Album Review: Debí Tirar Más Fotos by Bad Bunny
In his sixth studio album, the Puerto Rican artist asks himself what his legacy is, the mark, and the actual evolution of his work.
It can’t be a coincidence that Bad Bunny has had the ability, throughout his career, to turn each of his records into monoliths that mark a turning point not only in the Spanish-speaking music scene but even in our recent history. Each of his full-length projects, each of his aesthetic transformations, seems to have had the innate capacity to present itself as the sonic portrait of the moment they were released—or even as a harbinger of what awaited us around the corner. With X100PRE, the Puerto Rican artist consolidated Latin trap as that seemingly inexhaustible gold mine. Two years later, YHLQMDLG trusted in the promise of the future that these sounds held, crystallizing in its twenty historic tracks a Benito who, indeed, did whatever he wanted—a Bad Bunny beyond reggaeton and trap—just a few weeks before none of us could do anything we wanted.
For that very reason, he wanted to pay tribute to LAS QUE NO IBAN A SALIR, whether these were songs initially discarded or young people weary from the pandemic lockdown, and then choreograph, two solitary years later, a festive closing ceremony for the coronavirus with Un Verano Sin Ti Even albums we might consider minor, such as El Último Tour Del Mundo or Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana, can also be understood as sonic omens: the first, that definitive climax of the omnipotent nature of urban sound—of a Bad Bunny now understood as a musical genre in itself, of trap as the new pop—and the second, that twilight X100PRE that opened the debate on the relevance of post-pandemic trap. What’s clear is that even during these past few months in which Benito has disappeared from cultural conversation, Bad Bunny has been our chachalaca, that bird whose call announces the imminent rain. We know that Bad Bunny is still able to predict the future (of the industry), but in Debí Tirar Más Fotos, it’s Benito himself who explains from his sofa that he’s tired of being our Nostradamus of Urbano.
The sixth studio album from the Puerto Rican artist is far more concerned with being Puerto Rican than with being a sixth studio album. This is a record made with its back turned to the industry and facing a visceral commitment to those images that might remain locked in the past, to those traditional sounds that project into the future, and to seventeen relaxed songs that portray a Benito who has never been so present. Debí Tirar Más Fotos does not face Puerto Rico—it is Puerto Rico. Bad Bunny depicts this brilliant sonic landscape with a much more centripetal than centrifugal sensitivity, using the musical genre as a political tool and, as if they were synonyms, as a mechanism of poetic justice. The emotive core of this Caribbean party undeniably lies in the magical balance Benito finds between his engaged ideological side and the hedonistic nature of his homeland’s rhythms, between introspective nostalgia accompanied by a comforting homemade brew and the explosive euphoria that one can only find under the intermittent darkness of an unknown club at three in the morning (there, or in YHLQMDLG). “Por la noche bebiendo tequila, por el día matcha,” the Puerto Rican asserts in “Ketu Tecré.”
It’s therefore consistent that the album’s first single was “El Clúb,” precisely because of the inconsistent dialogue it carries on with the rest of the record. On that elegant, soft, deep house beat, Benito crafts a jealous elegy to his ex while, in a bizarrely chaotic music video, his image glitches and explodes until it’s lost in an overwhelming, nightmarishly incoherent flood of images (in other words, lost on the Internet). “Mami, ese no soy yo,” the incorrigible melancholic exclaims in a track that seems to function like that mental breakdown one suffers in the big city right before realizing they need to return home to their people and their sounds. Benito thus lands in Puerto Rico by sampling the iconic salsa of El Gran Combo on “Nueveyol,” turning it into a suggestive dembow with rough bass that again proves that talking about musical genres is already an anachronism—“¿cómo Bad Bunny va a ser rey del pop con reggaeton y dembow?”
Those traditional Puerto Rican sounds find their most spontaneous place in “Baile Inolvidable,” an ode to memory that, after a deceptive synthesizer from Troy that momentarily transports us to urbano, explodes into the fever dream of any ballroom dance enthusiast, in a salsa jam session that turns Bad Bunny into that Miles Davis who guided the sonic structure of “You’re My Everything” (58) with his own voice. Also exciting is the purity of the folkloric percussion on “Café Con Ron,” a collaboration with Los Pleneros de la Cresta that is both a lovely tribute to the Puerto Rican plena and to that afternoon coffee that ends up turning into a rum and cola at dawn. In fact, what was left of that shared bottle of rum ended up poured into “Pitorro de Coco,” a Christmas hangover in which Benito embodies the tragic soul of the bolero, whispering in our ear his most hopeless yet sincere side.
Bad Bunny does not forget reggaeton as an inseparable extension of himself and his homeland—“aquí nací yo y el reggeaton”—and gifts us several instant classics for the devotees of YHLQMDLG and Un Verano Sin Ti. We even get the legendary siren of “Safaera” in “Voy a Llevarte Pa PR,” a collection of indistinguishable sounds from the history of reggaeton, laid out over this purist Tainy beat with a double reference to Rosalía included (see the quote from the lyrics of “Vampiros” at the end of the track). Something in “Perfumito Nuevo” might remind us of that summery collaboration with Bomba Estéreo that was “Ojitos Lindos,” but those EDM synthesizers—which for a moment seem to invoke Bizarrap—and RaiNao’s splendid voice bring an energetic emotionality to this surprising reggaeton rhythm, an unexpected surge of frenzy. Though slightly less effective, the carefree delivery from Omar Courtz and Dei V takes us back to the previous decade while once again pointing to Puerto Rico as the world capital of perreo.
It’s impossible not to feel a visceral déjà vu when hearing the initial melody of “La Santa” reinterpreted in the intro of “Kloufrens” or to experience a certain paranoia upon detecting, as if it were a subtle cacophony the female voice from the epilogue of “Si Estuviésemos Juntos” in some verses of the monumental “Eoo:” the spiritual successor of “Safaera,” a time capsule of pre-pandemic happiness, an unfiltered bombardment by the master Tainy; lustful violence, violent lust, pure physicality in one of those songs that prove the unquestionable power of Latin rhythms. On the other side of the coin is the moving “Bokete,” a ghostly ballad drowned in fog, one of those poems that lift us slightly off the ground and that recovers a facet of Benito achingly devoted to sadness and romance—as he already showed in his underrated “Trellas.” It’s one in a million, surprisingly moving.
Goosebumps when dancing perreo, goosebumps when longing, and goosebumps when Bad Bunny invites us to a melancholic dance with “DTMF,” a track that seems to contain within it all of the album’s intentions. Just like throughout the entire journey through Puerto Rico that Debí Tirar Más Fotos narrates, Benito looks to the past with melancholy, the future with calm, and the present with the happiness of someone who knows he misses people while embracing those who are still here. His people and his homeland merge in this endearing anthem of sweet percussion, which, despite not being as explicitly political as the critique of gentrification that shapes “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii,” encourages a heartfelt celebration of the landscapes our loved ones once enjoyed, turning any small moment into an image if it means never losing it.
That’s why Benito takes a picture of the voices that do the backing vocals on “DTMF;” that’s why Bad Bunny sings with his back turned to us in Debí Tirar Más Fotos. We, too, should be listening to the Puerto Rican’s most personal project with our backs turned as we look into the eyes of our loved ones through the camera’s viewfinder, as we cry for those who now only exist in our phone’s photo gallery, and as we dream about the next time Bad Bunny’s music will play while we go out with those who are sure to remain.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Kloufrens,” “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii,” “DTMF”