Switched on Pop - Bad Bunny Has A Message For Your Mom

Episode Date: March 17, 2020

Latin Trap megastar Bad Bunny may be best known to American audiences for his feature on Cardi B’s #1 “I Like It’, but the Puerto Rican native is known to music-lovers worldwide for more than just those few bars. Bunny started off as a student in Universidad de Puerto Rico studying audio visual communications. He was bagging groceries at a supermarket in PR when he posted his song ‘Diles’ on SoundCloud. That moody, 808-fueled track turned into a record deal, as well as huge feature opportunities with bigger acts like Becky G, and of course--Cardi. His newest project, YHLQMDLG (an acronym that stands for the Spanish translation of “I do what I want”) is currently smothering the Hot Latin Billboard Chart. The albums opening track, "Si Veo a Tu Mamá" had us listening to the origins of Bossa nova, and investigate how elevator music-sounding samples and overused chord progressions add up to latin trap magic for El Conejito Malo.  Special thanks to Bad Bunny super fan and listener Maita, for never giving up hope :) Songs discussed: Bad Bunny - Diles Becky G ft. Bad Bunny - Mayores Cardi B ft. Bad Bunny, J Balvin - I Like It Bad Bunny ft. Drake - MIA  Bad Bunny - Si Veo a tu Mamá Antônio Carlos Jobim - The Girl From Ipanema Bad Bunny - Soliá Bad Bunny ft. Kendo Kaponi, Arcangel - P FKN R Bad Bunny ft. Jowell & Randy, Nengo Flow - Safeara Missy Elliot - Get Ur Freak On Bad Bunny -

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It's free for iOS users. Hey, it's Charlie. Times are pretty nuts right now, and we feel like more than ever, the music must go on. So here we are. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.

And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Today I want to take a listener request. Great. I'm Mice. I'm Puerto Rican. I'm a student. Midas started listening about a year ago and went through most of her back catalog of episodes. I began to wonder if there was one on Bad Bunny. So I requested one through DM basically every month since then.

Every single month, Waita reminds me. Yeah, that is persistent. I love it. We need to cover Bad Bunny. Maita loves Bad Bunny. He's the 26-year-old Puerto Rican Latin trap artist who has made a spectacular global, crossing career. And for those of us

just getting introduced to Bad Bunny, I asked Meita to tell me a bit about his backstory. He started off as a student in the University

of Puerto Rico. He studied audiovisual communications. He was a backer at a supermarket and then he started off putting content

through SoundCloud. His song delays that he put on SoundCloud was this moody track that helped define his sound. Latin instrument raunchy lyrics, skittering high hats and 808 beats.

Delaus actually landed him a record deal, and then he goes on to become an essential featured artist that really helped build his name. He gained a lot of recognition with the song Majore. Here we get that reggaeton Demba rhythm, rounding out his trap sound, and gaining him recognition, especially in his home territory. That's when he...

He started being played in local radio in Puerto Rico, which is a very big deal. And not long after his sound goes global with a crucial collaboration. In summer 2018, he worked with Cardi B and Jay Balvin in I Like It. The song was nominated for a Grammy. He goes on to collaborate with J.Lo, who he later performs with at the Super Bowl alongside Shakira and Jay Belvin. But before his big game moment, people might have heard his hit Mia

with Drake. Right after that, he puts out his first album. And then he dropped for Sienpren in 2018, and ever since then, he's had a huge impact on Puerto Rican society. People started dressing like him. On his first record, Bunny established that he could blur

between reggaeton, trap, Latin ballads, and even pop punk. He inspired a lot of people in the process. Now Bunny has released a second solo album. I'm going to butcher Spanish for the rest of the episode, and I apologize as a non-native speaker. His album is

Joe Ago, Locet Me de la Gana, which is Spanish for I Do What I Want. And the entire album is actually currently on the billboards' hot Latin chart. The whole album. Whoa. Every song. and the record spans some truly surprising territory. Maita told me that her favorite song on the record is C. Vio Atumama. For me, like, the background music resembles, like, elevator waiting music,

and the song is about a breakup and how after a break-up, you're kind of like in this weird state, you're trying to get over the person and see the person moving on, so it's kind of weird, and you're kind of, like, waiting for something. So I guess the elevator music in the background mirrors that weird stage in life after a break us. It's brilliant. Like if that's the whole purpose of the background music, it's brilliant. And I love it.

