Then, the performances segued into ”Fulanito,” from her 2022 LP Esquemas, before she closed the high-energy first act with “Bailé Con Mi Ex.”
Quickly, Becky slid on Dodger Blue sombrero. The accessory perfectly matched her bedazzled sapphire bra , reminiscent of the bustiers made famous by Selena Quintanilla, the first crossover “rule-breaker,”as Becky calls her. And with the look, a slew of guests joined what she described as her música Mexicana “carne asada.”
First, Marca MP stepped onstage for the heartbreak ballad “Ya Acabó,” her first time dabbling in música Mexicana. Next up was Fuerza Régida frontman JOP, who performed “Te Quiero Besar” with Becky before launching into his group’s chart-topping song “Bebé Dame.”
“Sharing the stage with Becky G means a lot to me. Only big artists get to do things like this,” JOP tells Rolling Stone. “The regional Mexican genre is growing and I’m happy to be part of it. And the culture is growing: Becky G brought Fuerza Régida to Coachella! This is otro pedo!”
To close the Mexican music acts was Peso Pluma, the Jalisco-born corridos phenomenon who dove into the pair’s collab “Chanel” and his own hit “PRC.” (Pluma told Rolling Stone that he was “excited and grateful” that Becky invited him to be a part of her performance.)
For the final part of her performance, Becky opened with her mambo single “Arranca. Then, Dominican star Natti Natasha joined her for “Sin Pijama.” Becky went through the Karol G-assisted hit “Mamiii,” interpolating it with the Fugees and Ms. Lauryn Hill’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” Right when the crowd thought that the show was ever, Becky appeared in front of a bathtub for a rendition of her smash breakthrough “Shower” that healed everyone’s inner child. “I always thought, ‘I don’t want to be the “singing in the shower” girl forever,’” she says. “Now I’m like, ‘Singing in the Shower? That’s Becky G.’ And the world’s going to know it.”
Ahead of her performance, Becky spoke exclusively to Rolling Stone about her Coachella show-stopper and shared how her performance captured her career evolution, the power of música Mexicana, and the sense of “sereneness” during what she calls a “crossroads” in her life at the moment.
How are you feeling ahead of Coachella?
It’s so weird. I feel like for me it’s such a symbolic milestone in my career. It’s a decade of just going and not stopping. I never gave up. To be on the main stage at Coachella, a part of me is going to die on that stage and then a part of me is going to be born. What do the next 10 years after this look like?
Walk us through bringing your culture into your set.
I think for me, it was about representation, but I think the lens that I see that through is so nuanced. Part of me felt like, “Oh, it’d be so cool to bring ‘Becky from the Block’ to the stage and come out in a lowrider,” but I also felt like a part of that would’ve been so stereotypical. We’re so much more. I think that there’s something really cool about the evolution of how I now relate to my roots. It doesn’t have to be so obvious anymore. It’s much more elevated.
Basically, the whole middle piece of my set is guests in the regional Mexican space: people who I admire and people who I’ve worked with at the beginning of my regional project. It’s about the 200 percent. It’s all so intentional.
It wasn’t Mexican to the “white eye,” it was just Mexican for us.
That’s the 200 percent. I don’t want to have to prove that I’m enough of anything to anyone anymore. I’m tired of not feeling Latina enough. I’m tired of not feeling American enough. I just am who I am. If you get it, you get it, and if you don’t, you don’t. That’s totally fine, but I think that when you are a 200 percenter, that representation is hard to come across.
You mentioned sharing space. You were able to bring out Peso Pluma, JOP, and Marca MP for your set — why was doing that so important?
It just really embodies who I am and how I move. It’s really cool to talk about these things, but it’s another thing to lead with action. To dedicate a whole 20 minutes in my set to just that, it’s because our music and our culture is something that I am so inspired by. Maybe it hasn’t been represented in my music in the past, but it is in the way that I work and in the way that I share, whether it be opportunities, songs, or just all those collaborative efforts, I think it really does come from the blood that runs through my veins. This is one of the biggest global stages that you can walk on.
