Most popular music enthusiasts know Down AKA Kilo for his club hit single "Lean Like a Cholo," but this oversized rapper from Southern California, whose alias suggest the weight of his influence within latino hip hop, has been producing massive amounts of heavy hit singles for years now. Down's rise to the top has been a long time coming. Born to migrant workers in Oxnard, California, just north of Los Angeles, Down, whose real name is Juan Martinez, grew up listening to the sounds of urban music in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Cypress Hill, NWA, and Ice Cube, among others. Down AKA Kilo started out small, mixing records, writing raps and making music in the garage studio of a close friend.

Kilo hit the big time when he came out with "Lean Like a Cholo," which had been part of a 2007 album titled Definition of an Ese. However, that record was not his initial entrance into the chicano rap industry. Down AKA Kilo released California Cowboyz in 2003, and although it didnt do nearly as well as Definition of an Ese, it has recently been mined for some of the more club-ready hits after Kilo's name went to the forefront in 2007. California Cowboyz was more of a typical West Coast gangsta rap album than his later work. Featured prominently on the tracks of Cowboyz are real gangsta godfathers like Snoop Dogg, Daz Dillinger and B Real.

Four years later, when Definition of and Ese came out, Snoop, B Real, Butch Cassidy and Nate Dogg were included on a few of the tracks. "Lean Like a Cholo" not only caught on as a song, but the corresponding dance that went along with it spread from California to the East Coast in an elbow-high tidal wave.