Bad Bunny's 'Debí Tirar Más Fotos,' Explained
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From NPR Music, this is Alt Latino. I'm Felix Contreras. And I'm Ana Maria Sayer. Let the chisme begin. And this week, boy oh boy, Felix, do we have a lot to discuss. We have so much that we also have NPR reporter Isabella Gomez-Sarrimiento, friend of the show, with us. Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio-Cortez.

better known as Bad Bunny, released an album this week. So yes, it was Christmas all over again for me and Isa and maybe even you, Felix. I don't know.

It was a high moment. Isa, please back me up. This album is pretty freaking incredible, no? It was revolutionary, I would say, just to put it lightly. That's maybe the one word I would use. Just to be casual about it. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so name of the album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos. It was released on January 5th. That's three days ago now from when this is coming out. And it's making a massive splash, not only in the music world, but on the island across Latin America. A lot of my friends...

who are of my age, they've noticed the name, they're music fans, and they recognize the name, and they recognize that he's a big deal. But they didn't know a lot about him and his background. So they didn't have the context for why this is such a significant record. Ana Filicin, give us the background for who this guy is. Okay, wow. Let me run it down in 30 seconds. So Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, he was born in Puerto Rico. He's 30 years old. This is his sixth son.

studio album. He's a global superstar, one of the biggest in the world. Last year, he was the third most streamed artist on Spotify. He's always been politically involved in so far as he talks about issues in Puerto Rico that matter to him in certain moments, the blackouts, the culture, the beaches, but

Six years ago, he got involved in a really hands-on way. He rallied for the removal of Governor Ricardo Rosselló successfully. This past election, he once again took to the streets, speaking out against the PNP. Just two months later, here he is releasing his arguably most political, personal, sonically ambitious, and controversial

Can I officially say it? His best album yet. That is a hot take. Ana, what track stands out to you right now and why? Just pick one and then we're going to play a little bit so people can hear the record. I'm just going to go with the literal opening banger of the album, Nueva York. Nueva York! Nueva York!

Just for reference sake, that sample track at the beginning is from a band called El Gran Combo, which is a Puerto Rican salsa institution. It's a release from 1975 and it's called Un Verano en Nueva York. And who doesn't have a primo en Nueva York that they're going to go have a good summer with? I mean, everything about this is just...

exactly reinforces what to me are kind of the two very shining clear theses of this record. One is

Bad Bunny asking us to imagine a Puerto Rico sin puertorriqueños. And two, which is very much supported by this song in particular, it's this real embracing of the diaspora. That means Puerto Ricans both on the island and that have left the island, which they are leaving in increasingly large numbers. This was something that we kind of expected. He did say that this is for Puerto

all the Puerto Ricans on the island and throughout the world. And this is something that has become

increasingly a conversation, I think, across Latin America and Latin music. And this very much felt like a definitive statement from effectively the most visible artist in Latin music saying, hey, if you're part of a Latin, some Latin American country's diaspora, if you have lineage that involves a Latin American country, you are part of this community. And we're calling on you now to participate in our issues. That to me is just like,

As much of a banger as the song actually is, message-wise, he really does not hold back. I think this is such a strong opening statement because immediately he presents so many of the points that he's going to hone in throughout the album. Like, musically, he's mixing Dembow with this salsa song. He's calling to the Nuyorican history of Puerto Ricans in New York. Specifically, he mentions...

the last Puerto Rican social club in Williamsburg, Toñitas. So he's already sort of hinting at these conversations of gentrification for Puerto Rican communities on and off the island that we're going to hear about later in the album. And he's also just showing that he's here to have a really, really good time while also capturing a historical record. That again ties back to that title, right? Debí tirar más fotos. It's an album about memory. It's an album about celebration. But I think it's also an album about...

sadness and about what we're leaving behind in the past. And the fact that he manages to do that in something that's so incredibly fun from the get-go lets you know that, like you said, Ana, this is unlike any Bad Bunny album we've ever heard before, I think. Having listened to and paid attention to music for pretty much most of my life and then really delving into Latin music

