Bad Bunny has been on a winning streak.
The Puerto Rican musician is one of the most streamed artists in the world. He hosted Saturday Night Live, and is appearing in a slew of new movies.
All eyes are now on his 30-concert hometown residency, which runs through mid-September and has made Puerto Rico the center of the universe this summer.
His concerts, long sold out, have drawn hundreds of thousands of residents and fans from abroad to San Juan to revel in the songs from his latest album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (“I Should’ve Taken More Photos”).
The songs fuse modern Latin trap and reggaeton sounds with more traditional Caribbean sounds of plena, bomba, and salsa.
Bad Bunny — born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio — isn’t just celebrating Puerto Rican culture with this album and residency. He’s also using his platform to highlight the archipelago’s long and complicated history. And he’s done so through an unusual collaboration.
Today, Explained co-host Sean Ramewaram spoke with Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, an associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of Puerto Rico: A National History.
Meléndez-Badillo explains how their collaboration came about, the aspects of Puerto Rican history that Bad Bunny wanted to spotlight, and how Bad Bunny’s songs and videos are grounded in a history of colonialism and resistance.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Did you make it back to Puerto Rico this summer for a certain concert?
Yes, absolutely. I was in Puerto Rico for about a year on a research fellowship, and I got to go to the residency on its opening weekend.
Was it the greatest show you ever saw?
It absolutely was. It was mind blowing. I’ve seen Benito multiple times in different tours supporting different records, and this was by far his best concert of all the ones that I’ve seen.
And unlike every other single person at the Bad Bunny concert, you had a very different experience with this particular moment Bad Bunny is having. Tell us about it.
Last December, I was on vacation with my family in Portugal. I had left my computer behind. I was contacted via Instagram message from someone in Benito’s team saying that they were working with Bad Bunny and they were interested in knowing if I was interested in having a conversation about a potential collaboration with Benito. My heart dropped, as you can imagine. They sent a non-disclosure agreement.
But wait, you had to say no because you’re on vacation with your family in Portugal, right?
Exactly. But my family understood. They’re all Bad Bunny fans. We also have an altar, a shrine, for Bad Bunny in our house. And so I had to say yes. Five minutes later, we were on the phone, and they were telling me that Benito was going to drop a new record in a few weeks. They talked about the sensibilities of the record, how it was an homage to Puerto Rican culture, and how history was going to be central to the album’s narrative. They were interested in incorporating Puerto Rican history into the visualizers. Visualizers are the ways that artists monetize in YouTube. And so each one of the 17 songs in the record has a historical narrative that goes all the way from pre-Columbian history to the current political and social movement in Puerto Rico.
Tell us about this history.
Benito wanted for me to write about the general history of Puerto Rico, but he was also very adamant that there were certain things that he wanted to include. For example, the history of surveillance and repression in Puerto Rico throughout the 20th century; the history of colonial governance in Puerto Rico; and the history of plena and bomba, which are two Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and how it influenced reggaeton.
In addition to the visualizer videos, I also collaborated with Benito in the residency in Puerto Rico. The team wanted me to write about 40 historical texts of Puerto Rican history and Puerto Rican culture itself. So, it was an opportunity for me to highlight certain things that don’t usually get mentioned in Puerto Rican history: punk bands; Felix “Tito” Trinidad, our boxer; and our basketball team and how they beat the US Dream Team in Athens in 2004, which Benito talks about in one of his songs. So, for me, it was also mind-blowing to see my work not only in Benito’s visualizers, but also to be part of the residency in Puerto Rico, which is a historic residency.
When this album came out, I remember streaming it all weekend that first weekend and feeling like, ‘Oh, wow! This is this incredible comprehensive survey of the history of Puerto Rican music.’ You can just tell that from all the genres that are incorporated into the album, but I know nothing, zero, about the history of Puerto Rican music. How did it feel to someone like you who’s dedicated their life to this?
I became an academic and a scholar, the first in my family, because I wanted to take this knowledge out of the ivory tower of academia and democratize access to our history and knowledge. And so it was mind-blowing when the record came out January 5 at noon, to put the YouTube visualizers on and see Puerto Rican history accompanying these sounds.
