NPR Music - Bad Bunny's 'Debí Tirar Más Fotos,' Explained

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Alt.Latino hosts Anamaria Sayre and Felix Contreras, and NPR reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento break down what exactly makes the record so Puerto Rican and why its Bad Bunny's most reflective, ambitious and ingenious album yet.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

From NPR music, this is Alt Latino. I'm Felix Contreras. And I'm Anna Maria Sayer. Let the Chisemate begin. And this week, boy, boy, Felix. Do we have a lot to discuss? We have so much that we also have NPR reporter Isabella Gomez Sarimiento, friend of the show with us. Benito, Antonio Martinez, Ocasio, better known as Bad Bunnies.

released an album this week. So yes, it was Christmas all over again for me and Issa. And maybe even you, Felix. I don't know. It was a high moment. Issa, 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, Devi Tiberi TIRMas Photos. 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, like they've noticed the name, they've, you know, their 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. Anna Phyllisin, 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 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 Rosseo 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 can I officially say it, his best album yet? That is a hot take. Anna, 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, Nueval Yol. Nueva Jol!

Just for reference sake, that sample track at the beginning, it's 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 in New York. And who doesn't have a Primo in New York, but they're going to go have a good summer with? I mean, everything about this is just... It actually 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 Puerto Ricanos.

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 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 involved.

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 Nembo with this salsa song. He's calling to the New Yorkerican history of Puerto Ricans in New York specifically. He mentions the last Puerto Rican social club in Williamsburg, Donitas. 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? De We need to Tiber Mas Photos. 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, Anna, 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 Victor Hara and Chile 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 Latino 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. I want to pick a song, which one? Bail Inolvibé'Nolvibre.

I've had this one on repeat. What we're hearing is like just straight ahead salsa 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 heard his voice.

I grew up with, you know, Ruben Blaze, Hector Lavaux, 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'm like, 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. 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. 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, listen 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. 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 earbutts for a while, the precedent for me on this thing is Ruben Abarran from Cafetta Cuba. I remember the first time I heard him sing over some Son Harocho. I'm like, oh my God, like it does not go together at all, right? Because he stylized, no, he has, he stylized his voice, his whole approach, that whole band. But then like, oh, okay, I get it. I see what they're doing. If you're going to have a certain amount of vocal quality, going back,

Back to Bob Dylan. True. Again, right? We saw Rao Alejandro do a salsa album just a couple of months ago. But I think the difference with something like that is it's Rao 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 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, say you're about it. You approve. You're listening to Alt Latino. We're talking about the new bad bunny record Debbie,

tirer mas photos. And we just finished talking about the song Maile Inovidable, Unforgettable, We talk about the music for a minute. Let's talk about the lyrics. Anna, pick a song that has some lyrics that you think stand out. A really natural one here is Loke Le Passo to Hawaii. Musically, it's very sparse. There's just a widow.

There's some little nice little bass part, keyboard part. But the lyrics are very profound. a lot going on. Let's start with the title. Translate the title and then what is he singing about? This is one of Bad Bunny's maybe most overtly political songs that 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 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. Anna, describe a little bit about all of these factors, independence versus statehood versus staying a colony. The two reigning parties in the statehood. 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 a 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 Rican. Yeah, I think this is a

And who's going to Don't care of it's a little bit 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 Anna 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's se be bonita, although a basis le vizabeth's lois,

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 terms. general can reverse this trend. His last record, Nadiazále what will pass tomorrow, 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. They're doing that because of extenuating circumstances that have pushed them to do so. So, like, he says, here nobody ques he goes to, and who can see who may be able to.

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 a 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, Tourista.

Stake through me every time Tell me 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. 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 soft guattro 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 Domino's 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 grown now, 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. You're listening to Alt Latino, and we're talking about Bad Bunny's brand new album DeVi Tiramas Photos. I'm here with Felix Contreras and Isabel Gomerse Arbiento. Can I nerd out a little bit? So let's start with the track Café Conron.

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 Hiroros, 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 of who they are. Let's hear a little bit of that song. And it was recorded with the group called Los Planoes de la Cresta. So we're going to hear Café Conron, and then we're going to listen to to the band's more traditional approach. resistance. 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 Palinas 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, 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 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 Bombay 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, like, 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 Pitoro de Coco.

Check it out. Then we'll hear an original. I'm a two six no I'm who I

know that I'm a year that I'm a year your first for

for me me I had in the nubes and like a

man they don't say they're in a day so

I'm I'm going to play something from this band called Echoes de Borican. 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 Quattros, a six-string guitar, Guiro and a Bongo. It's very, very traditional. This is called El Amma de Puerto Rico from the group Echoes of Borinken. And you can hear where Bad Bunny is getting his inspiration from. 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. Pitoro de Coco features an interpolation of a song by Chuitul de Bagamon, who was a very

important musco Hiro, 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 re-centering 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 and 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. It doesn't feel like a full pivot to something completely out of his light. 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 was a collaboration with a band called Chui and the song is called Wiltita. He does this really beautiful 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 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 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 instrumentalists 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 Seals. And this week, from Jacob Gantz. The woman who keeps us on track is Grace Chung, and the executive producer of MPR music is Siriam Mohamed. Keith Jenkins is our hefe-in-chief. And thanks, as always, Isabella Gomez-Armiento. Thank you, Isa.

Thank you. And you get to have the honors. Thanks for listening.