Fuerza Regida made history on the Billboard 200 chart this week. The band’s 111XPANTIA is now the highest-charting Spanish-language album by a duo or group, and the highest-charting album in the música mexicana genre. It sits at Number Two on the chart, with Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos at Number One, marking the first time the top two albums in the U.S. are in Spanish.
“We said it before the album even dropped, we were gonna make history,” band frontman Jesús Ortiz Pazz tells Rolling Stone, reacting to the news. “We believed in the music, and we knew the fans would show up. This is a huge moment for Latin music, and we’re proud to help take the genre, to take música mexicana to this level.”
“It was a team effort: la empresa (the business), the musicians, everyone who’s been with us from the jump. This is proof of the hard work, the dedication, and the power of our genre,” he adds. “We manifested this.”
With 111XPANTIA, Fuerza Regida earned the largest sales week for a regional Mexican music album, according to Billboard.
Along with landing at Number Two on the Billboard 200 chart, the band landed at the top of the Top Regional Mexican Albums and second on the Top Latin Albums charts. The record earned 76,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the tracking week ending May 8, according to Luminate.
Last week, in an interview with Rolling Stone on 111XPANTIA, Fuerza Regida frontman Jesús Ortiz Paz said, “This album right here, is all about making your dreams come true, bro. The eye [in the artwork], it resembles manifestation. It resembles new beginnings.”
