Switched on Pop - Bad Bunny's love letter to Puerto Rico

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

The first great release of 2025 is already here: Bad Bunny's newest album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. Over the course of its 17 tracks, the Puerto Rican reggaetonero crafts an intertextual, anti-colonial tome of a record, incorporating sounds from across his island and the boricua diaspora. From his use of salsa classics on "NUEVAYoL," to his pointed interpolations on "VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR," and his detour into folk melodies and songwriting on tracks like the somber "LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii," the record features some of Bad Bunny's most creative, intense, and direct work yet. On this episode of Switched On Pop, producer Reanna Cruz takes Charlie and Nate on a journey through Bad Bunny's love letter to Puerto Rico, with additional insight from journalist and translator Carina del Valle Schorske. Read Carina's NPR Music review of the record: Bad Bunny's politics of presence. Songs Discussed: Bad Bunny, "DtMF" Bad Bunny, "NUEVAYoL" Bad Bunny, "BOKeTE" Bad Bunny, "EL CLúB" El Gran Combo De Puerto Rico, "Un verano en Nueva York" Bad Bunny, "PIToRRO DE COCO" Bad Bunny, "BAILE INoLVIDABLE" Rauw Alejandro, "Tú Con Él" Bad Bunny, "VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR" Wisin & Yandel, Héctor "El Father," "La Barría" Alexis y Fido, "Me Quiere Besar" Angel y Khriz, "Cazando Voy" Bad Bunny, "El Apagón" Bad Bunny, Kendo Kaponi, Arcángel, "P FKN R" Bad Bunny, "LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii" Bad Bunny, "CAFé CON RON" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Attention Spotify. Has given the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Carolina Herrera, a fragrance intense with character gourmet and addictive. Imagine a jasmine emvolvente, toffee caramelized, and tonka-tostata.

A combination that seduce from the first instant and a waya. Good Girl Jasmine Absolute, hypnotica, irresistible. Discover it today and let you involve for its essence.

Welcome to Switch on Pop. I'm producer Rianna Cruz. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Quick shout out to our new theme song. banging intro already. It's sounding great. Thank you, Zach and Jossi.

Now, we're only a few weeks into 25, and our theme song is not the only major release of the year so far. What do we got, Rihanna? I'm talking about Bad Bunny's newest album, De Be Tierra More Photos, or in English, I should have taken more photos. Hell yeah. Crazy that the album of the year has been released in January. I know, it's pretty wild.

Though I think fans of Ringo Starr's country record might say something different, but to each their own. Good point, Rihanna. So we just heard the title track, DTMF, and over the course of 17 tracks, the Bitterama's Photos, constructs through its sounds, essentially a love letter to the island of which Bad Bunny is born and raised. Puerto Rico. It moves through several different genres. We got Dembo on songs like Nueva Yoel. We got Batchata and songs like Boquete. And of course we got classic

bad money clubby Urbano and trap on tracks like Diably named El Club. The day that this dropped, I set out loud. My kids are in the room. I'm like, hey, bad bunny has a new record. And they're like, what's a bad bunny? It's like, oh, are you in for a ride? And I put the record on. And these little kids just start dancing instinctively. Like, they know this is a record you're supposed to

move your body to. Our household does not speak Spanish. So I'm assuming there might be some lyrics that might not be appropriate for children, but that's totally fine because we're just in it for the grooves, the melodies. And so far, I'm loving it. but I'm glad you've brought it to the show because, honestly, I feel like I need to go deeper to really understand what's going on. No, totally. It's a very sonically rich record. And I think Bad Bunny, in crafting an album with this sonic palette, he's reaching back into time while also keeping a contemporary sensibility and creates, in that process, a historical picture of the music of Puerto Rico in its past, present, and few years. future. So in the spirit of Bad Bunny's statement, I should have taken more photos. I thought we'd look at some musical snapshots from the record and see how this new album speaks to and moves

the island of Puerto Rico and its people. Love it. Where do we begin this journey, Rihanna? Well, before we get into it, I got to provide some context, right? Because the Bitaramas photos is designed to be, for the lack of a better term, impenetrable to gringoes, right? Like, it's a record essentially for Puerto Ricans by Puerto Ricans to the point where Bad Bunny has gone on record to say in his interview with Popcast that he doesn't care if people, specifically English speakers, are alienated by it. How does that make you feel? Do you want to over-explain it, or you just feel like it is, it's in the world?