I love this idea. You can't get over an X and you're sitting around waiting in a waiting room, just waiting for things to change. In the background, you have this sound, which, I don't know, for me it sounds really familiar. Like, what is this thing? Yeah, this kind of elevator music, as Maida calls it. Yeah, this is a really surprising reference to encounter in a pop song in 2020. It's Antonio Carlos Jobim's The Girl from Impanema. Oh, what thing more linda, more chea de grace.

She's a manina who comes and that pass. A doce balance, a camille. Has the girl from Infanima, which I guess I'm like, When I first heard this, I think I was tricked because of the sort of cheesy synth sounds. Totally, yeah. They almost sound like a video game or something. They've also changed the chord progression a little bit, retained the melody. Yeah, this is a deep cut from Bad Bunny here.

And I'm excited to hear the song and kind of unpack more of the musical meaning. Why don't we see how he contextualizes the girl from Epinima in this track by going right to the chorus, which of course is at the beginning of the song. I anticipate a error because you no me I anticipate a trap beat

coming in right here I love that this is so fun and for my edification what is he what's the translation of what he's singing here?

The song translates to call your mom and it's basically like I'm having such a tough time have time in this breakup and, you know, I see your mom I'm going to say hello. I love that. Which is neat because it's kind of like maybe if you're trying to reach out to someone's mom, like maybe this song is a good way to bridge between generations, right?

You got a little bit of the new, the Latin trap sound, the old girl from eponema. Yeah, so let's crack open this Bosa Nova sound, which I'm so thrilled to encounter here. surprised and but thrilled. Like we said, this is a kind of iconic song composed by Joe Beam and originally performed by a guitarist and singer named Zhao Guilberto, along with the American tenor sax player Stan Gets, and also featuring vocals from Gilberto's wife, Astrid. So this was like a real international, one of the first like international cross collaborations back in the early 1960s when this track dropped. And it like kind of took the world by storm to the point where fast forward now and the bosanova sound has become kind of ubiquitous and also kind of diluted.

It's like elevator music. So maybe before we dig into this track, let's go back to the very beginning of like where bosanova came from. And that comes from the streets of Brazil, from the carnival from the percussion batteries that you would hear accompanying dancers in the rhythm known as samba. It is so propulsive. That is so funky. I love it. Oh my God.

We're just like dancing in the studio right now. But just isolate one of the rhythms there. You just hear like this that that that that dat dat dat dat, that that that highly syncopated, highly percussive. What Bossa Nova does is take that that like, out. Outdoor, noisy, somber rhythm, and kind of mute it, turn it indoors, make it a little more introspective. But that propulsion and that funkiness is still there. You can hear it in the guitar part as soon as we hit play on Girl from Ipanema.

It's so pretty. Oh, my God. I mean, this is just the most beautiful music ever. But still, like as music, which is, this is a little more like lean back. Yeah. Yet the guitar, which translates from the percussion, does provide forward motion. Like, even though it's slow, like, I want to keep it going. Yeah, and that's kind of the brilliance of this music is the guitar part is like very soothing,

but also kind of keeps you on your toes. And this was literally, Bosa Nova translates to new waves. So this was like a new sound in Brazil in the late 1950s, early 1960s, the sound of a new generation, a modern urban generation. And it had a lot of political resonance at the time. And over the course of the 60s, would morph into styles that were even more kind of outwardly political. But it had this daringness that maybe it's lost today

because what happens to Bosanova is that it kind of filters out across the globe and eventually becomes like the music, music that you hear in waiting rooms, in elevators, while you're shopping at the grocery store. Dear shoppers, we have a discount on Isle 5 on Dry Ham. Dried Ham, discount, Isle 5. Yeah, this is, I mean, this is just music like designed to just chill you out, right? It's still pretty cool.

I dig it. But it's lost some of that vitality and sense of wonder, I think. It definitely sounds like it's coming out of a loudspeaker. Okay, so fast forward now to Bad Bunch. It's like, I feel like when he uses this today, we collapse all of those multiple resonances, right? The noisy samba carnival, the new wave bosanova from Zhao Gilberto, the elevator music that it becomes like we're hearing a whole history of sound in just that little clip. Wow. I love that.

