“I’ve made it this far because I don’t cling only to my own thoughts,” Tombochio tells Apple Music. “I try to ask my mom, my sister, the people close to me what they think, how it feels to them. A lot of the time, that becomes my compass.” If GAD, the Culiacán-born singer-songwriter’s debut album, was about gratitude, then STAR is about believing it. “No dream is too small, partner—you just have to know how to fly,” he sings on “GIVENCHY”. Building on the idea that every person carries a hidden star inside them, José Manuel Osorio turns his second studio album into a first-person reflection on his artistic and personal limits. “I imagine all my music with myself in mind,” he says. “I’ve never written a song imagining someone else singing it. I make everything thinking of me first—even commissioned corridos.” Read on for Tombochio’s thoughts on a few key tracks from the album. “GIVENCHY” “It’s a corrido someone commissioned from me for a guy who sells caps, and I recorded it in Los Angeles during one of my last days there. I wrote the whole thing in 10 minutes in my apartment one night. I usually write at night when I’m alone, and it comes fast. If I don’t finish it, I stop liking it. I keep notes in my phone of things I’d like to sing about. In this case, I already had one phrase, and from there I built the whole corrido.” “MIRANDO LAS ESTRELLAS” “I was going through a really bad shock. I had a problem with my visa, and for almost two months I couldn’t write anything. I didn’t have the time, the desire or the energy. I tried for a week and nothing came out. I was thinking, ‘I lost my prime. It’s over. I’ll never be able to write again.’ Everything I made felt wrong. One night I was about to go to sleep, but I sat down, and the song came out all at once. I finished it in 10 minutes and went to bed so happy. It was the best night of my life. I forgot they had taken my visa. I forgot everything.” “INTOCABLE” “I linked up with Peso Pluma and he told me, ‘Bro, show me what you’ve got.’ That day after seeing him at the studio, I got back to the apartment and made this one plus several others. I made about four songs that night, and I liked all of them for myself—I didn’t want to give him any. But it had to be that way. Then while we were there, he asked to hear them, so I played him around six songs. This was the one he liked, and the one we ended up working on together.” “STAR” “Someone asked me for a corrido, but they didn’t really explain what they wanted. They just sent the money and paid me. I made it for him, and when I finished it, he said, ‘It’s really cool, but the corrido isn’t for me—it’s for someone else. I bought it, but it was for another person.’ I told him I’d misunderstood and made him another one. But that first version, the one I made originally, was left floating there. Later I adapted it for a friend of mine and gave it to him. I made that corrido by accident, by mistake, and now it’s the title of the album.” “Vice City” “We were at a camp in Los Cabos where a lot of songs came out, including some that still haven’t been released. We made around 25 songs. It was the last day, maybe Saturday or Sunday, around 4 am, and I asked my engineer, ‘Do you know how to make beats?’ He said yes, so I asked him for one, then another. He made two. We played the first one, and with lyrics from my phone I started singing and recorded it.”