Across five studio albums in just over six years, Bad Bunny has made music for the masses without sacrificing his culture. Now, as he enters his 30s, Benito has paused to reflect on this unprecedented moment: a time when música urbana has surged onto the global stage and risks being diluted by its own commodification. He could’ve recruited the biggest names in Latin music to chase more Grammys and streams. Instead, Bad Bunny returned to his beloved Puerto Rico, forging a deeper connection to his community and producing his most profound statement yet. In a fraught political moment following the victory of Donald Trump and a devastating loss for the Puerto Rican Independence Party in the 2024 election, Bad Bunny’s sixth studio album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (I Should Have Taken More Photos), is a bold declaration—a groundbreaking testament to his evolved artistry and vision for the future of música urbana.
Its release date, January 5th, marks not just the eve of Día de los Reyes (Three Kings Day) but a week of historical significance for Puerto Ricans. Roughly 157 Januaries ago, Bori revolutionaries established the Comité Revolucionario de Puerto Rico during political exile in the Dominican Republic, drafted the first flag in solidarity with Dominican and Cuban designs, and sparked el Grito de Lares in 1868, the island’s first armed uprising against Spanish colonial rule. Though the rebellion was crushed, its cultural and political symbolism had sown the seeds for Puerto Rican identity and independence. On album opener “NUEVAYoL,” Bad Bunny launches his own musical revolution in New York City, where exiled Grito participants produced the familiar sky-blue Bandera, a symbol of independence and defiance.
“NUEVAYoL” sets the fuse with 20 seconds of El Gran Combo’s 1975 salsa hit “Un Verano en Nueva York” before igniting into an explosion of Dominican dembow madness. It’s a savvy collision of past and present that swings a machete through the Boricua musical fabric. The smallest of details, like the crisp, reverberating crack of a home run or the mention of salsa icon Willie Colón’s debut, El Malo—prodigious boogaloo compositions recorded when he was only 16—are romantic in a distinctly Boricua way. DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS is studied, deliberate, and intricate, interpolating multiple generations of Puerto Rican rhythms: Salsa, plena, bolero, and old-school perreo paired with today’s Latin pop and música urbana. Bad Bunny, ever the perreo scholar, lets the hand drums and Afro-Indigenous sounds live right alongside the hypnotic synth lines and sub-rattling bass.
Listen to the captivating six-minute salsa “BAILE INoLVIDABLE,” where a heartbroken Benito pictures life as a party that must one day end. The passion in the refrain comes in waves—“No, no te puedo olvidar/No, no te puedo borrar/Tú me enseñaste a querer/Me enseñaste a bailar” (“No, I can’t forget you/No, I can’t erase you/You taught me to love/You taught me to dance”)—set to a brassy, unquenchable corrillo that captures the nostalgia of past love with a sense of grace that lingers like rum in the throat. Later, as Benito sings, “Y yo tenía mucha’ novia’/Pero como tú, ninguna” (“And I’ve had a lot of girlfriends/But nobody like you”) the words wash like seafoam, affirming: It’s me, not you. Performed by students from el Libre de Música San Juan, this perfect salsa counteracts sorrow with the healing properties of its horns, drumline, and cowbell. When the piano solo cuts in like a much-needed smoke break, it invokes Tito Nieves in the ’90s or Héctor Lavoe in the ’70s: classic salseros whose music was designed to hurt so good.
DeBí TiRAR MáS FOToS is more than just a means of liberating the hips; it arrives amid a broader narrative of the island’s struggle for sovereignty, rooted in compounded centuries of Spanish, then American, colonization. DTMF reminds us that while musicians worldwide look to Boricua innovation and resistance for inspiration, many Puerto Ricans feel like an endangered species on their own land. Many islanders rang in 2025 in the dark, experiencing yet another blackout of the unreliable, privatized power grid; just after New Year’s Day, a Missouri tourist allegedly set fire to three local businesses in Cabo Rojo before fleeing back to the States. Life on the island consists of Boricuas confronting the consequences of nearly 130 years of U.S. corporate investment and gentrification through generous tax incentives. The beautiful bolero lullaby “TURiSTA” underscores this toxic, transactional relationship. And on the muted bachata “BOKeTE,” or “Potholes,” Benito swerves around deception as if primed by the island’s crumbling roads.
