Welcome to a new corner of Platea, Primera Persona. In this section, we explore reflections deeply connected to Puerto Rico, the kind that give you a warm flutter in your chest.
With the clearly stellar launch of Debí tirar más fotos (DtMF), his sixth studio album, Bad Bunny seems to have reaffirmed his standing as the defining voice of Puerto Rican music in the 21st century.
The man who was once a bagger and stock clerk, now a superstar of urban music, is today synonymous with Puerto Rico around the world, and with this latest musical offering, the artist from Vega Baja has solidified his place as an undisputed opinion leader both on the Island and abroad.
An artist? What do you mean, an artist?
Yes, Bad Bunny is an artist, and DtMF is his clearest example of that. Beyond catapulting to the top of music charts around the world, and in keeping with his author's increasingly forceful forays into our regional political situation, this album prompts introspection and difficult questions for anyone who listens to it, as any work of comparable political and social character does.
And play one of my songs the day they bring Hostos back In the casket, the light blue flag And let them remember it was always me, always Benito
🎶 Lyrics: LA MuDANZA
Beyond its initial premise, the album broadly demonstrates the narrative and lyrical depth of the Vega Baja native, as well as a narrative cohesion that evolves and builds on the endearing but sometimes disjointed charisma of earlier projects such as X100PRE and El último tour del mundo.
Debí tirar más fotos, as a complete work, surpasses the highest emotional peaks in Bad Bunny's discography, yes, even those of Un verano sin ti, because more than any of his previous projects, this is the one in which Bad Bunny seems to have solidified his ideological voice, the one that previously appeared only tentatively (though we already knew it was there), but today reaches its fullest expression.
Nobody wanted to leave, and whoever left dreams of coming back If my turn ever came, it would hurt me so much Another jíbara fighting, one who didn't give in She didn't want to leave either and stayed on the Island
🎶 Lyrics: LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii
Many Puerto Ricans and Latin Americans who have no sympathy for him struggle to understand how Benito Martínez Ocasio has become such a ubiquitous figure in our contemporary popular culture. For their benefit, I will try to offer an explanation.
To understand the unavoidable phenomenon that is Bad Bunny, you need to understand the time and place in which he grew up, and his original fan base: the Puerto Rican youth raised at the turn of the century who have carried him on their shoulders since his beginnings as a teenage trap artist on Soundcloud.
A night in Maya in 2018
My first face-to-face encounter with Bad Bunny happened when I was 18, at a Yellow Halloween event in Mayagüez. At the time, buzzing with excitement, I packed into a narrow street in the town with a friend and hundreds of other people, hoping to catch a glimpse, on a tiny stage in the distance, of the trap artist whose "Chambea, jala" everyone was chanting and that my friends couldn't get out of their mouths.
The road to DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
X 100PRE
2018
Oasis
2019
YHLQMDLG
2020
Las Que No Iban a Salir
2020
El Último Tour Del Mundo
2020
Un Verano Sin Ti
2022
Nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana
2023
Debí Tirar Más Fotos
2024
It was a futile effort. As those first trumpet notes, now so recognizable, began to thunder, the crowd around me surged in such a way that we both got swept out in search of somewhere safe where we could breathe again.
Trapped there for the rest of the show inside an uncomfortable bar, I remember wondering how it was possible to have been subject to such a force of nature.
This generation, my contemporaries, were no strangers to the new promises of Latin trap. It is worth noting that, alongside Bad Bunny, a string of similar artists debuted at the same time, among them Anuel AA, Ozuna, Bryant Myers and Farruko.
All of them, along with many others not mentioned here, reached varying levels of success in both the local and international markets, carried by the wave of growth that urban music generated in the second decade of the 2010s. None, however, achieved as many milestones as El Conejo Malo.
In my view, this comes down to three factors: his versatility, his activism and his universality.
Ian Acevedo is an independent communicator and consultant in training, with experience in the Puerto Rican music scene, currently based in Madrid.
Cover photo: @badbunnypr, Instagram / Paras Griffin, Getty
This content was translated with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
