Cartel de Santa
Founded in Santa Catarina, Nuevo León in 1996 by Hector Montaño and Ronaldo Sifuentes, Cartel de Santa became one of the signature acts of the Avanzada Regia movement once vocalist Eduardo "Babo" Dávalos took over as its defining voice. Their 2002 debut, built on blunt, weed-fixated gangsta rap over dense loops, turned Cartel de Santa into one of the most enduring — and most sampled — names in Mexican hip-hop, with Babo crediting the group's entire sound back to a single formative discovery.
Frontman Babo has said Cypress Hill was his single biggest musical influence, discovered as a kid through VHS tapes a cousin brought back from the US — years before he ever picked up a mic himself, and long before the two acts later shared a stage at Sonorama.
listen forThe nasal, sing-song hook riding a thick, murky loop on Cypress Hill's "How I Could Just Kill a Man" is the direct ancestor of the woozy, deadpan flow Cartel de Santa uses on "La Pelotona."
Rather than just echoing his style, Cartel de Santa built "Babo Regresa (Versión 2)" directly around a sample of Biggie's "Big Poppa" — a concrete, audible link rather than a stylistic guess.
listen forListen for the same loping, luxury-rap loop underneath both tracks — Biggie's original hook sits right there in the mix beneath Babo's verses on the sampled cut.