I don't care. I kind of love that because the record is so laden with detail and intricate references that even someone like me who is Puerto Rican but doesn't live on the island like I could not catch everything even if I spent 20 years like sitting down analyzing this record you know taking bad bunny studies like

you cannot catch everything that is included in this album and I find that awesome for a star of Bad Bunny's caliber. That sensibility is something that I find very welcome. It's a very similar work to his 2022 record, Unvoranos in Tee, which we've talked about on the show before. There were several songs with billions of streams, like the track, Titi Me Pregunto.

These beats are just superior. But it's like Rihanna's saying, there's also this dedication to an artistry and an activism beyond his music, while maintaining that sonic excitement and commercial success. I don't know if there's another artist like this in the 21st century music landscape. Yeah, I don't think so either. And I find DeBittarmas Photos really notable because it's of the same ethos,

centering Puerto Rico, right? Like, for Puerto Ricans by Puerto Ricans. But the album also serves as like a political message, right? Like, it's a record that reckons heavily with the island's, gentrification and colonialism. He really put in the work into crafting a rich text. You know, he worked with a historian on visualizers for each song. He wrote and directed a short film highlighting the island's gentrification at the

hands of Torres, starring the director of the only Puerto Rican movie to be nominated for an Oscar. He announced a residency in San Juan, the first part of which is only open to Puerto Rican residents. Like, he's looking specifically at his time. people. And I think on Unverano Senti, he's saying the praises of Puerto Rico and like, focused on the good parts, you know, the beaches, stuff like that. This album, De Beiterar, is an anti-colonial record, really, and it's distinctly political in its advocacy for

Puerto Rican independence. In its sonic construction, it's an album that relies heavily on Puerto Rican melodies and genres in an effort to construct a text that connects to the entire diaspora. So, bringing it all back to the music, where to start, but the first track on the record, Nueva Yoel. What a banger to open up your album.

We're 20 seconds in, and we already have enough to analyze. We got a salsa-dembo hybrid going on, You know, that like Dembo part, the quick beat, you know, it's very fast. It's very repetitive. And we have the salsa element. We got horns going on. We got group singing.

There's a communal element to it. Choro. And piano, Mantunos. That is El Gran Campos, a verano de Nueva York, which was released in 1975. And the title for those that don't have elementary Spanish background. translates to a summer in New York, which is significant because in the 70s,

New York was the home base for a lot of Latino immigrants and specifically Puerto Ricans. And so that gives us our underlying sample. Why is he starting with this sample as the introduction to his record, mashing it up with Dembo? Like, break that down for me.

So it kicks off the whole album. Before we hear anything bad bunny, we're hearing a grand combo. Yeah. And then it morphs into something very bad buddy. It's kind of like we back to the future to this album and then zoomed forward into the present. This moment of transition is so compelling to me. Rianna, can you play that exact moment when the salsa drops out and the bad bunny kicks in?

Because I want to focus on the way the singer from El Gran combo, his voice kind of changes in that moment. I hear it almost as ghostly. It's sort of filtered out. It's a little echoey. It's in the background. It makes me think like this is the ghosts of Puerto Rico, of the Puerto Rican diaspora, of the musical styles of the past, and how they still manifest in 2025 in the present. The effect is like they played the sample out of a gramophone in a cathedral in order to some

those spirits. And in that, I think we immediately have a thesis for the record, right? This bridging of classic Puerto Rican history, context, these genres that are so ingrained in the culture with newer and of the people music like Dembo, which comes from the Dominican Republic, but has been accepted and really integrated into Puerto Rican culture. That music is distinctly current and of the streets. And that bridging of generations, frames the beat of the art of most photos, right? Like, it's crossing the oceans, it's bringing into the conversation New York and New Yorkicans

