Bad Bunny Talks Coming Back Home on His ‘Most Puerto Rican’ Album Yet
The New York Times
In an exclusive video interview, the world-conquering Latin superstar discusses why his new album is filled with traditional sounds and rhythms from his homeland.
Over the last few years, Bad Bunny — the global superstar of reggaeton and Latin trap whose astonishing success has remade the pop landscape for Spanish-language music — gained the world. Three chart-topping Billboard albums. A headlining slot at Coachella. The title of most-streamed artist on the planet. A burgeoning acting (and wrestling) career. A creeping interest in his romantic extracurriculars by the paparazzi.
And yet all his success left him unanchored from the place at the root of it: Puerto Rico, where he was born, raised and lived until 2023, when he decamped for an extended stay in Los Angeles and New York.
He’s back in Puerto Rico now, and on his sixth solo album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” (“I Should Have Taken More Photos”), the musician born Benito Martínez Ocasio is making his recommitment to the island plain with a pointed musical pivot.
The 17-track LP, cut through with live instruments, was recorded wholly in Puerto Rico, and features a host of young collaborators representing a range of his homeland’s styles dating back generations — urbano from the singer RaiNao (“Perfumito Nuevo”); reggaeton and Latin trap from Omar Courtz and DeiV (“Veldá”); and traditional rhythms like plena and bomba from Pleneros de la Cresta (“Café Con Ron”) and the young band Chuwi (“Weltita”).
“Every one of them is Puerto Rican and there for a reason,” Bad Bunny, 30, said in an interview in late December, ahead of the album’s release on Sunday. During his globe-trotting, he added, “When I listened to them, I felt like I was there in Santurce, hanging out.”
