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On January 5th, 2025 Bad Bunny released his sixth studio album, ‘DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS’ – which translates to: ‘I Should Have Taken More Photos.’ (Listen on Youtube here).
This album can be described as a love letter to his home, Puerto Rico; through the music, he makes strong political, cultural, and emotional assertions. This sparked a lot of discourse online.
TikToker, ‘HelloTefi,’ said in a video reaction about the album, “Bad Bunny’s new album is truly a work of art… It’s the first time in my life I’m listening to Reggaetón and I’m crying.”
On the track ‘LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAII,’ he speaks about Puerto Rico as if it is a woman. He expresses he does not want to see what happened to Hawaii happen to his home.
Hawaii has gone through many hardships throughout the last few decades with overtourism and colonization of a once native land. These issues have caused natives to beg online for people to not come visit the islands so they can protect their lands.
In the chorus of ‘LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAII’ Bad Bunny sings, “Thеy want to take my river and my beach too / They want my neighborhood and grandma to leave / No, don't let go of the flag nor forget the lelolai / 'Cause I don't want them to do to you what happened to Hawaii.” (Genius used for translations.)
On the track ‘VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR’, which translates to ‘I’m going to take you to Puerto Rico’, Bad Bunny sings about what it means to be in Puerto Rico. He takes the listener through the dancing, partying, and romance of his home.
Toward the end of the song he makes the powerful statement, “This is Puerto Rico, baby /
This is where I was born, and so was reggaetón, just so you know.”
In another song, ‘Turista,’ he sings about heartbreak and a lover leaving, but the track has undertones of denouncing mass tourism.
In the chorus of the song he sings, “In my life, you were a tourist / You only saw the best of me and not how I was suffering / You left without knowing the reason for my wounds, the reason for my wounds / And it wasn't your place to heal them, you came to have a good time/And we had a good time.”
Beyond his music, Bad Bunny also released a short film on Youtube as well that highlights the gentrification of Puerto Rico. (You can watch the film here).
The album cover also has significance in the message of the album. It shows two white plastic chairs, but not just any chairs – Monobloc chairs. These are the most popular and versatile chairs in the world, they are in every country, cheap, and work for indoor or outdoor uses.
Bad Bunny is not the first and will most definitely not be the last artist to use his platform to raise awareness or discuss a topic they are passionate about.
In 1992, Ice Cube released his album ‘The Predator’ which was in direct response to the LA riots that came as a result of the video of Rodney King, a black man, being assaulted by police officers in 1991.
The album touches on the topic of racial tensions and violence in America through tracks like, ‘When Will They Shoot,’ ‘Check Yo Self,’ and ‘It Was a Good Day.’
Marvin Gaye released one of his most famous albums of all time,‘What's Going On,” in 1971 which highlighted the effects of the Vietnam War.
U2’s 1983 album ‘War,’ Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born In the U.S.A’, Eminem’s ‘8 Mile,’ and Dr. Dre’s ‘The Chronic,’ are a few examples of artists talking about different cultures, classes, races, and upbringings in their albums.
I encourage everyone who reads this blog to take a moment to listen to one of these albums I mentioned. Not only are they artistically done lyrically and musically, but being educated through music is also an important part of the craft.
Music is art, and art has meaning.
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