alongside the diaspora on the island, kind of galvanizing the entire Puerto Rican people. So he's doing this also through his lyrics and references to specific Puerto Rican ephemera, right? Like, we have references to the Bronx, Washington Heights. He mentions another solaceous. icon Willie Colon and his debut record, El Malo, which he made when he was 16 years old. So we're just a few seconds into this record, and I feel like we're getting the Renaissance

slash Cowboy Carter type deep text. But in this case, we're dealing with like colonialism, Puerto Rico, diaspora, how Puerto Rico exists within America. And we're getting that in just a few seconds of music. Exactly. You know when you listen to like Beyonce's like, yeah, yeah, right? And there's so many decades and genres of culture just like mashed all together. That's kind of what this song is. You know, later in the song, we get references to the Puerto Rican rapper, Big Pun. We get a nod to the Dominican baseball pair Juan Soto. Just move from the Yankees to the Mets in New York. There's a name drop of Frida Kahlo, who is Mexican, but still included in this conversation. It's fascinating.

These references that he's working in are so winking and, playful. And that playfulness is highlighted, especially when it gets all Dembo at the end of the song. I feel like Babi's Big Bunny's biggest gift is his voice, you know, and he is really working it. And he's

really allowing himself to get silly, you know, which I think is very, very fun. His personality is everywhere, and he is a generator of endless hooks. Like, we've analyzed plenty of other songs of his where it's just like, there's not even choruses. It's just like hook, hook, hook, hook, hook, hook. Every moment is memorable. There's not a lot of artists that pull that off. Siza does it.

Bad Bunny does it. It's like all hooks all the time. Speaking of his voice, Rihanna, something I want to keep front of mind as we listen to this album, I feel like he's utilizing the lower ranges of his voice more than ever on this record. I'm not a bad bunny completist, but I know some of his previous work, and I feel like it was often characterized by him, like, reaching up into his falsetto. And here I feel like he does the opposite. He goes, like, down. And, like, he hits these low notes that I've never heard him do before.

And I wonder if that's maybe to communicate a certain, like, earthiness and groundedness in this record. The place of this record, sort of like in the roots of this record are literally exemplified by his, like, deep basso tones. So maybe we can listen for that as we continue this journey. Sounds like Nate is finding some camaraderie in a fellow baritone. I mean, we got to stick together. Okay, so this is thoroughly an album about building bridges all the way to Dr. Sloan. We didn't know that. And he's doing it with all these different genres.

I really love particularly the salsa of it all. Is there more salsa happening on the record? Thankfully, there is. He's on a salsa kick, this record. And it's something that Bad Bunny leans into over and over again. We hear it on songs like Pittoro de Coco. One of the stars of Had a repeat. That is the song.

Yeah, that's a good one. It was a really good video of Bad Bunny Learning to Salsa. It's so fun. But I find it interesting, right? Because lately I feel like there's been a sort of micro movement. of A-list Puerto Rican artists incorporating salsa in their work. Last year, Raul Alejandro put out a record that does a similar thing. And on that album, he puts weight on the same artists that Bad Bunny does.

You know, he's referencing Willie Goulon. He's referencing Frankie Ruiz. There's even a cover of Frankie's Tukonel. I find that to be pretty notable. And I wanted to know why artists are gravitating towards this sound. Artists like Bad Bunny, right? These massive reggaetoneros. So to get the bigger picture, I talked to journalist Karina DeVayashorski.

