
It’s been barely two weeks since Bad Bunny released his new album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS and, at first blush, it’s been dubbed a love letter to Puerto Rico. While I agree with the sentiment, this latest album is so much more. It is a reckoning for all Puerto Ricans and a call to action.
Undoubtedly Benito’s unapologetic representation of what it means to be Puerto Rican has been at the forefront of the album launch. On his promo tour, he embodies Puerto Rican swagger, love, and pride for the island and its culture, and those of us in his fan base swell with pride watching him.
Sin pelos en la lengua he has made it clear whether you understand his lyrics or not, he does not care and he remains unbothered. And we love him all the more for his refusal to assimilate his art or himself.
By comparison, no one is asking Taylor Swift to make Spanish songs to appeal to her millions of Spanish-speaking fans. Despite the fact, that she is considered an icon in Argentina who rivals Messi for Argentina’s adoration. The pop star was left in awe of the shaking roar and welcome she received from her Argentinian fans during her Eras tour and to date, she has not been asked to sing in Spanish.
Bad Bunny’s unabashed confidence and defiance to speak in Spanish during interviews reminds me of my grandmother, who refused to ever learn English despite living in the US for all my life and most of her adult life. She left us never being fluent in English something I will forever be grateful for, because it is thanks to her and my father’s defiance that I am still fluent.
Benito’s noncompliance was on full display on the Jimmy Fallon show with an all-out Puerto Rican parranda wearing a jibaro hat, he filled me with so much pride it is hard to put into words how good it felt for those of us living here in the diaspora. Many of us are still wiping the wounds of a scathing election cycle where Puerto Rico was called garbage.
It feels vindicating to have seen such a display of joy and culture done our way by one of our very own conejito malo. His favorite song on the album had already reached number one in the world that night. A song that will surely serve as medicine for us here in the States for the next four years.
Un baile inolividable is Benito’s favorite song and the most powerful on the album, a song so deep for all the things it says and doesn’t say that it makes me cry every time I hear it. I’m not crying alone; social media feeds are full of fans moved to tears by its lyrics. Its beauty is not only in the classic and beautiful salsa rhythms so familiar, they transport us to the soundtracks of our distant but unforgotten pasts.
The song’s power also lies in its ability to make you think of other relationships that aren’t just romantic. I’ve watched people cry remembering their parents and abuelos, tíos y tías. Those loved ones who taught us the basic salsa moves that we still know today. Transcending language, this song has made people who don’t understand the lyrics cry.
The DtMF song also makes us weep for the ones we’ve lost and all those we miss on the island who feel lost to us by distance. With the familiar sounds of salsa y plena Bad Bunny guides us back to our past, where we visit our difuntos and our Isla in equal measure. Places where we all long to be, all while making us dance and sing lyrics that heal parts of us that we’ve long stopped visiting with joy, and affirming pride while shedding fresh bittersweet tears for deep wounds.
The song’s power to move us to examine and sit with our pain makes this album more than just a love letter; it forces us to reckon with our history, our present and our identity as Boricuas. It is a call to action for all Puerto Ricans on the island and in the diaspora to dig deep and examine our colonial wounds just as Benito has.
NuevaYol, Lo que le pasó a Hawái, y La Mundaza make it crystal clear to me that these songs are an invitation to those on the island to stay and to those of us in the diaspora to come home, for us to fight for our home and most of all, help save our house. It is so clear to me that I marvel at this album’s brilliance and Bad Bunny’s evolution as an artist. Its message is so direct and uncomplicated, this is who you are, this is who we are, this is our home, don’t leave, come home. It makes me wonder if this was the cry of our ancestors too.
La Mudanza starts with Benito sharing the story of his parents and how he came to be. We can all recite a very similar story, especially those of us who are first-generation Boricuas born away from home. I grew up hearing the adults in my life saying the plan is to go back I stopped hearing that as time went on. It has lasted as a whisper in my own heart growing louder for some time now, disillusioned by my life here in the States.
With this album, it’s quickly becoming a full-throated promise to myself and my family that the plan is to go back. How many pieces of art can awaken and inspire such devotion and loyalty? Certainly, not many. This masterpiece, however, has.