Very few in the music industry have been beaten and jabbed in the face, literally and figuratively. George Prajin, manager of Mexican star Peso Pluma, is one of the few who can make such a claim, taking his fair share of punches as someone who not only practices mixed martial arts but also held roles as a music retail store manager, entertainment lawyer and record label owner.
The Prajin family business, a successful Latin music distributor with retail stores throughout Southern California, was booming and helped independent Latin music acts such as corridos (Mexican folk music) legend Chalino Sánchez sell records before suffering the same fate of many other record shops. The stores shuttered their doors as consumers’ habits changed and digital music was embraced.
Prajin was down but certainly not out, having graduated from UCLA and later getting a degree from Southwestern University School of Law. He pivoted to the sports industry and found success as an agent representing UFC fighters.
However, his passion for music never waned, and with the music streaming business on the rise, Prajin made his way back into the industry and rebooted his record label. Just a few years later, he signed a young, lanky artist from Guadalajara, Mexico, by the name of Peso Pluma, who would not only help his company achieve global recognition but start a cultural movement. Peso Pluma propelled Mexican music into the mainstream by fusing corridos with trap, hip-hop, reggaeton and sierreño. His music took social media by storm as well as the live industry, grossing more than $72 million off 50 shows in just eight months last year, according to Pollstar Boxoffice, including two sold-out concerts last October at the Honda Center in Anaheim that hauled in a total of $4.65 million.
Prajin took the time to chat with Pollstar about his journey into the music business and how the biggest gamble of his management career led him to an unforgettable 2023 and helped Prajin Music Group become one of the premier companies in Latin music.
Pollstar: Tell me about yourself, George. How did you get into the music business?
George Prajin: My dad opened his first record store in 1972, and I was born in 1972. I was a baby, and my parents were raising me and my brothers in their retail stores. My dad had a store in Huntington Park, California, and had predominantly Mexican clientele.
That’s where I started really finding a love for corridos and things of that sort. We started off in retail and then we became one of the top distributors in the country for Spanish-language music. When I turned 25, a lot of the independent acts would bring their new CDs and cassettes for us to sell.
We had some massive acts come through our doors. I used to always ask my dad, “Why don’t we start our own label? Why don’t we just sign them and then we can make the money from the beginning?” He initially said no because he didn’t need to invest in the acts and since they had to filter through our wholesale and our retail, we were still making good money.
I went against his advice because I am a musician myself and I love producing. I ended up getting my first act with no support from a distributor and didn’t do too well, but it led to me going into the studio to pay musicians and hearing this kid singing. I ended up signing him. His name was Jessie Morales, known as El Original de la Sierra, and we had five platinum albums at my first record label, Z-Recordz.
I remember his music.
I’ve been in it for more than 40 years. The first label in the ’90s with regional Mexican. Then in the music business, the physical world kind of collapsed. Obviously, our distributor and our retail stores closed, and it was hard to monetize any type of music.
I had a degree, so I followed up on it and became a lawyer. I practiced law for 12 years in the sports entertainment industry, mostly representing UFC fighters and negotiating their contracts.
In 2019, I noticed that the music business was coming back with streaming, and then I jumped back in and I opened up Z-Recordz again. My first signing was Junior H. I signed him when he turned 18 years old, which was pretty cool.
I was still juggling being an attorney and being a label, trying hard not to cross that line and compete with my clients. And then one of my good friends, the brother of one of my artists, signed this kid named Peso Pluma in 2019. [My friend] wasn’t doing very well with his health, and he called me up and asked me if I would help him with the project. I saw the potential, and I jumped right in.
He ended up releasing Peso Pluma from his contract because he couldn’t fulfill his obligations, so we signed him in November 2021 when he had less than 3,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. I started producing his music right away. I saw the potential with the label. We were releasing probably six to seven different acts at once. And I told my team you know what, let’s just put it all on Peso. We took a big gamble, but it was the best gamble I’ve ever made in my life.
How did your dad feel when you went against his wishes and started your record label?
We had a really strong business service in the country, and he didn’t want me to lose sight of that. I had already put my law career on hold to be in the music business. He always wanted me to go back and fulfill my degree and practice.
My dad was the first person who helped Chalino Sánchez when he started recording music. He came to our store like every other independent artist and brought a box of cassettes. I think he had 500, and my dad said, “Leave them all.” A week later, Chalino came back and asked, “So how am I doing?” He said, “I sold ‘em all. Make 10,000 more.” And the rest is history. [Sánchez] is iconic and a folk hero in Mexico.
The kid I actually heard and signed that day I went to pay the band had a voice very similar to Chalino. When I played it at one of my stores, my dad said he really liked that kid. I told him it was my new artist. He just kind of smiled. It didn’t hurt that in the span of time we played [Morales’] music, 10 people came up to the counter asking who he was.
That’s how we used to do our research, too. We would play music, and we would see how many people would ask for the song. We knew we had a home run, and so I think that kind of put a Band-Aid on [my decision]. He was excited because I had something that had some legs. Fortunately for us, he was one of the biggest artists in the ’90s for corridos.