She's also a translator, wrote the first really massive Bad Bunny profile, who filled in some gaps for me about salsa and its use on Debbie Tiran, more photos. Bad Benny grew up listening to Salsa. He says, like, his dad in particular was the Kokolo, as we see, in Puerto Rico in his house, right? you can hear kind of retrospectively when he really steps fully into salsa that those sonics were already influencing the work we don't recognize as salsa that Bad Bunny is doing. When this record that Bad Bunny describes as his most Puerto Rican record yet begins by shouting

out Nueva Yole. He's already kind of exploding ideas about what counts as Puerto Rican and what a traditional genre might be because we have a music like salsa drawing on especially Afro-Cuban rhythms like Son Montuno and stuff like that. But it's also, it's a fundamentally urban experimental music that absorbs the sounds around it, whether that's jazz and R&B or more traditional rhythms like Plena, for example, which also shows up in other moments. So what Karina is saying is that a music like salsa draws on rhythms from Cuba. and indigenous rhythms as well

and is listened to all over the world, right? And I think Bad Bunny is constructing something similar here where he's taking rhythms from across Latin America, specifically Puerto Rico. It's creating something

that's sonically just like the people of Puerto Rico. I love those insights from Karina because when I heard this track Baile Inolvidable, I thought it kind of sounded in a way like the inverse of the first track,

Nueva Yole. Like the first track, Nuevoille starts with this salsa sample and then transitions into this contemporary dembo feel, as you said. This track starts with this more contemporary synthed out dembo style and then transitions into this like classic throwback salsa groove. It's like on the first track, past is present. And in this track, and in this track, present is past. The sample is flipped in the inverse.

It starts kind of muted in your cavernous space, and then it blossoms into full high-fi contemporary recording. And these kind of references on the record are not just limited to salsa, okay? Bad Bunny is a reggaeton artist, first and foremost, right? So it's quite natural that reggaeton gets the same historical treatment. It's his specialty, and we hear it all. over the record, like on the song, Voya Yavarte, Pape Ere.

So we got a melodic regatone track, right? There's some club influence in there. We got some twitchy electronic synthesizers. He's working those melodies really well, like we talked about earlier. It's not fully a club track in the sense of, like, doesn't have that four-to-the-floor beat,

but there's a little bit more going on in it than an average regat-ton song. I feel like that is what makes Bad Bunny's music so special. I mean, even on a record that's an hour long with countless reggaeton songs, like each one is its own amazing beat. Like, they really are the highest quality beats in all of reggaeton. Just, there's always some kind of surprising element. The beat on this song rocks, but where I want to focus is the lyrics and the melodies.

So earlier we heard him sample a salsa classic. Here, he is subtly interpolating several Puerto Rican regatton classics in his melodies. So I thought we'd take a look at them. We got three, or at least three that I clocked. Like I said, I could spend 20 years looking at this record, looking at these songs, wouldn't catch all of them. I caught three. The first is about a minute 20 in. So that part, right?

The Daletra, Patra, Tantan Chularia, that is a reference to Wysin, Yandel, and their song, La Baria. Oh, yeah. 15 seconds after that, we get another interpolation. Those lyrics, me care besar specifically, is a reference to Alexis and Faidos. Me care besar. Another Puerto Rican duo. Me care of besar, Ike la puce mal.

Those are the same lyrics that we were hearing in Bad Bunny's track. So we got two Puerto Rican duos, but, you know, there's the rule of threes, right? So we got to have to have. a third one. This one comes a little after two minutes into his song. Oh, hey, I'm going to perriando, that part, boy casando and I'murro periando. That's an interpolation of Angel and Chris's Casando, boy. So there's three interpolations of Puerto Rican regaton duos specifically. That to me,

feels pointed, right? Like, it's like not just sampling regaton writ large, but he's looking specifically at Puerto Rican regaton duos. Earlier, I made the comparison to Beyonce's latest work, which are these like intertextual works of claiming her space in dance music and country music. And then here, this is also reminding me of like Kendrick Lamar's GNX, where he uses hyper-local references as a way of connecting to his roots, promoting his community. I feel like Bad Bunny is doing something very similar and continuing this trend of the biggest pop stars in the world, claiming authenticity by not being universal, but by being regionally specific. I mean, that makes sense.

