By basically any metric, Bad Bunny is one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. Yet as he’s released the most-streamed album on Spotify (2022’s Un Verano Sin Ti) and sold out concerts around the globe, the Puerto Rican rapper, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, has always put his island first. This homegrown, “sobre Puerto Rico para Puerto Rico” ethos has never been more apparent than on his newly released seventh record, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, a dense and sprawling tome about Puerto Rico’s musical and cultural history.
On a record that’s wholly about the island’s neocolonization at the hands of turistas, the ideological centerpiece is “Lo que le pasó a Hawaii,” a sparse, moody warning about the rapid gringo-ification of Puerto Rico. Over a stripped-back instrumental full of sounds you would hear walking down cobblestone streets in San Juan—güiros and guitars—Bad Bunny speaks slowly and with a measured intimacy. “Que no quiero que hagan contigo lo que le pasó a Hawái” (“I don’t want them to do to you what they did to Hawaii”), he cautions, drawing connections between the current plight of the Puerto Rican people and the way Hawaiian statehood has threatened local culture. At times his vocals cut off mid-phrase for dramatic effect, simulating the electrical blackouts the island frequently experiences.
On Un Verano Sin Ti’s “El Apagón,” Bad Bunny sang the praises of PR, extolling the island’s beaches, people, and culture. “Lo que le pasó a Hawaii” is the brooding yin to the older song’s boisterous yang: Here, he reckons with what happens after the vacation ends, the sun goes back behind the clouds, and the visitors return to their home countries with a coqui figurine and a sunburn. It’s a song filled with a simmering, generational anxiousness rarely seen from the reggaetonero, moving beyond hometown pride and into radical music.