He's unprecedented. There is no equal to his influence and his popularity. And a lot of it has to do with, you know, the changes in technology and being able to get music out to as many people as possible to put out these messages, these kind of messages that I look for in people like Ruben Blades

going back to, you know, Victor Jara and Chila in the 70s, even Bob Dylan, who's having a moment right now. I'm like, that's what I hear in his stuff. That's what I really admire and respect. It's mind-boggling. I do have these moments where I sit here and I listen to a new Bad Bunny record and I feel lucky to exist in the era of Bad Bunny and to be young in the era of Bad Bunny. Truly, you know, like this is the type of record that makes me feel like,

Wow, he's out here actually changing things. For me personally, as a young Latino, right, as a young Latina point blank, to feel so seen and represented and understood, it does make you feel like you're part of something meaningful. All right, let's continue. Let's hear some music. Let's choose one song and let's really break it down into what we're actually hearing because there's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of elements. We want to just kind of get into the DNA of what he's doing.

Ana, pick a song. Which one? Baile Inolvidable. I've had this one on repeat. What we're hearing is like just straight ahead salsa music.

That could have been from the 70s. It could be from Spanish Harlem Orchestra, like last year, the album that we featured on Best of the Year. Like it's just, there's a tradition. All the horns, the percussion, the rhythm, the mumble, all that stuff. And you know, when I heard it the first time, I was like,

I heard his voice. I grew up with, you know, Ruben Blais, Hector Lavoe, Celia Cruz. And at first, I'm like, wow, that's a bit of a challenge for me. But you know what? His voice? His voice. ♪

But after listening to that again, it's like any other musician that I respect. They're immersing themselves in it. It's not an appropriation, it's an immersion and what he brings to it. And if it's not like something that people hold to a certain standard...

He doesn't care. That's what's so great about it. I'm getting used to it. I love that because I think like one of the first things that made Bad Bunny as popular as he was, was his voice. Like before he was, before anyone was talking about his political messaging, when he was just making straight up trap, like what everyone was so captivated by was that very deep baritone voice.

So I think it makes sense that he kept his signature voice even if it feels jarring against these more traditional salsa sounds. He's very rooted in what he sounds like and who he is even when he's branching out to try something completely unexpected for an artist like Bad Bunny.

I think a good, maybe even a great contemporary artist blends traditional sounds in a way that it kind of feels like they're feeding you your vegetables in a really subtle way. Like they're like, hey, it would be really cool to incorporate X, Y, and Z sound that my grandparents used to listen to. And I'm going to try to bring that into my music. And that's great. And that's cool. And I love that.

The absolute ingenuity to me of this record is it feels so natural to him. Like in this moment, listening to the song, I was like, oh, Bad Bunny's been doing salsa the whole time, right? That voice is like, it's still to this day, it grips me like nothing else. The most effective uses, I think, of traditional sound have been using these sounds that were created to communicate pain and

Like, you think about a really good bolero. People have been expressing heartbreak for two, three centuries with this. He does it so, so, so well on this record. And he does the jilted lover thing, heartbroken voice, to talk about how his country has been hurt.

He does it again and again and again and again in a way that feels so real. After thinking about it and walking around with it on earbuds for a while, the president for me on this thing is Ruben Albaran from Café Tacuba. I remember the first time I heard him sing over some Son Jarocho. I'm like, oh my God, like it does not go together at all, right? Because he stylized. No, he stylized his voice, his whole approach, that whole band, bafflingly.

But then like, oh, OK, I get it. I see what they're doing. If you're going to have a certain amount of vocal quality, going back to Bob Dylan. OK, again, right? We saw Raul Alejandro do a salsa album just a couple of months ago. But I think the difference with something like that is it's Raul Alejandro completely adapting himself to another genre and to another sound. I think what stood out to me so much about this song is that it's

like you could put any other backing sound behind this and it would still sound like a Bad Bunny song because Bad Bunny is being fully himself and Bad Bunny is singing fully in the way that we're used to hearing him sing. He just picked instrumentation that's like completely new for his sound and that's what makes it feel like it's like a step forward for salsa as a genre. I'm going to be curious to listen for some of my uh

my age-appropriate compatriots and see what their take is, because that is a straight-ahead salsa banger, man, and his voice on top of it. I'm there for it, as the kids say. We should let him know, Felix, that you're about it. You approve.

