GALINDO: Three decades after his death, more than 2 million listeners still tune into his Spotify channel each month. SHAPIRO: There's one moment in the first episode of this podcast where you give a sense of this guy's importance for people who might not be familiar with his music. And then you're like, oh, this is a good feeling.

But then you calm down, and then you just kind of absorb it. You know, we describe it like maybe the first time you smoked marijuana, where, like, you're like, this hurts. And he, like, inspires others to think they can sing.Ī lot of people don't like his voice, but eventually it grows on you. But in that way, he's so passionate and real. He really does kind of sound like somebody singing in the shower. GALINDO: Chalino did not have a trained voice. Sanchez spun tales of folk heroes who were sometimes drug lords.

SHAPIRO: That's Erick Galindo, one of the hosts of the podcast 'Idolo: The Ballad Of Chalino Sánchez.' This singer-songwriter was basically responsible for popularizing an entire musical subgenre, the narcocorrido. (SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, 'IDOLO: THE BALLAD OF CHALINO SANCHEZ')ĮRICK GALINDO: At age 31, the self-made music mogul, rumored cartel hitman, acclaimed singer-songwriter and beloved father of two is dead, and the mystery surrounding this ghastly murder is about to turn this poor immigrant from a tiny Mexican pueblo into the most famous Mexican American singing outlaw that ever lived. But there's much more to his story, as a new podcast explores. Many musicians became all the more famous after they died young, and that's true of Chalino Sánchez.

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