As a San Fernando Valley kid, I used to buy CDs of Latin artists, some of them corridos albums, at a local Ritmo Latino store.
Ritmo Latino was our competition. We were Latin Music Warehouse.
I remember that store! I shopped there, too.
We had a couple in the Valley. One of the things that made me decide to put my education on hold was Sam Goody. They had six or seven stores in Latin areas, and they came to us and asked if we wanted to take them over. I committed to the business.
I grew up in the ’80s, and it was weird that Mexican teens and kids weren’t really listening to Spanish-language music. Then quebraditas (a Mexican dance style) came, and everybody was all into it, going to the clubs.
And then the corridos with Chalino blow up, and all of a sudden, I’m seeing kids coming in with their parents. It was really cool to see the culture come together, parents and kids listening to the same type of music.
I’ve been on both sides of the table, and honestly, I never really thought myself to be a manager. I always wanted to be the record label because the record label was one that owned everything. But when I started representing fighters at UFC, I started to realize that that’s really what I did as a label. I basically managed everyone’s careers.
And I started realizing that I think the biggest player in the game now is the manager. The manager is the one that really controls everything because he controls the touring, A&R (artists and repertoire). Today’s manager is totally different than the manager of the past.
With Prajin Parlay, an affiliate of Double P records, which Peso and I own together, our goal now is this new role of managers. … A lot of [artists] don’t realize that they still need the team that the labels provide. Our new management company is a cool hybrid where I’ve hired the best of the best in all the different aspects of the business and we’re providing all these artists with label services in addition to the traditional advisory council as a manager.
I’m excited. I mean, in addition to Peso, we now have Santa Fe Klan.
Congratulations on that signing, by the way. You seem to have a good ear for musical talent.
I feel like I went to school in my stores. I’m big on research, and I still am today. I would play music and see how many people would ask about a song. Our first retail store on Pacific Boulevard, which is where I spent the majority of my learning, was really small. Most people walked by that thing and didn’t even know it existed. So, my dad put a big speaker at the front of the door to blast music out so nobody could walk by without it catching their ear.
We didn’t make as much money on [established] artists like Los Bukis, Vicente Fernández or Los Tigres Del Norte than we made on independent acts. They would sell us cassettes for $1.50 each whereas we were buying the others for $3-$4 and selling them for $6, so we were always trying to find the hot independent act. It kind of trained my ear to know what was good.
I feel like I’m tooting my horn too much, but my ears are pretty well trained to what’s commercial.
With the roster that includes Dareyes de la Sierra and Jasiel Nuñez, I’d say so. You mentioned your past in the sports industry. You’re a well-built guy; were you ever an athlete?
I’ve trained in martial arts for a good part of my life. I’ve been hit in the face, and I’ve hit a couple of people pretty hard. Actually, I’ve hit more people in the face than they’ve hit me.
When it comes to working with athletes and musicians, what’s the difference?
It’s very similar. If it’s an athlete, you want to make sure you have the best trainers. If it’s an artist, you want to make sure you have the best producer. The biggest difference for me is not having to sit cageside, and in music, no one gets hurt at the end of the night.
Are you still involved in sports?
I’m not representing any athletes at this time. I’m 110% into this new company. I made Peso a partner of Double P Records, something that’s never been seen before because record labels try to keep artists closer to a contract end date. Nobody does that at the beginning. Having been an attorney and representing both labels and artists on deals, I know what’s fair, and I always want to be the fair guy in the game.
I made him a partner six months in. He got to eat what he killed, and that doesn’t happen very frequently in the industry. Double P records is killing it. We have five artists who are doing really well; they’re all going on tour this year.
That in-house, hybrid business model that can handle everything, from management to booking to label services, is really interesting and popular with Latin artists.
My experience and law background allows us to come up with a model that works because usually you can’t. You have to be very careful about double dipping. You can’t commission as a booking agent and then as a manager or as a record label on some type of ancillary. So, I’ve been very careful that we do not double commission on anything. Also, we have an affiliate talent agency. We abide by all the rules.
It’s obviously to everybody’s benefit if you’re able to run everything smoothly together, but you have to do it in a way that you don’t double dip and you don’t take advantage of the artists. That’s something that we’ve worked on, and we feel really good about this plan.
I want everybody to know exactly what’s going on with their career. I’m the lawyer who when somebody would walk into the office and want to sign a deal that they just got, I would throw them out and say come back in four weeks because nobody should sign anything unless they fully know what they’re signing.
You’ve managed to build quite the team and roster with Prajin Music Group. Did you ever imagine having a year like you had in 2023?
Growing up in retail, I always tried to kill two birds with one stone. I used to see everybody coming in buying corridos records and the same guy buying Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac. I thought there had to be a way to fuse urban and regional Mexican together, and if somebody figured that out, which we almost did with Jessie Morales back then, then this is going to be massive.
Then I met Peso. After 25 years of trying to figure out the answer, he answered it for me. He said, “Don’t do it that way. Don’t try to give me a beat with a tuba or some type of regional instrument to try and make it regional [Mexican]. It’s not. It’s rap. It’s hip‑hop. It’s trap.”