I said earlier, Bad Bunny, like, doesn't really care if people not from Puerto Rico don't get his music. Like, he literally sang it. I feel like that was also a similar conversation around Kendrick's music, you know, especially the track not like us. There were many people asking, is this something that non-black people should be listening to and embracing, especially when you'd see, like, you know, a video of a bunch of 13-year-olds at a bar mitzvah chanting not like us. Right, right. And, I mean, ultimately, I believe music is for everyone, but I'm moved by the idea that you can make a piece of art that honors your community, like you were

saying. And going back to this idea of DeBittirama's photos being like a historical bridge between different eras of Puerto Rican music, he's doing the same thing here that he did on those salsa tracks, you know, bridging together the past. You know, All of these regatone songs came out in the 2000s. He's bringing those tracks into 2025 with his distinct bad bunny flare. It's an intertwining of the musical history of the island. And on this track,

he is expressing confidence in his hometown. And regaton, specifically, he sings, this is Puerto Rico, this is where I was born, and so was regaton. And then right after he says that, he moves into that interpolation. Now, I don't want to get a twisted. Bad Bunny has never not repped Puerto Rico in his music.

Right. Going back to Unverano Sinti, we had El Apagon, my personal favorite track. Before that, we had P-Fucking Ere on Yo Ai Lo Ke de la Gana. And so on and so forth. Those are not the only two examples. But debut te de la mas photos is so pointed, right? It's different in the sense that it's intertwining this love of Puerto Rico with his love of its music. And in my conversation with Karina about salsa, she actually brought up reggaeton as having a similar history and vibe as salsa music. Reggaeton was always influenced by, like, hip hop in New York, whether black American or black Caribbean or whatever it is, right? Salsa, like, was also really shaped by this city and like reggaeton, you know, a lot of people on the island and a lot of people in general disparaged it, like, as hood music. So by working within these two genres, Bad Bunny is connecting these bridges ideologically and kind of cementing himself is making music for and of the people, something. that he's gestured at in his entire career thus far.

Yeah, Rianna, you called this album a rich text in the beginning of this conversation. And I feel like that's really coming to the fore. There are stories within stories in each of these tracks. Where do we go next? Like, what else? Salsa, reggaeton. Like, what else is there to explore? Well, we got to go to some of PR's most traditional musical forms right after the break.

Maria, you have a podcast now. 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. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, 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. So we've already discussed Bad Bunny's use of salsa, regaton, in this multi-layered intertextual representation of Puerto Rico, right? The Sobre P.R. PADAPER ethos, right? For us, by us. But something that is specifically new about this record that I really enjoy is that Bad Bunny is successfully incorporating a folk sensibility into his songwriting, which is kind of a radical claim, I feel like, for a regato no-urbano superstar, you know, you don't really hear them

drawing on folk traditions, right? Like, that feels kind of old head. It feels kind of lame, you know? Yeah, often a reserve for museums and, like, elite institutions of music that, you know, keep these things around. Smithsonian Folkways CD collections. Not lame. Very cool. Yes, to be clear.

I think it's pretty cool. I think it's cool how he uses it on this record because the way that I see it, right? Like, folk music is storytelling. And it can be cultural storytelling. It could be communal storytelling. And I see folk music. in the way that Bad Bunny is implementing it as speaking to a certain group of people, moving them in a sort of direction.

You know, like, I've been doing a lot of thinking on folk music. I saw a complete unknown recently. Got my brain working, you know, Bob Dylan doing folk, whatever. Bab Bunny is doing folk music on Debbie Tiral Mas Photos. And I'd like to look at that through a standout track for me. The song, Whate L'Keyeyey. So, Nate, earlier you were like bad bunnies operating in his lower tones, you know. Here, that's pretty much that.

Like, he's operating in this baritone vocal, you know, it's deep. It's from the heart. Okay, so we've got the low voice. What is the underlying rhythm to this track? I believe what you're hearing, Charlie, is a guiro. Oh, shit, let's go. For the record, I just brought out my metal guira, which I believe comes from the Dominican Republic. It's for merengue, but it's very, very similar to the wooden version, the guiro from Puerto Rico, similar sonic palette.

