T3r Elemento are part of a new crop of artists innovating corridos, narrative tracks traditionally associated with Mexico’s countryside. The Las Vegas-reared group (formed in 2015) have championed a sound called corridos verdes, or “green corridos,” a nod to their affinity for smoking cannabis. Much like the output from contemporaries like LEGADO 7 or Apple Music Up Next artist Natanael Cano, the group’s lyrics explore the theme of drugs mostly through the eyes of the consumer. However, they don’t shy away from more traditional narcocorrido stylings, as in 2017’s “Rafa Caro,” an open tribute to the founder of the Guadalajara cartel, Rafael Caro Quintero, a figure immortalized on screen by Tenoch Huerta in the Netflix series Narcos: Mexico). The group have also championed the sierreño sound in the vein of former fellow DEL Records artists like Gerardo Ortiz––with whom they collaborated on 2018’s “Aerolínea Carrillo,” another Quintero tribute––and the late Ariel Camacho, who is arguably responsible for spurring the style’s renaissance. The sound is minimalistic, most often characterized by two guitars and a tuba. T3r Elemento take that stripped-down sound and infuse it with raw, heart-on-sleeve lyrics about love on 2019’s “Mágicos Besitos,” weed-smoking on 2017’s “Fire Up,” and the quotidian struggles of Mexican-Americans in the Southwest U.S.—sanitizing in large measure the corrido sound’s blood-stained reputation.