Bad Bunny's highly anticipated album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (I should have taken more Pictures) has sent shockwaves throughout Latin America and the diaspora, conquering stereos across the hemisphere. It seems the artist has succeeded where Bolívar failed: uniting Latin America through perreo. Despite addressing issues specific to Puerto’s Rico’s current political moment, DtMF has resonated across the region because it deals with issues that are universal to Latin America: displacement, disillusion, and heartbreak, but also fiesta, solidarity, and cultural resistance.
The structure of the album takes the listener through the vaivén (ebbs and flows) of the Puerto Rican nation, starting in the diaspora with the song “NUEVAYoL.” Then, it returns to the island with the songs “VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR,” “CAFé CON RON,” which evokes driving through the winding roads and the lush greenness of the cordillera central, and “PIToRRO DE COCO.” It then leaves the island again with the political and heart-breaking “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii”.
The album is deeply concerned with the life of the Puerto Rican diaspora, a focus that is, unsurprisingly, concentrated on New York City. The first song of the album, “NUEVAYoL,” samples the salsa group el Gran Combo de Puerto Rico's 1975 ode to the Puerto Rican diaspora, “Un Verano en Nueva York.” Bad Bunny, the professional name of Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, reinterprets the song for 2025 with shoutouts to some of the remaining Latino neighborhoods in the city like the Bronx and Washington Heights and famous Nuyorican musicians like Big Pun and Willie Colón. The song’s most significant reference for any young Puerto Rican who has lived in the city is the mention of la casa de Toñita, a Puerto Rican dive bar that has served as one of the last outposts against gentrification in the once working-class boricua Williamsburg.
The incorporation of salsa is a theme throughout the album and is most pronounced in “BAILE INoLVIDABLE.” The song starts out as a typical trap song, echoing songs like "Diles” and "Soy Peor” that made Bad Bunny famous, but then transforms naturally into salsa. But salsa wasn't the only traditional Puerto Rican music included in the artist's latest project. Martínez Ocasio also chose to incorporate elements of bomba and plena in “CAFé CON RON” and “PIToRRO DE COCO.”
Throughout the album, Martinez Ocasio chose to collaborate with Puerto Rican artists, many of whom, like Los Pleneros de la Cresta of the song “CAFé CON RON,” are reviving old genres by discussing contemporary issues in their songs. In addition to Los Pleneros, the album features Chuwi, Dei V, Omar Courtz, RaiNao, and Wisin. The artists span a wide variety of genres and, with the exception of Wisin, are relatively new to the scene. He even collaborated with students from the Escuela Libre de Música on the aforementioned “BAILE INoLVIDABLE.”
Martínez Ocasio did more than just collaborate with the island’s local musical talent. A few days before the album was released, Martínez Ocasio uploaded a short film that he co-directed with the Puerto Rican director Ari Maniel Cruz, director of the critically acclaimed film Antes que cante el gallo (before the rooster calls). The film begins with an image of the mountains of Puerto Rico then descends into a field of banana trees revealing a Puerto Rican flag. Starring the Puerto Rican actor and Oscar-nominated director Jacobo Morales, the film reflects on issues the island is facing by presenting a dystopian future —or present— in which wealthier White Americans from the mainland have displaced Puerto Ricans and asserted their cultural by way of the English language, rising prices, and vegan cheese. While the film is fictional, it accurately captures much of the current reality in which wealthier Americans like youtuber Logan Paul can take advantage of tax breaks on the island to accumulate property and power at the expense of native Puerto Ricans. It's no accident that the main character in the film is a cartoon Sapo Concho (Puerto Rican toad), a species that is currently fighting for survival in the face of extinction.
A unique component of DtMF are the visualizers that accompany the album’s videos on YouTube, with each one addressing a particular moment in Puerto Rican history that's relevant to the song. The visualizers feature events like the creation of the Puerto Rican flag by exiles in New York and the 1868 Grito de Lares uprising against the Spanish, as well as more contemporary issues like Puerto Rico's debt and the effects of recent hurricanes on the island. The visualizers are part of a collaboration with Puerto Rican historian and University of Wisconsin professor Jorrell Meléndez-Badillo. Meléndez-Badillo, author of a recent book on Puerto Rican history that was highly praised for its focus on the contributions of the island’s marginalized communities, had previously written about Bad Bunny’s political significance.
What truly sets the album apart from the rest of the Bad Bunny canon is the fact that its aesthetics and lyrics are explicitly political. The album’s most political song, “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii,” is a subtle reference to the only Puerto Rican film nominated for an Oscar,Jacobo Morales's 1989 Lo que le pasó a Santiago. The chorus of the song laments the dispossession of Puerto Ricans from their land, much like what happened to Hawaii following its annexation to the Unite States. The song invokes a fear of displacement that has taken over the psyche of many Puerto Ricans since the perfect storm of economic crisis, environmental collapse, and favorable tax benefits have brought in a new wave of wealthier U.S. mainlanders who are increasingly treating the island as a colony. This ideology of entitlement and privilege was embodied in the actions of a White woman from Missouri who, in response to being kicked out of a Puerto Rican owned bar in Cabo Rojo on New Year’s Day for disorderly conduct, allegedly set fire to the bar and another Puerto Rican owned business in the town.
Furthermore, the album expresses unrestrained pride in Puerto Rico's history and identity. “LO QUE LE PASÓ a HAWAii” features a solo of the cuatro, Puerto Rico’s guitar-like national instrument, that includes the rhythm of Puerto Rican's national anthem, "La Borinqueña," a song whose original lyrics were composed by Puerto Rican poet and revolutionary Lola Rodríguez de Tió. This reference comes on the heels of the island’s November 2024 election in which, for the first time, the Puerto Rican Independence Party's candidate, Juan Dalmau, came in second place. Dalmau garnered over thirty percent of the vote, an impressive performance for a party that typically receives around 5 percent of the vote. Martínez Ocasio was heavily criticized by the Puerto Rican Right for investing in an ad campaign that targeted Jennifer Gonzalez, the then-candidate and current governor of Puerto Rico from the right-wing, pro-statehood New Progressive Party. The openness of Bad Bunny to take on political positions that make those in power uncomfortable stands in stark contrast to other reggaetoneros like Nicky Jam and Anuel AA who endorsed Donald Trump this election cycle.
Though the album’s focus on Puerto Rico and its political nature could have alienated listeners, it seems the risk is paying off. DtMF will go down in history as one of reggaetón's most unique and inventive albums. Much like Rubén Blades and Willie Colón’s 1978 salsa album Siembra, Bad Bunny's DtMF demonstrates that music is key to telling the history and shaping the present of Latin America and the Caribbean. As the region faces an uncertain future amid the return of the Monroe Doctrine in Trump's foreign policy, DtMF shows us that there is hope as long as we are willing to fight.
Cruz Bonlarron Martínez is a diasporican writer living in la patria grande. His writing on Latin American politics and culture has appeared in various outlets including mitú, Al Jazeera, Jacobin, and TRT Español.