So you're scraping the metal pick we got onto a ridge surface. Might is metal, different than the wood, of course, but it creates a sound like this. Sick. Nice. So that's the core rhythm that we're hearing on this track. Yeah. Rihanna, that's so sick. I don't think I've ever heard you play an instrument before.

So this is a watershed moment. I have weird ones. I have this one. I have a stylophone. If we ever need that, I got it. I got a kazoo. Good to know. You know, I got the quirky ones.

Okay, we'll keep that in mind. Essentials. I feel like another folk instrument I hear on this is a Puerto Rican quattro guitar when we get the chorus drop. Yes. As a mandolin player, I'm very partial to the quattro, which feels like a musical cousin. It's got those doubled strings giving it that thick, percussive sound. That is so cool. So we have these sounds that are distinctly Puerto Rico, right?

like sounds that are like of the streets, you know, you can walk down the cobblestone in San Juan and hear Giro's. You could hear these quattro guitars. But the real folk emphasis here, I think, is in the lyrics. The title, Loke Le Pasoa Hawaii, translates to what happened to Hawaii. And through this pensive, cautionary vocal, Bad Bunny is singing to his island, right? Like, he's singing a refrain. I don't want them to do to you what happened to Hawaii. And earlier, we talked about the political undertones of this record, right? How he's sort of advocating for Puerto Rican independence. He's railing back against the islands over tourism. So on this song, Bad Bunny is warning his island and his people not to fall to the same fate as Hawaii, where Hawaii became a state in the 50s. And as a result, traditional and indigenous cultures slowly began to fade to the background due to the statehood. And due to the white tourism economies, he starts the song talking about his island in this tone that creates a sense of foreboding, right? Like, it's like very stark and drastic compared to most of Bad Bunny's work.

So that first verse, talks about the foam on her shores looks like champagne. In her eyes, a smile holds back her tears. Later in the song, the chorus says in Spanish, they want to take away my river and my beach. They want my neighborhood. They want my grandma to leave. Don't forget the flag or the Lelolai, because I don't want them to do to you what happened to Hawaii. Man, this is powerful stuff. I mean, I hate to invoke them, but the thing that this brings up for me immediately is Logan Paul and Jake Paul, who, you know, you know these guys. Jake Paul is an amateur boxer. Yeah. Yeah. Who beat Mike Tyson.

You too. Has the, has the incredible accolade of having defeated an almost 60-year-old man in a boxing ring. Really, really should feel really proud of that. Logan Paul actually has a connection to Bad Bunny in the sense that they both wrestle for WWE. Ah, okay. And I don't know. Maybe I'm shading these guys unnecessarily, but I do know that they both move to Puerto Rico solely for the purpose of taking advantage of the tax breaks that they could receive there and have received a lot of criticism for moving to this island with this incredibly rich heritage and culture that we've been talking about all episode and really not giving anything back to the people who live there or really honoring that tradition at all. So I see them as like sort of harbingers of. of this transformation that bad bunny fears. I mean, it's like if I were to show up and try to make residents in Texas and wore the clothes that I wear in Brooklyn, people would make a lot of fun of me and get mad at me.

It's like, this is not just Puerto Rico. Like, this is the act of trying to claim space into places that you don't have heritage and throwing your weight around. Like, you're going to get called out. Yeah, it's a quite depressing song, you know, and as somebody that is Puerto Rican but doesn't live on the island, like, it's very sad to think about, right? Like these Puerto Rican people forced out of their environments by the gentrification, the privatization of natural resources.

And he speaks in the song about the Heabato, right? Like the mountain man of Puerto Rico, forced to move to Orlando, Florida, you know, Florida being a hub for Latin immigrants, because the government pushed him out. It's really depressing and is a sense of storytelling that speaks to the struggles of the people. people, you know, directly to Puerto Ricans. And it's done in addition to the lyrics and the sonics by subtle moments that speak to Puerto Rican life. You know, the island frequently experiences large-scale blackouts and power outages. We talked about the song El Apagon earlier, El Apagon meaning the blackout. It's a theme that he's discussed in his work, but here he incorporates those blackouts sonically. At multiple points, the song cuts out, simulating.