The record is very political, even in the soundscape that it creates, mixing plena, salsa, all these Caribbean rhythms. Benito did not have to do this. He could have kept talking about expensive cars, you know, his life in Monaco, flying in private jets.
Dating a Jenner.
Dating a Jenner. That was, that was a tragic moment in his career. In Puerto Rico, Benito’s like that primo, that cousin that made it. And cousins sometimes do things that you do not agree with, but you still love him. And he spent time in LA, but then he came back to Puerto Rico. And I think there’s something about being in diaspora, in exile, about connecting with your roots and your identities, and I think that this record is an exploration into what it means for him to be Puerto Rican. And here you have arguably the, or empirically, the biggest star in the world — move to the side, Taylor Swift or Queen B, Beyoncé. You have the biggest star in the world using his platform to amplify Puerto Rican history and Puerto Rican culture.
I’m glad you brought up the world because after Bad Bunny finishes his stint in San Juan, he’s taking this show on the road, and he is one of the most streamed artists in the world. He’s been number one before. What do you think he wanted the world to learn about Puerto Rico by putting out this album?
I think that Bad Bunny wanted his listeners to understand the colonial reality of Puerto Rico. When we think about Puerto Rico, it’s always joy, beaches, and tropical paradise, but there are other realities. Benito is using his platform to highlight the colonial dimension of Puerto Rico to the United States. Puerto Rico has been undergoing a fiscal and political crisis since 2006, and it has been exacerbated throughout the last two decades, particularly after 2015 when the U.S. federal government, in a bill created by Republicans and signed by President Obama, created a fiscal oversight board of unelected members that have more power than the executive and legislative branches in Puerto Rico.
President Trump recently fired five of the members of this board, which triggers a conversation about the colonial relationship of Puerto Rico. First, we cannot elect the president of the United States, and second, we cannot elect the people in this highly unpopular fiscal oversight board. Benito’s songs like LA MuDANZA or LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii talk about the colonial reality that Puerto Ricans are living through. But if we look also at LA MuDANZA’s music video, Benito is also highlighting the resistance to that colonial situation.
Puerto Ricans have never stood to the side. Puerto Ricans have never been docile. Puerto Ricans have always dared to imagine themselves as something beyond their colonial rulers. And I think that that is very clear in the record, and it’s part of the conversations that have been triggered by the residency, by the record, and also by the aesthetic project that these two bring together.
Do people in Puerto Rico look to Bad Bunny to actually affect change, or are they happy enough with what he’s done, which is to put them on the map in a way that they weren’t on before or constantly bringing himself and his music and his message back to the island?
I think that everyone in Puerto Rico is in love with Bad Bunny at the moment. Even my grandmother, who used to say that he was malhablado, that he was always swearing and she disliked him, now she sings his songs. I think that people are happy. But I think that, more importantly, there is a generation that has been coined as the “crisis generation,” which Benito is part of, that only know crisis. The kids that were born in the late ‘90s and early 2000s went through the fiscal crisis that began in 2006, austerity measures, the implementation of an undemocratic fiscal oversight board by the U.S. government in 2015, school closings, Hurricane Maria, an earthquake swarm, the loss of power on an almost daily basis, corruption, et cetera. So the only thing that this generation knows is crisis. And I think that that generation is becoming more and more politicized.
The last election cycle was the first time in Puerto Rico’s modern history since the ’40s and ’50s that the pro-independence party got to second place. Benito supported the party publicly and was at their closing event. So, people are happy, people love Benito, but Benito also represents a generation that feels disenfranchised and is becoming more politicized. We needed an artist in the mainstream to amplify the conversations that are happening around colonialism, displacement, and crisis in Puerto Rico.
You refer to the artist known as Bad Bunny as Benito. Does everyone just call him Benito on the island?
Yeah. I think Benito is a term of endearment. Benito, you dated a Jenner, we still love you. When we are at the concert residency, we’re not only celebrating Benito, but it feels as if we’re celebrating ourselves. And so that’s why we are so happy to see him succeed.
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