I’m so focused on the bigger picture. It’s not about, “Oh, that should be mine.” I’ve just never had that in me. It’s something that really needs to be challenged. I think it has a lot to do with machismo. I think it has a lot to do with ego. I think it has a lot to do with pride since we come from so much struggle. When I think of immigrant families, we come from so much struggle that is passed down generationally. That trauma is just like we’re always afraid we’re going to lose it at any given moment. I think that that’s the fire that keeps us going, but then also what doesn’t allow us to connect with each other or trust in one another.
Why were Peso Pluma, Marca MP, and JOP the people to do that with?
It’s cool that I’ve actually done songs with all of them. It’d be one of those things where if I just brought someone on just because they had a hot song, it’s because I actually am a fan of these people. I think inviting Marca MP was super important for me because they were one of the first. It is a literal tear-jerker.
Then with Jesús, “Te Quiero Besar” was a fun song that we had written and there’s so much more there. Then he had done “Bebe Dame” with my other bros from Grupo Frontera. It’s all in the family. Peso, he’s so sweet, so dope, so hardworking and so deserving of an opportunity like this. For me, sharing is caring — let’s do this together.
What message do you want people to take from the Mexican music segment of your show?
Juntos somos más. Together we’re more. When we come together, representation is super important. It’s very easy to stereotype us and say, “Oh, there’s only room for one. If we have one of them, then we check a box,” but no. So that, for me, is the hope. We’re all unique.
Natti Natasha also joins you for “Sin Pijama.” How’d that happen?
That’s such a full-circle moment because “Sin Pijama” was where it all started. There were so many people who didn’t want us to work together. There were so many people who didn’t think that women could even collaborate. Without “Sin Pijama,” I don’t know what would’ve happened. I have a sister for life now. I took inspiration from Karol G inviting me to perform “Mamiii” last year. I was hoping she could come this year too. Doing “Sin Pijama” and “Mamiii” back-to-back… it’s just mujeres empoderadas (“empowered women.”)
That acapella to start “Mamiii.” Own it, girl.
It’s hard to find the words to embody what this experience has been like for me. I feel like my higher self has been preparing me for whatever transition in my life that I’m in right now. It’s such a crossroads and I couldn’t be more excited for it. There’s a sereneness. There’s this calmness. There’s this trust in, “We’re good. Everything’s great. Take it in.”
I want to ask about your bustier and the Dodger Blue. Is the bedazzled bra a nod to Selena?
I feel like with my style, I’m so crossed between In Living Color Fly Girls, something tomboy-esqu, to shaking my ass in a cute little dress and doing my vibe. I feel like Selena was such a rule-breaker in the most organic way. She wasn’t trying to provoke people to feel some type of way about what she was wearing. I think that bustier for me is definitely a reference to that and the color in that. When I think of “Dodger Blue,” I think of Mexico and the saturation in our colors. There’s just so much there that is so me without it being, “There are the words Becky G slapped across the stage, or there’s a flag there.”
You close your show with Shower which was such a surprise to me. What was that like for you?
I feel like we wouldn’t be who we are if we didn’t go through the things that we went through. I was checking in with my younger self and updating her on all the things. “Hey, you felt some type of way about this time in your career, but I’ll tell you now, girlfriend, it’s all good in the hood, shit’s going to be just fine.”
To find a new love for your hardships, for the challenges that you went through, I think is, for me, a huge part of my growth. Even when I am faced with a new challenge, I trust that it’s happening for a reason. I trust that it’s because it’s what’s supposed to happen.
What do you hope is the takeaway of this show for you personally?
There’s a before Coachella and after Coachella for a lot of artists. When I see that for myself, I feel like I can see that really clearly. I feel like I’m definitely at a crossroads, and I’m really excited to bring people along on that journey.
So who’s invited to the carne asada?
That’s the real theme here! I had also invited J-Hope to the carne asada, and it was so sad because he couldn’t be here for obvious reasons, and that was a bummer. But he was invited. I bumped into Snoop Dogg the other day, and the same thing. Everybody’s invited to carne asada.