are just some of the podcasts you can enjoy sponsor-free with NPR+. Get all sorts of perks across more than 20 podcasts with the bundle option. Learn more at plus.npr.org. You're listening to Alt Latino. We're talking about the new Bad Bunny record, Debbie, Tirar Mas Fotos. And we just finished talking about the song, Maile Inovidable, Unforgettable Dance. We talked about the music for a minute. Let's talk about the lyrics first.

Ana, pick a song that has some lyrics that you think stand out. A really natural one here is Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii.

Musically, it's very sparse. There's just a weirdo. There's some nice little bass part, keyboard part. But the lyrics are very profound. There's a lot going on. Let's start with the title. Translate the title, and then what is he singing about? This.

This is one of Bad Bunny's maybe most overtly political songs I can think of since El Apagón. This translates to What Happened to Hawaii, which a Hawaii comparison might seem bizarre, but for anyone who knows a little bit more about Puerto Rico and what their status is, they're effectively a colony at this moment of the United States. They don't have statehood and they aren't independent from the United States, which is where Hawaii was founded.

over half a century ago. Bad Bunny is suggesting that Hawaii in this song lost a lot of who they were in the process of becoming a state of the United States. Ana, describe a little bit about all of these factors, independence versus statehood versus...

Stay in a colony. The two reigning parties in Puerto Rico have been asking either for statehood or to remain a colony, to remain basically with the status quo. It's the third party that is...

a combination of the Independence Party and the Social Issues Party that came together this past election and won actually the second highest percentage of the votes. And this is the party that Bad Bunny and so many other Puerto Rican artists were very strongly advocating for in the days leading up to the election.

In recent years, there's been pretty dramatic increases in both young people leaving the island and gentrification increasing on the island. And the combination of those two factors has created a pretty pervasive fear, especially in more progressive circles around this idea that there might actually be one day a Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans.

♪

Yeah, I think this is a really interesting song because it really connects the dots lyrically between the natural disasters, the cultural extinction that Hawaii has experienced, even though it is a state of the United States.

And similarly, the cultural disasters, you know, Hurricane Maria that Puerto Rico has experienced, like Ana mentioned, the way that so many young people are having to leave the island, the way that the island is rapidly becoming gentrified because of tax incentives that motivate Americans to move to Puerto Rico. Life becomes cheaper for Americans in Puerto Rico while it becomes more expensive for the islanders. And I just want to quote a little bit. You know, he personifies Puerto Rico early on as a woman, and he says...

Ella se ve bonita aunque a veces le vaya mal. En los ojos una sonrisa aguantándose llorar. Like basically saying, the island still looks beautiful even though things are headed in a bad direction. She's smiling with tears in her eyes. She looks like she wants to cry. So it's definitely a song that's really...

nostalgic and sad because he's trying to capture this change that the island is going through and trying to identify how he can, how he or how young Puerto Ricans in general can reverse this trend. His last record, Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va A Pasar Mañana, was about him being a superstar in L.A., right? And in this song, he's really tackling the reality of like, he didn't want to leave Puerto Rico. Nobody who leaves their home country wants to leave Puerto

they're doing that because of extenuating circumstances that have pushed them to do so. So, like, he says, Like, no one wanted to leave, and whoever leaves is dreaming of coming back. If one day I have to, it's going to hurt me so bad. I think he's also referencing that within himself and within his career, he got...

so much pushback almost for moving to L.A., for sort of immersing himself in this superstar lifestyle. And this is a song where he's really reclaiming his place as the man of the people in Puerto Rico and as someone whose number one focus is the island, even when he spent time away from it. And reality actually backs all of that up when you consider that the country's power grid failed on New Year's Eve and the entire island was completely blacked out because of the political mess that exists on the island.

