Brothers Victor and Johnny Lopez spent their early years in El Salvador, a Central American nation torn apart by civil war. As youth, these two young men, who would later form the group Crooked Stilo, immigrated with their parents to the United States in search of a new beginning and a better future. They settled in a housing project in East Los Angeles, a new environment that came with its own unique challenges.
In East Los Angeles, Victor and Johnny of Crooked Stilo faced difficulties of gang warfare, drugs and alcohol, and criminal elements. They focused on their music as a protection from the shootings and fights that occurred outside of their home. The confrontations between other young immigrants and the police turned into music and the stories of their lives became their lyrics.
CROOKED STILO began to toy with a musical style of their own. They quickly found that their musical interests differed; Victor had always preferred the music of his roots, with lyrics in Spanish while Johnny loved American rap music. Representing their new reality, as Latinos living in Los Angeles, they developed a fusion of their two musical interests.
The brothers combined Latin music that they heard from their parents with the new sounds they encountered in Los Angeles. They brought together: Celia Cruz, Willy Chirino, Los Angeles Negros, Rigo Tovar, Sonora Santanera, Camilo Sesto, Los Hermanos Flores, Orquesta San Vicente, and Los Bukis with NWA, Gangstarr, EPMD, Big Daddy Kane, Mellow Man Ace, Biz Markie, Cypress Hill, ALT, Snoop Dogg, Tupac, and Notorious BIG. They baptized their new style as ‘crooked’ because, “it consists of combining Latin music and contemporary hip hop music,” says Johnny.
After defining their sound and style, CROOKED STILO began its quest towards stardom in 1993. They initially recorded their work independently, sold a good amount of copies, and quickly discovered an underground community for their music and spent a few years at major Latin label Fonovisa Records.
CROOKED STILOS’s popularity in the ‘underground Latino rap’ scene has captured the admiration of their generation.
CROOKED STILO represents the future of the Latin Hip-Hop genre that has arisen from the barrio with songs that paint a true mosaic of the duo’s musical influences.