It makes me think of a fun little side note, which is that Bad Bunny is actually a fun. fairly political figure. This might be reaching a little bit, but not only has he been a supporter of many causes, but when Puerto Rico went through what was called Telegram Gate, when the governor of the island had a bunch of texts that went public and had a bunch of homophobic things in them, spoke poorly of his political rivals and said that he was going to manipulate the media in them, Bad Bunny comes out with a track called Eiffelando Los Cachios. which I definitely said wrong, but definitely translates to sharpening the knives.

People in Puerto Rico thought this was very exciting. He's someone who, as actually Maita told me, really embraces his heritage. He's very positive of Puerto Rico and has a strong political following. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, I saw him perform on Jimmy Fallon and he wore a skirt and a t-shirt that commemorated a Puerto Rican trans activist who was killed. And I was like, wow, this guy is really bringing the heat here. I mean, he's not afraid to speak his mind. Yeah, I think that's part of what makes him so attractive to this young generation. Yeah. And an interesting wrinkle to his use of this Bosanova sample in this song. Yeah. Okay, I want to go deeper into this song because there's a lot more here. One thing that immediately caught my ear was how, I guess you could feel like maybe the song is like reductive or simple. Because it has this elevator thing.

It's like kind of a sample. And then the core progression. Oh, yeah. I clocked that. Yeah. What did you hear? It's one, six, four, five. The ice cream changes.

50s progression used in everything from Blue Moon. Oh, you saw me standing alone. To Rebecca Black's Friday To DJ Callads, I'm the One It is the core progression that will not die. It is like, yeah, the totemic pop progression. So he's actually altered the girl from Impanima piece. Yes.

To sort of mold into this 50s sound. Yeah, and this sort of pop sensibility, I guess. Do you want to play that for us? Yeah, I'd love to. I thought you'd never ask. So here's the core progression of the original girl from Ipanema. and here's the chord progression used on the bad bunny track. I would say that that was even generous.

You added some nice embellishments. I can't help it, yeah. The girl from Mipanima has many more jazzy chords, a lot of those extensions and fun things that add color. His version, more in the elevator music tradition, really sort of strips down those more jazzy sounds, simplifies it, makes it palatable. And yet, you know, this idea of sort of like translating call on your mom, it's like, well, maybe your mom like knows the 16, 4, 5, 1950s chord progression.

Like, yeah. Yeah, yeah. This is like, yeah, this is a track meant to appeal to everyone. And if you wanted to do that, you go no further than that 1645 chord progression. But I want to establish that this is not at all a reductive song. In fact, I think he's doing some incredibly creative things with how he actually structures his song. while the backing music is somewhat predictable, right? Like we have that plus our trap beat.

Yeah, and we kind of felt we knew when that was coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Doesn't dull the impact of it. What holds our interest is Bad Bunny himself. Now, even as someone who doesn't actually know what he's singing, I have to go and look it up. Sure. I'm constantly queued into his voice.

Yes. Because he has this sort of magical quality. of never giving you the same thing twice. If you think about the structure of this song, you could kind of slice and dice it any way you want. But the way that I hear it, rather than like a verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus, kind of structure, the only way I could think of this was like an ABCDEA.

Wow, okay, yeah, that was alphabet soup. One more time? ABCD-E-A. ABC-D-E-A. Yeah, okay. Let me play this out for you. Yeah, yeah. So he opens the song with an A phrase.

This is the, what I would sort of call, it's the hook. So, you know, the chorus material. Right. It's a nice hook. Yeah. Okay. Okay, but once this section is over, he moves into totally different vocal territory. Here's the B phrase.

Hmm, that was like kind of angelic. Yeah. And not something we've heard before. Just kind of a surprising new melody. I love how he holds that note up, even though it's auto-tuned. Like, it sounds kind of vulnerable. Totally. You know?

And also the way he kind of like, you can hear his aspiration. Like, I mean, by that I mean his breath. Like this, there's something very, yeah, vulnerable. It's a nice word. He's aspiring and aspiring. Inspiring to find this ex-lover. Okay. Then he picks it up.

Yeah. He moves into a C part, which is sort of this spoken, wrapped kind of verse. Cool. Yeah. A, B, C, I see. So every section gets a new letter because every section presents a totally new melody. And, yeah, and rhythm. No, and Mel.