those very blackouts and kind of drawing attention to the island losing power, perhaps metaphorically, drawing attention to the island losing its culture and it being erased. We drop out, we just hear the sort of flora fauna nightlife sound in the background in the background. no electricity. It's a song that I find interesting because it's designed for a kind of active listening. I think like an artist like Bad Bunny, right, could easily fall into, I think, like, the Drake method. Like put out an album, 20 songs, a long record that can serve as like background noise. You know, you like throw it on. You're not really fully paying attention or at least that's how I feel when I put on like fucking like Scorpion or something, right? Like it's like, this is not real music to listen to actively, you know?

This record in its flares, in its lyrics, is decidedly intentional. And I think Bad Bunny wants people to listen to what he's saying, especially Puerto Ricans. He wants him to absorb his message because he cares so deeply. And even if you're passively listening to a song like this, when the sound cuts out, it's very stark. where even if you're like doing something and you're listening and you hear that, you're like, oh, is there something wrong with my music? Because it just went out in the middle of the word. But that's the point. Super neat. Yeah. I mean, I've definitely been that casual listener. And I think great records work on both of those levels where it's like you can be drawn in by just the sounds. And they're so compelling that you're like, I need to listen more closely. This has more to tell me.

So loke et la Pazo at Hawaii has these folk elements, bad bunnies singing about the plates that face the people. In the back half of the song, he features the Lelolai, something he references in the chorus. And the Lelolai is a traditional Puerto Rican melody, one specifically relating to the mountain people he sings about, the He-Bottos. The song ends in that joyful Lelolai in a sort of triumphant moment where it's kind of symbolizing the people overcoming these issues that plague the island. You can hear it as if it's like sweeping over the plains, right? sweeping over the ocean, connecting to those, say, immigrants in Florida as well as the New Yorkans up in the East Coast, you know? That's not the only song on the record in this folk spirit, though. The song Cafe with Ron, which translates to coffee with Rome, features Los Pleneros de la Cresa and is an exercise in the music of Plena.

I should have known it wasn't about having coffee with a guy named Ron, so thank you for clarifying for this gringo listener. Wow, wow, wow. So this is a boppaque, you know, we heard Karina earlier when talking about salsa mentioned Plena music, right? And Plena is a folk rhythm characterized by two things, mostly, call and response and a multi-layered percussive beat using hand drums, among other percussive instruments, primarily hand drums. It's designed to be performed in a group with a communal element, right? Like we've been talking about folk music. We've been talking about the communal energy of such.

And you hear it. You know, there's back and forth in the lyrics, and it's a beat that relies on its hand drums. I'm stunned. The drumming is just spectacular. It's like you were saying earlier, Rihanna, the unity of this vision is so complete. There's nothing that is gratuitous here. It is all assembled in this cohesive and incisive unified message. And yet it slaps.

And yet these are bops, as we've noted. So it never feels like a lecture, you know, that makes you want to go like, oh, okay, you know, Got to go listen to Bad Bunny's, you know, anti-colonial history lesson now, yawn. Right. I think that's why, like, Cowboy Carter for me, it was a little bit of a slog because I think it means too heavily at points into that history lesson. Watch out for the beehive. I know. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I mean, it's also maybe a more challenging assignment to make country-esque songs that make you want to move in the same way. When you've got regga tonne plana salsa as your medium, you're going to get people onto the dance floor. That makes sense. Sorry, I know there's a lot of people who love to two-step. This comparison is just going to get some trouble. Yeah, I'm moving on. Well, I feel like it was almost a necessary step for Bad Bunny in some ways because I feel like he earned a bit of criticism from some of his longtime fans.

You know, his last album. We haven't even mentioned it in this whole conversation. Exactly. No, exactly. He had a whole other album in between this one and Unvaranad Sinti that no one really liked. his Kendall Jenner record. Yeah, his Kendall Jenner record, exactly. And that, and that relationship, I think, you know, was something that a lot of people who'd followed him sort of raised eyebrows at. This seems like he's reclaiming his roots, his ancestry, his authenticity in a way that was maybe necessary for him. It definitely feels like a big part of the formula now. If you are getting to be a legacy artist, you've put out four or five albums, you kind of have to go back to your roots.

