The Mess is a column from journalist Richard Villegas, who has been reporting on new, exciting sounds flourishing in the Latin American underground for nearly a decade. As the host of the Songmess Podcast, his travels have intersected with fresh sounds, scene legends, ancestral traditions, and the socio-political contexts that influence your favorite artists. The Mess is about new trends and problematic faves whilst asking hard questions and shaking the table.
We’re going there. We’re talking about it. Even if things get a little messy.
What the hell is wrong with Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso? That’s a mostly facetious question, since I’m delighted that a pair of irreverent and refreshingly original artists are breaking through a Latine pop landscape I’ve previously described as stuck in the sunken place. But their rapidly growing global fan base is, in fact, often vexed. To old guard followers, watching the mischievous Argentines break into dance on a commercial flight or deliver deranged speeches at the Latin Grammys fits comfortably within their canon of trolling antics. However, to newcomers enamoured by their seismic 2024 Tiny Desk performance, the signature cocktail of musical curve balls and headscratching publicity stunts can still be off-putting.
The duo’s latest turn as enlightened granola-fed Tuluminatti on “Hasta Jesús Tuvo un Mal Día,” which invoked Sting—the king of adult-contemporary and chakra alignment—received positive reviews but failed to ignite the viral fever pitch of previous releases. While not an outright flop, and teasing their hotly anticipated new album, Free Spirits, out on March 19, I’ve begun to wonder about the sustainability of these ragebait tactics. Make no mistake, I’m amused and understand that not every era will be a homerun. But how much longer can Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso provoke the industry and fans alike before being dismissed as the freaky boys that cry wolf every time there’s new music to promote?
Their crucial complicity dates back to 2000, when Catriel Guerreiro and Ulises Guerriero, now known as Paco Amoroso, met at elementary school when they were six years old. They became fast friends, sharing a passion for music, video games, and nearly the same surname. Paco studied violin while Ca7riel proved a prodigious guitarist, even graduating from the prestigious Esnaloa performing arts high school. In 2011, Ca7riel launched Astor y las Flores de Marte, a groovy rock band melding prog, funk, and reggae, genuflecting to national gods like Luis Alberto Spinetta and Gustavo Cerati, but also drafted his buddy Paco on drums to keep the vibe fun.
Though in recent years Paco Amoroso has been positioned as a sort of frontman for their project, Ca7riel has always been the duo’s creative catalyst. As rap and trap defined Argentina’s youth culture of the 2010s, Ca7riel sidequested onto El Quinto Escalón, trying his hand at freestyle battles. By his own account, he failed miserably. But in art, failure invites innovation. And in 2015, he released his solo debut xCUE7Ex, a self-produced hip-hop record that respected classic boom bap codes and touted his outsider status on songs like “Level Up.” Astor remained active for another two years, and so the budding rapper’s robust musical pedigree ingratiated him with Argentina’s staunchly rockist media establishment. By the time he started performing regularly, Paco joined him to better fill the stage, later incorporating their trusty ATR Band.
On Christmas Day 2018, Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso released the stonerific “Jala Jala,” trading introspective R&B and hip-hop for hedonistic trap. Boisterous and iconoclastic, the song’s music video even arrived in a vertical format conceived for phone consumption, again subverting convention. This became a pattern. “OLA MINA XD,” the single most diehard fans consider their breakthrough, was a screeching, mutant club banger with a techno-dystopian clip saturated in Boca Juniors and The Simpsons imagery. The partnership was a hit, connecting with fans through unpredictable beastmode energy, fluid masculinity, and internet savvy that alchemized the mundane into meme gold.
They parted ways in the years that followed, each dropping Bizarrap sessions and the most acclaimed solo work of their careers, including Ca7riel’s El Disko and Paco Amoroso’s Saeta. They reconvened in 2022 with a string of cinematic new singles. This rebirth culminated with Baño María, an LP parodying the Miami popetón industrial complex but so clean and streamlined that it seemed to rebuke their edgier origins. Days prior, their astronomically hyped performance at Lollapalooza Argentina sparked outrage after the spraytanned cohorts sat on stage in a hot tub overflowing with Insta-baddies, as the show rapidly devolved into a glorified listening party. Fans declared Baño María Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso’s first L, weeping for sellout idols lost in the industry sauce. But there was one small snag: their mainstream prank crossed over, and the album became a hit.
At surface level, adapting the electronic fantasia of Baño María into Tiny Desk’s acoustic format was a necessary promotional play and a cool technical feat. However, the contrast of silliness and undeniable chops is a defining signature of the Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso universe, putting fans through a rollercoaster ride of emotions with the eventual reward of great music. The immensely viral NPR showing not only rehabilitated charisma left for dead on the Lollapalooza stage, it was a wakeup call that the Argentinos were more than 2D weirdos in a vacuum—despite their striking resemblance to Beavis and Butthead.
The slap and tickle strategy has recurred ever since: while storming the global festival circuit with their jazzy Tiny Desk show, Ca7riel would sneak in ear-splitting cuts from his little-known nü-metal project, Barro. After being anointed the new “it boys” of Latine music, they responded with “#TETAS,” a cheeky slice of pop-R&B satirizing mounting industry pressure to change, well, everything, in order to make themselves more marketable. In fact, it was the rollout of their subsequent Papota EP that soured fans again, not entirely sold on the cutesy-corny storyline of how fame had tested their friendship.
Overexposure and fan fatigue came to a head when Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso were booked as the opening act for Kendrick Lamar’s 2025 Latin American tour, eliciting groans from the mostly orthodox rap audience. And even their booming EDM collaboration with English producer Fred Again.. felt forced when behind-the-scenes clips revealed the Argentinos mostly passed out in studio love seats. The party had gotten out of hand, so it came as little surprise when, in December, their new tour and album Top of the Hills was postponed due to exhaustion. However, when the pair reemerged on the red carpet for the gringo Grammys, dressed in quiet luxury garb and new-age haircuts, online chatter wondered if the crashout had been orchestrated to better accentuate this zen era.
The Free Spirits LP drops in a few short weeks, so we won’t have to wait long to see where la novela leads. Because, ultimately, a show is what we’ve been promised, and it’s precisely what we’re getting.
In the attention economy, control of the narrative is everything, and the reason Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso’s kooky methods work is the implicit trust of spiritual brothers who find balance in each other and, together, can make any wild fantasy possible. The tightrope of lunacy and hard work is what sets apart the trendy from the trailblazers, and these two are moonwalking across with no safety net.