Instead, on May 1, 2019, Louie — whose real name is Luis Alfonso Palacios II — sat inside the confines of the Texas State Penitentiary John Middleton Unit, where he was imprisoned on drug-related charges. The weight of his reality finally came crashing down as Cardi B was presented with the Top Hot 100 Song award.
On the stage presenting the award stood Becky G, with whom Louie had shared a management company in 2009. Both artists were poised for stardom, but while Becky G sparkled in a fitted gown standing on the MGM Grand Garden Arena’s stage, Louie sat in a white cotton pullover shirt tucked into white elastic pants and watched, mouth agape.
When the show broke to commercials, reality had another blow for the inmate. Louie lost his mind as he watched Leon Bridges, whose first time on stage was as a backup singer to Louie in 2011 at the House of Blues, revel in his celebrity status as he took centerstage in a commercial. Louie drowned in emotion as he got in line to use the phone and called his mother. They wept together.
“That was the day it hit me like, ‘Dude, you lost your career. You lost your shot. You missed it. That was it,’” Louie says.
This day is cemented in the country singer’s mind, but so is Oct. 31, 2023.
Louie TheSinger officially signed with UMG Nashville on Halloween, three years after his prison release.
“I think that Louie is going to be the future of country music,” UMG Nashville CEO Cindy Mabe said on Instagram. “I think he is going to walk right through the front door and he’s going to change everything and how wide this format is and I cannot be more proud to be part of this.”
For Louie, music isn’t just a career. It’s a lifeline. Music is all he’s ever had, even when he didn’t have music.
“It started with a diaper. I ran around the house with a diaper, a cowboy hat, and some boots and a guitar,” he says.
Louie recalls the artists in the musical melting pot disrupting country music and influencing his future sound. Garth Brooks smashing a guitar on stage at Reunion Arena in 1991 is a core image for the 33-year-old artist. Jamie Foxx is his favorite vocalist. Frankie J, Selena, George Strait and Michael Jackson were landmarks in the musical topography of his youth.
On paper, Louie’s story can be divided into three parts. Part one is R&B. That time is plagued by hardship and drugs.
“R&B was my first love,” Louie says. “I just felt so attached to it. I grew up on it.”
Louie’s jumping board into music began on the road, literally on the side of a highway.
On Nov. 11, 2007, music executive Lorenzo Zenteno, known as Smoothvega, picked up Louie off the side of State Highway 121. The green 1988 Cadillac pulled up next to the 17-year-old with the stern raspy voice. Zenteno had long been told he needed to hear this kid Louie, so he told the teen to get into the car.
Zenteno is Louie’s current manager. It started that night they went to Zenteno's house and sat talking for a few hours. That night, Louie showcased his talent by singing Jeremy Passion’s “Lemonade.” That night would becoming a fateful one, setting the foundation for a 16-year brotherhood that has followed Louie’s career and evolution from boy to man, from aspiring singer to signed artist.
But in 2018, Louie’s troubled youth caught up to him. He was sentenced to two years in prison after he started selling drugs. When he emerged as an artist again, he could no longer mask who he was for an industry that tried to control his image and output. As a heavily tattooed Mexican-American, he says he was was told time and time again he didn't "fit the mold" of a country singer.
“Most of my career, I felt like I've had to put on this character because I was told by people in the industry early on, ‘This is who you are as an artist,’ and that works for maybe industrial plants, that doesn't work for somebody that's really real,” Louie says. “My songs are about me. My songs are about the things I've been through, so I don't need to turn on, turn off anything. I just need to be me full time. And you can't pay for that.”
The transition into country music was not planned.
“I never, with intentions, went to the studio to write a country song, or have it come out sounding country,” Louie says.
Louie’s lyricism is raw, unfiltered and gut-wrenching. Friends dub him "the Lil Wayne of country music." The recording booth is his sanctuary, a sacred space where he can reveal his scars. It is his confessional.
“He's making music that the man version of him would make,” Zenteno says. “The things that he’s talking about now are things that only someone that has experienced life can talk about.”
Louie sings openly about his time in prison, his mother, heartbreak, drugs and alcohol, depression, suicide, grief and criticism over his legitimacy as a country artist.
A pillar of Louie’s success is social media. He has amassed a following of 700,000 on Facebook, 158,000 on Instagram and 707,700 on TikTok. The emotional vulnerability in Louie's songwriting resonates with his audience organically. He's turned stray social media followers into a solid, loyal following. And he's generated rapid growth for his music by doing so.
According to this year’s Spotify Wrapped, Louie has had 8.1 million streams over 743,200 listeners in 171 countries. He successfully traveled the country on an independent tour selling out shows in Colorado, New Mexico, California, Arizona and Texas. Packed audiences of loyal fans sang his songs word by word.
“It started with a diaper. I ran around the house with a diaper, a cowboy hat, and some boots and a guitar." – Louie TheSinger
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“I am vulnerable,” Louie says. “I did open myself, but I didn't do that to get a following. I did that because I was pissed at the world. I wrote multiple songs because I was mad at life.”
When Louie released “Alcoholic,” his comments were filled with others self-identifying as such. When he sang the lyric, “Even my mama can’t stand the sight of my face” in “Just Be Me,” people sounded off saying “Mine neither!” When he released “Sending Me Back” fans found comfort among each other as they shared stories about incarcerated loved ones.
“I don't feel like I'm a voice for the people, I am one of the people,” the singer says.
Louie’s evolution wasn’t solely musical. The artist's looks also took on a full transformation.
“A lot of us, 80% of us, grow up and put on them boots, put on a hat and we look just like our dads and uncles, that's just it,” he says.
After prison, Louie traded in his white getup for an aesthetic that was reflective of his proud Texas roots. Today, Louie’s fashion staples are a pair of Rock Revival jeans, an opened leather button-up with pearl snaps and a muscle shirt underneath, gold chains and visible tattoos. He complements his apparel with a nice cowboy hat, hanging low enough to cover his eyes, but high enough for him to see what's going on. The final touch is a pair of Lucchese cowboy boots. Fans and critics are still vocal about his aesthetic, about how he doesn't look like a country singer. He gets a lot of "you look like a criminal" and other bits of criticism for breaking what's perceived as country tradition.
“When people see me, anybody that hates, they're not hating because they think it's a lie; they're hating because they're scared that it's real,” Louie says. “They're intimidated. They don't like it. They're like, 'Holy shit. This is a real guy. This is real.'”
Louie has utilized social media effectively, shifted genres, embraced his wounds and grown into his identity. Now, for the next part of his journey, he’s trailblazing into country music as a one-of-one artist.
“We're not trying to be Mexican American as a marketing scheme, we're Mexican Americans,” Zenteno says. “This has been our time more than ever; the culture, it's just booming. Everything is clicking for the culture and there's just no representation in country music like Louie. It's just the right time.”
And now he’s backed by the UMG Nashville powerhouse. Louie joins a star-studded roster that includes Brad Paisley, Brothers Osborne, Alan Jackson, Carrie Underwood and Darius Rucker.
“I am so inspired by Louie's energy, purpose, and intention to expand the sound of country music through his own personal story and his songs,” Mabe said in a press release. “I am so proud to bring Louie into the Universal Music Group Nashville family!”
With a big record label backing him, it's all gas, no breaks for the rising star.
“Now that I have the major deal, I don't want to stop,” Louie says. “I want to go harder. I don't want to just make music, I want to make my mark in music.”