The roots reset album, I feel like that's just part of a career arc at this point. And he's doing it well. But I feel like that's a little dismissive, Charlie. It's like there's more of an urgency here than just him like trying to, you know. Right. It's not Lady Gaga's Joanne. You know, this is something a lot more significant than just throwing on a cowboy hat. and going back to playing guitar, you know.

Well, he's particularly able to connect his heritage to something which is currently pressing. Right? Yeah. Like, his story, the island's story, is a story of this moment. And so, yes, it's a lot more than it's like, hey, look where I came from. I mean, it's a little bit, look where I came from, you know, in the sense that he has a sense of island pride, you know, naturally. I think a lot of Latinos have the same vibe, you know, like I'm looking right up my window.

have a giant Puerto Rican flag on my window. You know what I mean? Like it's like we rep that stuff. But here I think it's very distinct and pointed. You know, Plena, going back to Café Conron, Plena is folk music. And on this song, the lyrics gesture to the people, in the opening lines of the first verse, we have a call to the Puerto Rican towns of Arecibo, Ponce, Fayardo, and Rincon. And if you're unfamiliar with the map of Puerto Rico, those are towns.

on the north-south, east, and west of the island, on the coasts. So it's a folk song that's also meant to galvanize the entire island in a kind of backdoor way through these lyrics about Café and Rum. Like, he's speaking to the entire people. And Plena, to thread the needle here, is very similar to salsa in its instrumentation and cadence. Both are percussive genres relying on Afro-Caribbean rhythms and instruments. There's indigenous culture weaved in to the music, speaking to and of the people. So I wanted to bring it back to what we started talking about with salsa and my talk with Karina.

She pointed out to me that salsa draws from Plena, but is also, in a way, folk music. Another thing to me that's like really core to salsa, and this is also true of those folkloric genres that it draws from so much. Really has to do with liveliness. It has to do with sharing space and what becomes possible when we share space, right? The salsa that we call salsa is associated with kind of left-wing populism, right? Definitely Bad Bunny, I think, is like engaged with that legacy with what does it mean to make political pop music? Like salsa really proves that you don't have to simplify the sonics or the lyrics to make people party. So, on debitered armas photos, these disparate genres, salsa, reggaeton, plena, and folk music, are bridged together in the context of Puerto Rican and rebellion and specifically community.

And maybe in this grand conversation, regaton can be considered Puerto Rican folk music as well, considering its cultural history in relation to salsa and its roots of being on the streets and of the people. All right. Prediction. Next bad bunny record. all reggaeton played entirely on acoustic folk instruments from Puerto Rico. That's what I want to hear. I put money on that. I put money on that.

Save it for bingo next week, Charlie. Switch on Pop is produced by Rihanna Cruz, edited by Art Chung, engineered by Brandon McFarland, music by Zach Tenorio and Jossi Adams of Arc Iris, Illustrations by Iris Gottlie, or a member with the Vox Media podcast network and a production of Vulture, which is part of New York magazine. You can subscribe at NYMag.com slash pod. Find us on social media at Switchdown Pop and tell us what you're, favorite tracks from Bad Bunny's latest are. Go to our website, switch on pop.com, pop in your

email address to sign up to our newsletter. We only blast you once a week. And we've got merch, right? Mugs, totes. We also have a book. And I only mention that, even though it's been out for a couple of years, because it's kind of apropos that we are about to publish the Spanish translation of Switched on Pop, how popular music works and why it matters. Oh, yeah. Published by Liburu Auk in Spain, available January 20th. We'll put a link in the show notes. And you can listen to Bad Bunny while you read our book in Spanish.

How cool. Next week we'll be talking about the Grammys and our predictions for both the ceremony and the upcoming year in music. Yes. And everyone listening will be able to play along over the course of 2025. So don't miss this one. Got cool stuff planned. Until then, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.