He showed me you don’t mix Chinese and Mexican food. You eat both at a different time. Fortunately, everything fell into place, and we were able to take this sound global.
On the touring side, we knew that we were doing really well in Mexico, but we didn’t know what his value was in the U.S. That’s where [promoter] Bobby Dee comes in. I give Bobby Dee props. I called him up and I said that I think we can do the Toyota Arena [in Ontario, California]. This was our first show. We had never sold a ticket in the U.S. Bobby said, “If you think so, I trust you.” I told him, “If we don’t sell the place out, we’ll do the lower bowl. And if we don’t sell that, I’ll buy the tickets. I don’t care. I gotta know.” And he said let’s do it.
We went on sale and sold out the place in two hours. And that’s when I knew that I had to go back to Live Nation and ask for more money. I will be forever grateful to Bobby because he took that chance with us.
We ended up restructuring the Live Nation deal, but even as we went out on tour, we started realizing that we were leaving fans outside and money on the table. Then we adjusted the tour three or four times, and that’s why I’m forever grateful to Live Nation as well because they gave us the ability to turn it into what it became: one of the biggest tours of 2023.
We were going to jump right into a stadium tour for this year, but Peso’s really smart. He said he wanted to do the arena tour right because we only did some arenas last year, and that’s why he decided to go this route.
What we’re seeing is a real cultural shift. Latin music has taken center stage before, but this time it feels different, and your artists have had a hand in it. Have you had time to stop and reflect on what you’ve done over the past few years?
[Feb. 4] was very emotional. I had a lot of success with my first label, but when I got out, I thought I was never going to ever be in contention to win a Grammy. That Sunday, [Peso Pluma’s] Génesis won for Best Música Mexicana Album. It was one of those days where you just sit back and you’re like, “Wow, this has been an amazing year. And how blessed and fortunate we are.” What made it even cooler was that I was one of the producers on the album, so I got a statuette too.
And then, being on tour and just watching [Peso Pluma] on stage, I say he’s a Mexican Mick Jagger. This guy’s a rock star. It’s cool, but now we have this movement on our shoulders that we got to keep. We gotta keep going and keep taking this to another level. We’ve taken música Mexicana to a place that nobody dreamed it could be, and we want to make sure that we don’t let it down. We don’t let the culture down.
A lot of times, you’re concerned that you’re gonna have that sophomore jinx, but I was in the studio with him the other day doing a recap of all the music that’s been recorded. And I feel this year is going to be way stronger than last year. So, we’re not going to slow down. We’re going to keep pushing forward.
One thing I love about Peso is knowing exactly how to contribute when collaborating on a track. He’s one of many Latin artists who have used collaborations to further their exposure and business. Why do you feel it’s so popular and important in Latin music?
We can’t take all the credit for it. The rappers have been doing it for a long time. They’ve been collaborating and helping build artists overnight.
On the Latin side, I can’t take credit for either because all the guys at Rancho Humilde were collaborating with each other. That’s why that record label is so strong, because, culturally, they all have their artists working together with communities. They created a whole genre.
We took that model and, in fact, collaborated with some of their artists in the beginning and we’re very grateful for those collabs. What we did was we just connected all of that to the international highway, and we took it global.
In the ’90s when I had my first label, it was unheard of for us to collaborate with each other. We have a compound that we built, and it has two recording studios, an event center and a bar. The purpose of the bar is for the artists to get together and get to know each other. Once they get acquainted, they go up and do a song together. That’s what we did a lot in our studio in Anaheim, and that’s where a lot of these different collabs came out.
If you have a major artist and they’re willing to do a collab with an artist who is developing and you have access to that artist’s fan base, that’s a marketing tool you can put a price on.
Mexican music is chartering new territory with its surge in popularity, and Prajin Music Group was at the forefront. How does it make you feel that you are tied to that moment?
When I talk to people, I say the biggest thing I take away is my record store was the first one to sell Chalino cassettes. I’ve always been super pumped about that, but now, obviously, I’ve been a copilot, riding shotgun on this Peso Pluma ride. And what he’s done right, I give him the credit. That kid’s amazing.
It’s badass. I can’t even explain how lucky and proud I am of the project and the fact that we have taken the music to a whole different level. No regional Mexican artist ever had more than 20 million monthly listeners [on Spotify], and now you have 10-15. Peso’s close to 60 million.
It’s amazing how much streaming we’re doing worldwide, the kind of money that these artists are making and the respect that this genre is finally getting. I’ve been in this business a long time and even though regional Mexican was the most profitable genre, it never got the respect that it deserved. And we still see that. I’m not going to mention any specific awards shows, but you still see that regional Mexican doesn’t get the respect that it deserves. But now we have an ambassador by the name of Peso Pluma who is going to make them respect the music.
The Grammys got it right: música Mexicana. It shouldn’t be regional Mexican anymore. It’s global.
But going back to your question, I’m blessed, and I thank everybody on my team who has been a part of this. And I really thank Peso Pluma for allowing me to be a part of this journey, and Herminio Morales, who had originally signed him and then allowed me to be part of the project and trusted me with his artist.
I’m looking forward to the future. I know we’re not going to stop. The brakes don’t work over here.