Bad Bunny: here’s why we like his new album so much
The success of “Debí tirar más fotos”, Bad Bunny’s new album, is surprising in some ways, but in reality it shouldn’t. It is surprising because it is gaining wide acceptance even among unsuspecting listeners, in fact it is very popular even among those who do not chew normally latin and urban. And this allowed the project to unexpectedly jump to the top of the Italian charts too. World rankings are more accustomed to welcoming the successes of the Puerto Rican voice. At the moment, in our country, it is in second position, behind only Gué’s “Tropic of Capricorn”.. Numbers that reinforce the idea of bringing him to play here soon. This high leap, as written, should not be entirely surprising not only because Bad Bunny has been a global superstar for some time now, but above all because, and perhaps this is the most important reason, “Debí tirar más fotos” is an album of asphalt and roots, true, which has nothing plasticky or pre-packaged about it.
There is an authenticity capable of convincing even skeptics. The Latin world is too often simplistically linked to suggestions, to stereotyped ideas that in the sixth album in seven years by Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, this is the singer’s real name, they leave room for maturity and a rich and varied soundanything but obvious. It is not an album for “tourists” of the genre, nor for intransigents or reactionaries. In an era in which urban and Latin music has exploded internationally, risking being diluted in the mainstream chaos and being commodified, Bad Bunny takes a step back and starts again from his places, surrounding himself with the greatest talents of his areas of birth: he could have recruited the Midas kings of the international scene to build a successful, easy and obvious project, and instead he returned to his beloved Puerto Rico, creating an even deeper bond with his community and writing what is in all respects his deepest declaration of love.
In a tense political moment following Donald Trump’s victory and a devastating defeat for the Puerto Rican Independence Party in the 2024 elections, Bad Bunny’s sixth studio album, is a bold letter of artistic and sonic freedom. “Debí tirar más fotos” is studied, cultured, unites several generations of Puerto Rican rhythms, winks at the new and the old school: traditional salsa, plena, bolero and perreo are combined with today’s Latin pop and urban music. Bad Bunny lets hand drums and Afro-indigenous sounds live alongside hypnotic synth lines, embracing the past and the contemporary. The album is more than just a means to make your hips move, it focuses on a sonic sovereignty that coincides with the history of the island, and brings young and old to the dance floor, all united. As if to say: “let’s start again from this union”.
Its release date, on January 5thnot only marked the eve of the “Día de los Reyes” (Day of the Three Kings), but also remembered a week of profound importance for Puerto Ricans, when, after the mid-1800s, the revolutionaries founded the Comité Revolucionario de Puerto Rico during political exile in the Dominican Republic, giving rise to the island’s first armed revolt against Spanish colonial rule. Although the rebellion had been crushed, its cultural and political symbolism had sown the seeds for Puerto Rican identity and independence. In the album, with “Nuevayol”, Bad Bunny launches his “musical revolution” in New York City right where the exiles created the “blue flag”, a symbol of independence. “Debí tirar más fotos” (each song is linked to a piece of the island’s history) is a record which, starting from the land and the road, from its most representative sounds, tells the story of a people and therefore a world. It strikes on a musical and identity level and allows, in just over an hour, to take a magical journey. It is the photograph of how pop can be, in its most profoundly popular sense, too “political”.
