Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija was born in the municipality of Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico. The relatives of his mother were residents of Badiraguato, Sinaloa. Both parents were born in Mexico; his father has Lebanese ancestry and was born in Chiapas. Growing up in Guadalajara, he began playing the guitar at age fif by watching videos on YouTube. Pluma started writing songs in a diary, admitting to being ridiculed by peers. Describing his initial approach to songwriting, he explained how writing became his therapy: "That’s where I’d write how I was feeling, then I realized some stuff would rhyme. I kept practicing and became better with time.
“Peso Pluma is really a combination of everything I like, of all the cities I’ve lived in, cultures I’ve come to know. It has all helped me,” he says. “When I went to the United States, I was listening to Kanye [West], Drake, Kendrick Lamar — it’s actually because of their songs that I learned to speak English. I’d come home from school and study their lyrics to try to understand the references they were making.” During a visit to New Orleans, he fell in love with jazz and the trombone, now a key instrument in his sound. He began writing his own lyrics in a diary-style notebook around the age of fifteen. Inspired by Camacho, who became a generational hero after his untimely death at age twenty-two in a car accident, Peso also learned to play guitar by watching YouTube videos. “There’s corridos in which you’ll hear me rap,” he says. “My music is inspired by many cultures, and that’s what I love about it.”~ Peso Pluma for Billboard