He does describe driving around, conceptualizing this record, having just returned home to the island and feeling sad. Things are crumbling in certain ways and I would rather live that out with my people and the beauty of it and the pain of it than be anywhere else. Like that is how much I love who I am and where I'm from. Which leads us to another great song, Turista. ♪

♪ Tú solo viste lo mejor de mí ♪ ♪ Y no lo que yo sufría ♪ ♪ Te fuiste sin saber el porqué ♪ ♪ El porqué de mi herida ♪ ♪ Y no te tocó a ti curarla ♪ ♪ Viniste a pasarla bien ♪ ♪ Y la pasamos bien ♪ ♪ Una foto bonita ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

Stake through the heart right there. That line kills me every time. Did you even care? Is everything that this song feels like. There's no better Bad Bunny than Sad Bunny. And especially when Sad Bunny is like, you broke my heart in the same way that tourists mess up my island. I heard this song and I was like,

Are we talking about Kendall? Can I ask the question? Oh my god. Regardless of which girlfriend it is about, I think this song really draws home

The poetic way in which Bad Bunny is always able to blend personal heartbreak with larger political disillusionment. Illustrating heartbreak as a tourist who only sees the beautiful parts of Puerto Rico and then leaves and doesn't have to stay to grapple. Like, you're not there for all the hard parts. You're not there for the real struggle that people who live there endure. And sort of creating a parallel between that and between just someone who

dances in and out of your life without real regard for your feelings with like this like soft guatro plucking behind when he's doing his little falsetto I have no more words for that actually a 30 year old bad bunny after you know six albums has seen the world and come back we've seen different eras of him now the one who doesn't ride fast enough and the one who's you know

his old trap self and then we see this and this to me is a grown-up Benito he's hit that point in his life where he's like hey I'll be over in the corner playing dominoes with my grandpa and like you know referring to the fact that his brother has a kid and his friend has a kid and he's like no we're we're grown now and and we kind of are realizing what matters to us and I'm realizing what matters to me which is the most human experience ever

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You're listening to Alt Latino, and we're talking about Bad Bunny's brand new album, De Vi Tirar Más Fotos. I'm here with Felix Contreras and Isabel Gomez-Armiento. Can I nerd out a little bit? So let's start with the track Café Con Rón. What we're hearing is a traditional plena, and what that is, it's heavy percussion, very stylized drums. It's a traditional dance music. It's the music of the working class, the jíbaros, the country people.

something that developed in the early 20th century. And it's something, it's a tradition that is still very active and very popular, again, as a way for folks on the island to reconnect to their roots, to reconnect to who they are. Let's hear a little bit of that song. And it was recorded with the group called Los Planeros de la Cresta. So we're going to hear Café con Ron, and then we're going to listen to the band's more traditional approach. Por la mañana, café.

Por la mañana café, por la tarde ron, ya estamos en la calle, sal de tu balcón.

♪

Now let's hear the band Los Pleneros de la Cresta. This is a sample of their music and it's called Resistencia. Resistance. Resistencia bajo la ceiba ancestral. ♪

Okay, so now you can hear the tradition that he's drawing on and also the band that he chose to do it with. So Los Penales de la Cresta, NPR national correspondent Adrian Florido introduced me to them a couple of years ago when he was reporting from Puerto Rico and he was like,

They are a group of young guys who are specifically focused on making traditional music because they want to keep plena and that tradition of Puerto Rican music alive on the island. As reggaeton and as urbano sort of becomes the mainstream, they want to hold on to those roots. So I think Bad Bunny bringing them on is very intentional as it shows that

who he sees as keepers of the culture and how he wants to put them forth on this project where he's also trying to sort of emulate the same thing. Yeah, these guys actually met a couple years ago literally in college. They were at the University of Puerto Rico and they kind of made it their mandate to really do this kind of preservation and they're actually one of...

Many. I mean, you go to the island and you see a lot of young people playing bomba y plena, playing in the streets, trying to very much make sure that the culture is kept well, kept safe, and something that is seen on the island.

and something that is taken care of. He's one of many Puerto Rican artists who are very adamantly, very forcefully preserving tradition. Someone recently made a comment on the creativity and the talent per capita of people in Puerto Rico, and I think that a lot of that really does just have to do with the necessity around cultural preservation and how that lives in the music.