Yeah. It's like everything about the performance of alls. Yeah. He, at the end of that phrase, you can hear actually supporting him, has these fireworks going off. Because things are about to get celebratory. We're going to move into his dephrase. He's going to up the ante and speed up the right. Yeah.

Okay. I see what you mean. It's like we've been accelerating. And now we're just getting this like rapid fire machine gun. bursts of rhythmic sound. Yeah. Cool. I don't even know how to describe the new vocal space that he goes into in what I think is a sort of E-section. Okay.

Yet new material. There are yet more things that happen even after this. So I think it might be like an ABC, the E, FG, like keeps on and on until he finally returns back to the introductory material that he establishes. Another way of thinking about this is just like this song performed by anybody else. I feel like any one of his phrases, any one of those sections, could be extracted and be a chorus in of itself that could be a repeating section. They're all so hooky that like anyone could have their own favorite moment that they want to sing from this. I think that's wicked cool.

Right. This song is like structured like a sandwich is what you're telling me. It's a sandwich. The A section is like one people. of bread and then we get all these different ingredients and every section is like a new ingredient so you're never repeating one yeah so it's just like you know lettuce cheese tomato onion dried ham pickles from aisle five and then eventually you get to the other slice of bread which is the very end of the song and he repeats the initial opening hook let's not debate about mayo yeah keep that's that's that's going to get way too contentious uh that's that's cool and a very like you see

said, I mean, a very unusual kind of approach to song form, which tends to be, you know, you get like lettuce, lettuce, tomato, onion, lettuce, tomato, onion. Yeah. So what I, what I really enjoy here is that we can, we can hear on one level something which is immediately approachable, something that your mom's going to like. And yet, you never want to turn this song off because you never know where it's going to go. Yeah. Right. Across its two minutes and 50 seconds. it's just hook after hook after hook. And Bad Bunny has me totally convinced. He's somebody for whom lots of other critics have said that his voice is sort of like a one-note thing.

And yet I think the song proves that he has many notes that he can hit with a very recognizable vocal timbre. Right on. Cool. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you.

Okay. Ready? Ready. Do not sugarcoat something for me. No. No. No. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals.

and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis.

We will begin to first. process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time.

The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. Bad Bunny's new album is enormous. 20 songs long. I could not begin to be exhaustive about it. Or his repertoire or history, those are all things people should go deeper into because they're, really fabulous.

There's a lot of fun music here. I really enjoyed preparing for this piece getting to listen through his entire discography. Did you check out some of his eyewear too? That's a really fun part about the Bad Bunny. I am not a bespectacle person. But as someone, I was looking at one. He's got some amazing spectacles.

Anyway, as you were, please continue. What I do want to do with you need is I want to look at just three songs that stand out to me because I think that they take his Latin trap and reggaeton sort of sound. into a new domain. Cool. The first song I enjoy is called Solia,

and the whole thing here is great. But I actually want to go to the end of the song. Yeah. Throughout this whole piece... Bad Bonny Ver. Bad Bonifere. I love that. Yeah, totally.

This is a vocoder sound. This is the... Which it was quite a long time ago, but it's definitely associated with Bonifere. Image and Heap. Image and Heap, we hear it on a lot of Zed tracks as well. There's a lot of sort of EDM-inspired sounds on that particular song. That was cool, yeah.

The reference that my ear immediately went to, it's one of my favorite songs of all time, Something About Us by Daft Punk. I might not be the right one. It might not be the right time. But there's something about us. In a similar sort of way, Bad Bunny's voice begins autotuned, becomes more robotic, and then just turns into this harmony of vocodery alien bliss. Yeah.

I mean, he's taken to a much higher level than daft punk. Oh, it's huge. Like, it feels like you're surrounded by it. Yeah. It's cool. It's very disorienting in a very cool way. Yeah. Okay.

So some really interesting sound design choices and new ways of expanding on his vocal. Yeah. So Leah, he has this other song. I have no idea how to say it. It is the letter P, then the letter F, K, N, then the letter R. I think it might stand for something. For Schengenary. That's exactly right.

More important than the song title, P, F, K and R, is what's happening in music. Yeah. It opens with this really beautiful Latin style of guitar, but it's definitely like pitched down, maybe slowed down, definitely transmuted. Yeah, that was cool. I don't know how to put my finger on it. I like it.

