Junior H had many songs written, but he didn’t know how to play any instrument. One day, he picked up a guitar and started learning the chords by watching Youtube videos. He recorded “I have not changed” (sic), a song that no matter how much he listened to it, he was not convinced. He still uploaded it to his channel. Then he closed his computer and didn’t want to know anything about the song.
“And one day it occurred to me to get into and it already had a million views”, Junior told the musician, programmer and composer Pepe Garza on the YouTube program “Pepe’s Office”. “I read the messages that said things like, ‘Who is this guy?’, and I opened my Instagram account, and that’s where people started coming to me.” He was then 17 years old and worked as a cook in a sandwich restaurant in Utah, where he emigrated with his parents to escape the violence that afflicted the place where he lived in Mexico.
To date, Junior, whose real name is Antonio Herrera Pérez, has a million and a half followers on Instagram, and more than a million on Youtube. At 20 years old, and five years after arriving in the United States, he is one of the most popular and promising performers of the urban regional genre. The lyrics of their songs usually talk about the violence that exists in Mexico due to drug trafficking, marijuana use, interested women, life on the street and other similar topics.
After his success on YouTube, Junior caught the attention of Jimmy Humilde, owner of Rancho Humilde Records. With this company the history of Junior H as a “formal” artist began to be written. This weekend, Junior, originally from San Juan Cerano, a town of just 5,000 inhabitants located in the state of Guanajuato, in Mexico, will offer his first massive concert as the main artist; will perform at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, where he will present some of his hits and the new songs from his next album, “Mi vida en un cigar Volume 2”, which goes on sale tomorrow Friday.
This album comes after his debut album “Mi vida en un cigar” and the EP “Trapped in a dream”; the latter was placed in fifth place on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums list.
His new production, unlike his previous works, is quite extensive, including 21 songs.
The unexpected success keeps Junior quite busy, who is called that at home because he bears the same name as his father. After his concert in Los Angeles –where he currently resides– he will take a short vacation but then he will return to the studio to finish a trap music album, another of his passions.
A tres years after his rise to fame, he says he is just beginning to digest it.
“I grew up with the very closed-minded and I never thought I would do something like this,” he said. “Music was like a hobby, it was always [mi expectativa] at a very low level; Now that everything is different, I’m hardly believing it”.
In detail
What: Junior H
When: Saturday, 8 pm
Where: Microsoft Theater
How: tickets $49 to $80; reports microsofttheater.com