As a youngster, Lupillo, his sister Jenni Rivera and the rest of the Rivera family moved to Long Beach California, where Lupillo graduated from Long Beach Polytechnic High School in 1990 (he was in the same graduating class as Snoop Dogg.) Rivera wanted to be a restaurant owner. His father, however, was a recording studio owner. Wanting to give his son a hands-on business experience, Mr. Rivera hired his son Lupillo to work at the studio. Lupillo was given the task of looking for local talent at bars, with the idea that some of that talent could be signed by his father’s company. It was while searching for talent that he met the now deceased Chalino Sánchez, father of Adán Sánchez Also now deceased. Lupillo’s uncle was a semi-famous professional boxer, known as El Toro Rivera to Mexican boxing fans. In 1990, Lupillo discovered that he could sing, and he began performing under the nickname of “El Toro del Corrido” (“The corrido’s bull (r)”), as a homage to his uncle. By 1993, Lupillo began to sing using his own name. By then, he had already signed with Sony Discos. His star began to rise meteorically at that point. In 2001, he was awarded a Premios lo Nuestro. In Juarez, Chihuahua, while he was driving to a concert location, his SUV flipped over. He required hospitalization. Months later, Adán Sánchez, a years-long friend who had grown to admire and become like a little brother to Lupillo, died at the age of nineteen in another car accident, leaving Lupillo Rivera devastated. In 2004, a Marine who died in Iraq had requested for Lupillo to sing at his funeral should the soldier die, and Lupillo complied with the request, leaving one of his famous sombreros on the Marine’s burial casket during the funeral. Rivera has been involved in controversy, tying him romantically to different women. Some women he has been linked to claim to have children from him. On April 29, 2006, he married the mother of one of his daughters.| |
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