The DTMF short film stars Jacobo Morales, the now 90-year-old director of Lo que pasó a Santiago, the only Puerto Rican film ever to be nominated for an Oscar, nearly 35 years ago (the Academy subsequently banned Puerto Rican submissions in the International category, forcing the island’s filmmakers to compete against American studio budgets). One scene imagines a Borinquén so depleted of Boricuas that hearing reggaetón blasting from the street is a distant memory. The perreo sucio “EoO” commits to keeping our classics relevant by calling back to the mid-’90s, when the police and National Guard tried to combat violence and other “obscenities” by sweeping reggaetón CDs and tapes off the streets. The crackdown fueled the rise of underground perreo clubs, such as DJ Negro’s The Noise, which hosted early stars like Baby Ranks and Ivy Queen. Producer and frequent collaborator Tainy’s expertise in this era shines as he builds the song’s sweltering beat around the chorus of Héctor y Tito’s 2002 track “Perreo Baby” and samples the final second of his X 100pre production for “Solo de Mí”: “¡Mira, puñeta, no me quiten el perreo!” (literally “Damn, don’t take away my perreo!” but more like the Boricua version of “Bitch, don’t kill my vibe!”). The rare reggaetón song to thirst after a woman turning 30—more of that, please—“EoO” is dedicated to the generation of millennials who grew up witnessing a crucial phase in the development of urbano music on the island.
To preserve that essence of Puerto Rican sound, Benito enlists some of the island’s top talent. “VeLDÁ” is Caribe catnip, combining trap sensations Omar Courtz’s drawn-out “bellaquitaaa” with Dei V’s signature “underwaaater” tag at a frequency only baddies can hear; Wisin, an icon of old-school perreo, shows up to contribute an interlude. The silky, spellbinding Latin pop on “PERFuMITO NUEVO,” featuring alt-urbana artist RaiNao, is a seamless continuation of her brilliant 2024 album CAPICÚ. In “WELTiTA,” the voice of Lorén Aldarondo of the genre-defying band Chuwi overflows with raw emotion, channeling the power of their hometown’s infamous coastal pozo, or blowhole. The song recounts a local legend of a jíbaro named Jacinto, who, after eating his last meal near the caves, is dragged by a frightened cow into the sea, where a thunderstorm seals his fate. It’s a tender, salt-sprayed tribute to the mystical and turbulent nature of Puerto Rico’s folklore and natural landscape.
But Bad Bunny doesn’t seek to simplify the nuances of Boricua traditions to convert tourists. He wants to make a tangible change on the island. Plena, a genre often called “el periódico cantado” (“the singing newspaper”) for its legacy of political and social commentary in the working-class barrios of 20th-century Ponce, gets a well-deserved spotlight on “CAFé CON RON.” Joined by Los Pleneros de la Cresta, Bad Bunny taps into one of Puerto Rico’s oldest musical traditions, first evoking images of celebrating Las Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastián from his balcony before accents of Latin club draw the pandereta-led revelry toward a smoky mountain peak. The chilling “Lo que le pasó a Hawaii” first staggers, then marches to battle with drums engulfed by hypnotizing guitar. Under a humid fog, Benito vows to keep fighting alongside his community to preserve the island’s rituals before they’re lost to overtourism.
Perhaps Bad Bunny’s most impressive achievement with this record is that older generations have never wanted to listen to música urbana more. Forty-and-over Diasporicans are fierce defenders of our history, though some find the sound and subject matter of today’s urbano too vulgar. With its balanced application of cross-generational references, DTMF is closing that divide. Heartfelt moments and family photos set to the plena title track and videos of parents and abuelitas moved to tears by the music are saturating social media: DTMF is nostalgic for our elders while inspiring new generations to carry their teachings forward. Bad Bunny brought perreo to the global mainstage years ago; with DeBí TiRAR MáS FOToS, he encourages future stars of Latin music to reclaim its roots. That’s where the medicine is.
