
With his most recent album release Bad Bunny, also known as Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, displays his love for his heritage and sends a clear message that Puerto Ricans are a unique and resilient people.
As Martinez Ocasio puts out his 6th studio produced album his message cannot be more succinct; «Puerto Rico se respeta» (Puerto Rico demands respect). The album delves into a diverse cross section of Puerto Rican music while telling poignant stories of migration, gentrification, adversity and culture.
The track list includes some familiar songs released in late 2024, while incorporating songs that are slated to become classics among the Puerto Rican and the larger Latine community. Martinez Ocasio illustrates an intentional narrative around gentrification on the islands of Puerto Rico with the albums preview short featuring Jacobo Morales and a fictional animated character named Poncho – an endangered species of Puerto Rican toad to drive home the precarious situation many residents of the island feel with the pressures of a failed government unable to provide health, education and even electrical power for its people. The twelve-minute film demonstrates a Puerto Rico where Puerto Ricans feel unwelcomed in their homeland and are unable to afford basic necessities such as food due to an encroachment of American settlers. While Martinez Ocasio’s depiction may seem hyperbolic, many residents of the archipelago are feeling the immense pressure of rising property values, privatization and lack of public investment.
One of the album’s most poetic tracks titled «lo que le Paso a Hawaii» Martinez Ocasio personifies Puerto Rico and Hawaii as cultures trapped on colonialism. In the song he pleads with Puerto Rico to not allow annexation and privatization of its natural resources as its rivers and beaches. He also highlights Puerto Rico’s incredibly corrupt government, (led currently by Jennifer Gonzalez Colon) as a major factor for a mass exodus to the mainland U.S. due to an inability to deliver the aforementioned public services needed to maintain any society.
The album also taps into key musical disciplines of the Puerto Rican culture which Martinez Ocasio has not overtly delved into such as Bomba, Plena and Salsa while resuscitating familiar reggaetón beats that millennials who grew up in the late 90’s and early 2000’s would not just recognize but embrace.
Overall, the album is truly a love letter not just to Puerto Rican music, but to the people of Puerto Rico and its widespread diaspora. It has a message which is artfully synthesized and clear with its goals.
Mainly, Puerto Rico is unique, its people are resilient, and we will not be replaced.
Rafael Álvarez Febo is the vice president for advocacy and community development at Esperanza.