Okay, we're going to go to the next track. This is called Pitorro de Coco. Check it out. Then we'll hear an original. PITORRO DE COCO

Feliz año nuevo, pero no tan feliz Te dieron un beso a las doce Y no fui yo quien te lo di Hace un año que yo estuve ahí Hace un año que yo estuve ahí Hace un año tu primer abrazo Fue solo pa' mí Me tenías en las nubes Y como un rayo caí Y ahora Ni una llamada

♪♪

I'm going to play something from this band called Echos de Borinquen. It's a traditional band. It's a folkloric band from the album. And this is a folk group, and it features two Puerto Rican cuatros, a six-string guitar, a guiro, and a bongo. It's very, very traditional. This is called El Alma de Puerto Rico from the group Echos de Borinquen. And you can hear where Bad Bunny's getting his inspiration from. ♪

God bless my flag of my homeland, my heart

Before we move on, I just want to note that the Smithsonian Folkways record label, if you're interested in knowing more about traditional Puerto Rican music, they've done an amazing job of recording contemporary bands and even some historical music that has all of this stuff with great liner notes. Pitorro de Coco features an interpolation of a song by Chuituel de Bagamon, who was a very...

important musico jibaro, and he was a sugar cane field worker. So I think it also sort of illustrates this pivot that Bad Bunny is trying to make between not just urban music, but also recentering the rural music of the mid-20th century in Puerto Rico. There is a precedent for this. I mean, going back to, what is it, 1988, Los Lobos released La Pistola y el Corazon. It was right after they had this huge success

They didn't want to become the La Bamba band, so they went totally folkloric. And it was a huge, huge hit. All acoustic instruments, very much like what we're hearing on some of the Bad Bunny record. So there is a precedent of somebody just sort of pivoting and going back into the roots and having success at it. Right.

It doesn't feel like a full pivot to something completely out of his lane. Like he very much still has some of his more classic Bad Bunny tinged reggaeton bangers. He pulls on some of the newer, younger voices on the island who are doing reggaeton. He also pulls a couple collaborators that I'm very excited about. We've talked about some of them a couple times on this show. I want to play one of the tracks that

That was a collaboration with a band called Chuy and the song is called "Wilpita".

♪

He does this really beautiful thing on each of these collaborative tracks where he very much transfigures, transmits actually the style and the energy of whoever he's collaborating with. I've seen a lot of people say, you know, it feels awful.

a lot of times more like he's a feature on their song. And to me, that is very much indicative of what he was trying to do with this record, which is really just provide a space to celebrate the island and all of the music on it. It was really about, you know, bringing on, I think, some of the young artists that he's the most excited about, that he actually said himself he's been listening to to feel more at home. And so, yeah,

It's almost like he's doing this massive, like, let me un-center myself a little bit and give space to these new young talents.

Definitely. And I think we hear that, too. He worked with a school for a lot of the live instrumentation. And he's talked in a couple of the interviews that have come out since the album's release about how important it was for him to connect with the youth of Puerto Rico and to get the youth excited about the future of the island and excited about the island's tradition. So I think the features and also even just the uncredited...

instrumentalist on the album, you can tell he's trying really hard to connect with a younger generation of Puerto Ricans and get them excited about the island's future. People keep talking about how this is his most Puerto Rican record yet. But to me, him giving up space and being as collectivist as he is about literal sonic space on his own work. I mean, there's really nothing more Puerto Rican to me than that.

That sounds like a nice place to wrap this up for now. Five-hour dissertation coming. I think so. Bonus.

Bonus five-hour episode. You have been listening to Alt Latino from NPR Music. Our audio editor is Simon Retner, and we get editorial support from Hazel Sills, and this week from Jacob Gantz. The woman who keeps us on track is Grace Chung, and the executive producer of NPR Music is Saraya Muhammad. Keith Jenkins is our jefe and chief, and thanks as always to Isabella Gomez-Armiento. Thank you, Isa. Thank you. And you get to have the honors. Thanks for listening.

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