It's kind of like if... I mean, it doesn't even... It sounds like almost like a coto or something. Oh, interesting. This is the second time in a month that we've been stumped by... A string instrument. On Harry Siles' album, I think. That I think a listener suggested that was a dulcimer.

So once again, let's rely on listeners to inform us what we're hearing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. But this cool sound that I really enjoyed then gets overtaken by this really gnarly bass. It's really deep. dark and menacing, that low, sludgy bass that's going on. Yeah. Right? Dude, this song is P-Fucking R.

Puerto Rico, P.R. You're absolutely right. Yeah. Okay. I mean, it's just like with Dan names these days, you get the, no vowels, you get the ampersand. Well, no, now that I'm looking at it, you misrepresent. Now that I'm looking at it, it's P-F-K-N-space-R. You're, I mean, that's clear.

Absolutely correct. Yeah. Nonetheless, this song still rules. It goes on and adds in this 808 kick drum thing that I just am enamored by. Yeah, it's deep. That's subterranean. Right? That is the nether regions, and I dig it.

You know what that makes me think of? It's almost like a bass player, like sliding around on the neck. kind of sound, right? At the edges of audibility too. Yeah. But here what it is is actually someone taking the 808 drum machine, which usually sounds like just a kick, drawing it out so it has this really long release,

and then introducing glide so that every time a note higher than it occurs, rather than going like one note than the other, instead you get this just like deep, movings, sort of, as you put out there, like subterranean base that doesn't stick to anyone pitch just gliding on the face. Portamento. Portamento. Lure.

Yeah. French. Yeah. Gliding. Gliding. Glacondo. Cool. Uninterrupted.

Yeah. Okay. Last one of the three that really stood out to me is Sapphire. For me, this is the sicko mode of Latin trap. So we got this intro with this like dub-stepy rap horn feel that then moves into a reggae beat. It's kind of... Sludgy. Yeah, it's a little sludgy.

Yeah, totally. The song literally devolves a minute in and becomes a synthy 80s Dembo beat. Then the song goes into this really cool reference from the early eyes. Once it! In the song dev' Today's fulma From a rat

If God That's That thing That's Yeah, yeah. Today's It's Fumma

Like a Rata If you Let's The song Devolves from there Did you catch The reference

That thing? That little bongra That's Missy Alleyets Get your freak on This got Timbaland What's neat here is you have this kind of like

Indian baghra rhythm-based track translated into a Latin trap world accompanied by these actually like major sounding

almost like reggae like guitars happening in the background and some menacing truly menacing symphonic strings that to me sound like they're out of the

movie Jaws. Like, what is happening here? Well, this song, if the first track was a sandwich, this one is like a stew. And just everything mixed in together. Delicious. Both are delicious. Yeah. You know, I wouldn't want to end on a monster of a song.

Now, this is an exciting monster. This is a monster movie I want to go see. This is a song to listen to again and again and again. Maybe we should just take a note of his final song. on the album. Another song that there's no proper way to pronounce because it is a sign less than followed by the number three. Cool. So those look like a heart. Right. Right. I mean, so this album has like every shade of color and tone on it. Yeah.

Yeah. I can't, I'm about to go on a big road trip. I'm going to, I can't, I'm excited to spin this. Yeah. This has been really, you know, Bad Bunny is an artist that I've wanted to know more about. And so I'm glad that Maita and you have sort of made that happen in this episode. And I think it's a good moment for us to recognize that, you know, this, the language of this material might be foreign to us. but the sounds here are not.

And this is popular music. This is top 40 hits that we're listening to right here. And we have an obligation to do our best to unpack it, bad Spanish and all. And I'm thrilled to get to know the sound to this album better. Go check it out. It's awesome. Yeah. Switched on Pop is produced by me, Charlie Harding.

And me, Nate Sloane. We've got a fabulous team. Our producers are Bridget Armstrong and Megalubin. We're engineered, mixed, and mastered by Brandon McFarlane. illustrations by Iris Gottlieb and social media by Abby Barr. Our executive producers are Nashak Kerwa and Liz Nelson. We're a part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. You can find us on Twitter at Switch on Pop.

Reach out, tell us what you've been listening to what you want to hear about. We love talking to you on there. We'll be back in another week with a brand new episode about the most popular song in the world. Here's a hint. It starts like this. Happy. It happens to be your least favorite song ever made. But it will be my birthday.

So it's unavoidable. And until then, thanks for listening.