#NewMusicFriday: January 10, 2025

After bemoaning last Friday’s dearth of notable new releases, I was pleasantly surprised when Bad Bunny released his latest album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, on Sunday, the 6th — just in time for Three Kings Day, a holiday enthusiastically celebrated throughout Bad Bunny’s home island of Puerto Rico.

Typically associated with reggaetón and Latin trap music, Bad Bunny infuses his latest album with more traditional Puerto Rican rhythms and musical styles and punctuates the work with that greatest of all African-Caribbean-American fusions: salsa. “NUEVAYoL” opens the album like something from the wonderful Fania catalog — horn section blaring over furious percussion. Andy Montañez, of the treasured Puerto Rican ensemble El Gran Combo, takes the chorus:

Si te quieres diverter con encanto y con primor
Solo tienes que vivir un verano en Nueva York

These are lines, musical and lyrical, pulled straight from El Gran Combo’s “Un Verano en Nueva York,” a scorching summertime anthem from the band’s classic 1975 album, 7, uncountable copies of which could be found in corners of housing projects, backyard barbecues, and abuelos’ salas. But this is not so much a celebration of New York or even life in the United States as it is a vow to return home.

Bad Bunny now:

Ey, ey, ey 4 de julio, Fourth of July
Ando con mi primo barracho, rulay
Los mío en El Bronx saben que hay
Con la nota en high por Washington Heights—
Willie Colon—me dicen “El Malo,” ey

Later, he poses the question, “How’s Bad Bunny going to be the King of Pop,” to which he answers: “With reggaetón and dembow, yeah, with reggaetón and dembow.”

If you question his right to the crown, consider that the 18.5 billion streams he garnered in 2022 made him Spotify’s top artist for the third consecutive year (a spot he ceded to Taylor Swift in both 2023 and 2024). I oppose many of the streaming service’s practices, especially despising its advancement of so-called “Perfect Fit Content” — in her eye-opening Harper’s piece, “The Ghosts in the Machine,” journalist Liz Pelly refers to PFC as “indisputable proof that Spotify rigged its system against musicians who knew their worth” — but the numbers are informative and, in Bad Bunny’s case, undeniably impressive.

It seems almost silly, but the simplest way to put this is that I feel immensely proud of Bad Bunny and honored to share some history with him. Many will be seduced into calling the album a political statement, a love letter, a tribute, a response to this present moment, a monument to other times or something similarly neat and unfortunately narrow, but, as is true for much great art, Debí Tirar Más Fotos is all these things and isn’t easily categorized.

In addition to the album itself, each of its 17 tracks is accompanied by a visualizer — a computer-generated animation designed to complement or enhance a work of music — that, in this case, explores elements of Puerto Rican history and culture. As reported by the LA Times, Bad Bunny worked with Professor Jorell Meléndez-Badillo of the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create the historical snapshots. The visualizer for “NUEVAYoL,” which describes the creation of the Puerto Rican flag by revolutionary exiles in New York, has ~~8.2 million as I type these words 8.3 million views as I type on Wednesday morning~~ 12 million views as I edit on Friday morning.

The texts are written in Spanish only, which, like the music of the album, does not eagerly bow to unsympathetic listeners. (I do not read Spanish, but I will consume these lessons as enthusiastically as I’ve devoured the music.)

There is also a short film that shares the album’s title and may be its most literal representation. In it, a Puerto Rican man, portrayed by 90-year-old filmmaker Jacobo Morales, reflects on life, admitting to his friend (an animated el sapo concho, the Puerto Rican crested toad, an indigenous species in danger of extinction due to habitat loss) that he wishes he had taken more photos, that he should have loved more while he could. The 12-minute film is by turns heartbreaking, heartwarming, hilarious, and powerful. It made a puddle of me as I reflected on the rapid gentrification of my family’s hometown and of my grandparents’ decision to sell their remaining land.

The island my cousins and I knew as kids, the one that welcomed us back as teens, that wrapped its arms around us as adults, that fed our children is no longer there.

Moments throughout Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos feel to me like a childhood — another brutal summer in Newark to be temporarily escaped with my cousins in Puerto Rico, where, in preparation for something colder, harder, and far less magical, we will be fortified by salsa, pastelillos, sandcastles, and old stories.

Read the New York Times interview.

Also, this is fun: When you have a chance, compare Bad Bunny’s “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” to Hector Lavoe’s sweeping “Periódico de Ayer,” from the 1975 Fania release De Ti Depende, while reflecting on Bad Bunny’s surprise appearance as an anchor on Tuesday’s edition of “NotiCentro Al Amanecer,” Puerto Rico’s leading morning news program.

And, if you’re still interested, watch the new video for “BAILE INoLVIDABLE,” which has Bad Bunny’s character struggling at a salsa lesson and again features Jacobo Morales.