Cuco Essentials

Cuco Essentials

Like a lot of success stories in contemporary pop, Omar Banos’ started in a bedroom, unfolded on the internet, and meandered sweetly onto center stage. The charm isn’t just in Banos’ sound—a dreamy but lyrically plainspoken mix of Latin music, indie pop, hip-hop, jazz, and psychedelia—but in how unassumingly Banos plays it: Where some young artists sound polished and mitigated by management, here you get the sense that you’re just hearing Banos say and do what he feels. That approachability has made him especially popular among Chicano and Latinx kids not regularly represented in American pop. Like him yet? “Cuco” was the nickname his mom gave him.

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