PHOTO: Becky G and Natti Natasha kiss on stage at Coachella

Becky G and Natti Natasha kiss on stage at Coachella 2023. 

Friday’s headliner is the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny, the first Spanish-language artist to top the festival’s bill, and, in another first, one of three nonwhite headliners this year: K-pop girl group Blackpink will take the main stage on Saturday night, and international man of mystery Frank Ocean will close out the festival Sunday with his first concert since 2019, and his first area show since 2017.

Friday will feature highly anticipated sets from Gorillaz, Metro Boomin, Burna Boy, the Chemical Brothers, a reunited Blink-182, Wet Leg, Becky G, Yves Tumor, Kaytranada, Blondie, Doechii and many more, plus the usual parade of surprise guest stars (who gets custody of the Weeknd?), and The Times’ Mikael Wood, August Brown, Suzy Exposito, Kenan Draughorne and Vanessa Franko will be roaming the grounds of Indio’s Empire Polo Club, reporting on all the action as it happens.

The 2023 edition of the wildly popular (and lucrative) festival follows a chaotic few years, for Coachella and more broadly for live music. In 2022, both Travis Scott and Kanye West pulled out of planned headline performances, while the 2020 and 2021 editions were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dominican-born Natti Natasha, 36, became the most successful female artist on Billboard’s Latin Rhythm Airplay chart in February with her sensual banger”To’ Esto Es Tuyo,” her 17th song to hit the top 10 on the chart. 

Then there’s Mexican American dynamo Becky G, who recently nabbed a Hot Latin Songs No. 1 with her biting breakup anthem “Mamiii” (a collaboration with Karol G) and a No. 1 album with her sophomore effort “Esquemas.” The 26-year-old joined the cast of “Encanto” to sing “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” at the 2022 Oscars and was honored at Billboard’s Women in Music event in March.

Such infectious girl power creates a notable inflection point for reggaeton, a Latin genre that fuses warm Caribbean rhythms and swaggering rap with a hip-hop sensibility. The genre has traditionally been spearheaded by men: from Daddy Yankee, Tego Calderón and Don Omar in the 2000s, to modern-day stars Bad Bunny, J Balvin and Ozuna.

“It was just a little bit difficult to accept that women also had a point of view when it came to sex, when it came to power, when it came to society, when it came to just expressing themselves in a very raw way,” says Natasha of the lag in female representation in reggaeton.