Bad Bunny already warned that the next thing that was coming would be perreo. He left it said in the last song of his previous album, Un previewpublished almost 15 months ago. And this Sunday he fulfilled I SHOULD TAKE MORE PHOTOSan ode to Puerto Rico in every sense, dedicated both to the island where he was born and to the Puerto Rican diaspora. In addition to reggaeton, trap and dembow, which he has already made his own in previous projects, in his sixth studio album the Puerto Rican singer experiments with other purely Puerto Rican and Caribbean sounds, such as salsa, boleros or plena, among others. Drawing on these elements, the artist named Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, 30 years old) invites the listener to get to know him better, to understand the culture in which he grew up and the people that formed him.
The album starts with a version of the iconic salsa A summer in New Yorkby the group Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, published in the seventies. Like the original version, the new song—which mixes salsa sounds with dembow and even a little house— talks about the generations of Puerto Ricans who have had to leave the island in search of new opportunities in cities like New York. “A shot of straw (a type of rum) at Toñita’s house, PR you feel close” Bunny raps, evoking a bar called the Caribbean Social Club, located in Brooklyn, whose owner is María Antonia Cay, better known as Doña Toñita, the matriarch of the Puerto Rican community in the Big Apple.
Emigration, gentrification and forced displacement are themes that are repeated throughout the album, which also, of course, talks about sex, drugs, money and fame (it is Bad Bunny, after all). cape). Although in his previous album, Nobody knows what will happen tomorrowpublished in 2023, Bad Bunny reflected on his career—going from being a Chamaquito from a humble neighborhood to a global superstar in his early twenties and everything that entails—in I SHOULD TAKE MORE PHOTOS goes beyond itself. The singer talks about his island, his people and how much they deserve despite the little they have, and reinforces his political and social commitment to his country.
“I’ve been dreaming about this album for years, dreaming about several songs that seeing them come true fills me with a lot of joy,” Bad Bunny said in a press release about the album. “I have always been honest with the people who follow me, each time I show them more of myself because and in turn I also get to know myself more. This album is the result of experiences that have led me to know myself better, even to know which rhythms I most enjoy singing and creating.
In fact, even before the launch it was known that I SHOULD TAKE MORE PHOTOS It would be about Puerto Rico. In true Bad Bunny style, the singer dropped clues about the project for those who knew how to interpret them. For example, in the video clip for the album’s first single, THE CLUBpublished exactly a month ago, there were several references to the problems facing the island: blackouts, hurricanes, poverty… And during the week before the album came out, before announcing the tracklisthe Bad Rabbit He released coordinates that led to various points in Puerto Rico in which some detail of each song was revealed.
Then, in case there was still any doubt, the artist published a short film on his YouTube page last Friday as a preview of the album. Written and directed by the reggaeton player himself with the Puerto Rican screenwriter, director and producer Ari Maniel Cruz Suárez, in the almost 13-minute film, which bears the same name as the new album, the current gentrification that the island is suffering under its political status is criticized. as a US territory. It proposes a Puerto Rico in the future, in which there are almost no Puerto Ricans left because they have been displaced and Spanish with a Puerto Rican accent has been replaced by English.
The artist returns to it in the song WHAT HAPPENED TO HAWAii. “They want to take away the river and also the beach, they want my neighborhood and they want grandma to leave. No, don’t drop the flag or forget the list. I don’t want them to do to you what happened to Hawaii,” Bunny sings. Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, as was Hawaii before becoming the 50th State of the American Union. With these lines, Bunny positions himself against a repetition with Puerto Rico of what happened with the Kingdom of Hawaii, whose annexation in 1898 by the United States caused the displacement of the native population and the erasure of the native culture.
It is unlikely that Puerto Rico will become the 51st State, since the island has been an unincorporated territory of the United States for more than 120 years without Washington showing any interest in changing it. But even without joining the American union, the island is already experiencing the forced displacement that was experienced in Hawaii in the last century. The island has been filled with Americans in recent years, especially since Hurricane María in 2017. They arrived first as tourists, not needing any type of visa to travel there, and have remained as residents. Their arrival has caused the cost of living to skyrocket on an island where around 40% of people live below the poverty line, compared to the national average of 11% in the rest of the United States. Many of them moved to take advantage of the laws that the Government has enacted to offer tax incentives to those who move to the island.
This gentrification has contributed to a mass exodus of Puerto Ricans to the United States, and currently, there are more Puerto Ricans in the 50 States than on the island itself: it is estimated that there are about 6 million, compared to the 3 million who remain in Puerto Rico. . Bad Bunny also talks about them in WHAT HAPPENED TO HAWAii: “Here no one wanted to leave, those who left dream of returning. If one day he touches me, how much it will hurt me.”
The new album is long, although not as long as some of the previous ones: there are 17 songs that add up to one hour and two minutes. His previous album, Nobody knows what will happen tomorrowhad 22 songs, while A summer without you (2022) y YHLQMDG (2020) were 23 and 20 respectively. I SHOULD TAKE MORE PHOTOS includes collaborations with several Puerto Rican artists of the urban genre such as RaiNao, Omar Courtz or Dei V. But there are also songs with Puerto Rican musicians who may be little known outside of Puerto Rico, but whose music resonates on the island: Chuwi, a band that fuses tropical sounds with jazz or indie rock, and the Pleneros de la Cresta, who play plena, a genre of music, singing and dance originally from Puerto Rico.
Since debuting in 2018 with X 100prehe Bad Rabbit He has released albums every year, except in 2021 and 2024. But even without releasing albums, the singer remains at the top of the music charts: he closed last year being the third most listened to artist in the world on Spotify. The previous year was the second, behind only Taylor Swift, and A summer without you It was the most played album of 2023 on the platform.