About Qué Maldición

After tilting toward urbano, regional Mexican music has gone full hip-hop thanks to Snoop Dogg’s surprise collaboration “Que Maldición” with Banda MS. The Long Beach native and Sinaloa’s mega-selling group came together for the rap banda anthem you didn’t know you needed.

As a proud Los Angeles native, it’s no surprise that Snoop Dogg loves banda music. (He even attended the same high school as banda legend Jenni Rivera.) And as both regional Mexican and Latin music at large grow exponentially more popular worldwide, Snoop has made it no secret that he’s been wanting to release his own banda song someday.

Luckily, that day is today. Snoop has shared “Que Maldición,” a collaboration with the Mazatlán-based group Banda MS, and it’s as wondrous a fusion of banda and hip-hop that you would expect from the G-funk icon. Snoop’s trademark subwoofer bass and drum machine work surprisingly well with the Banda MS horn section — a concoction that sounds engineered in a lab to be bumping out of a lowrider over the L.A. River. “Every time you leave there’s only one thing that I know,” raps Snoop in Spanglish: “What’s that? Baby, yo te extraño.”

Snoop confirmed late last year that he was in the studio with Banda Sinaloense MS de Sergio Lizárraga. “Que Maldición” is finally here with the Doggfather and Banda MS longing for a lover when they’re away.

Snoop’s signature flow seamlessly works its way around the group’s full-band brass dotted with light hip-hop beats. Snoop rides for his lady in Spanglish, calling himself “tu perrito loyal.” Banda MS singer Alan Ramírez drives that devotion home on the heartache-filled chorus. “It’s a curse to miss you,” he laments in Spanish. Out of the strange Anglo-Latinx collaborations we’ve seen, this one feels the most organic and it bumps while bridging two cultures.