DEBÍ TIRAR MÁS FOTOS by bad bunny.
wahhhhhhh.
i’m puerto rican.
…if we’re being technical. really, there’s nothing “puerto rican” about me. i grew up in semirural pennsylvania. i only started liking spicy food as an adult. i’m scared of frogs. i have no rhythm. i don’t speak spanish at all—my father’s fluent, but he never spoke it to me as a child. he always places the blame on my mother, and she places the blame on him. my mom and sisters are all white as can be, german corn-fed light-eyed women with pink faces. i always thought i looked like an alien beside them: dark-eyed and olive-skinned with a flat, square nose. i always felt ugly. i hated my eyes the most.
my mom once said that she thought that i got into full-day kindergarten in the name of “diversity.” her mother used to call me “exotic.” being mixed is its own curse. you’re too X to be Y, but too Y to be X. and as the only child of my parents, it’s also isolating. sure, i share traits with my sisters and mother, but what about what i share with my father? there’s no one to have a camaraderie with over such things. a while ago i was watching my sisters’ children play, and i realized that no one would ever say you look just like your aunt to them about me. my sister ashleigh’s first son is a dead ringer for our sister that passed. leo’s oldest nephew looks a far bit like leo when he was a child. maybe it’s a stupid thing to get upset about, but it makes me feel like an island. one time, my nephew called me his babysitter to one of his playmates. “babysitter?” i said. “i’m your aunt.”
i’ve always felt like a piece of me was missing. my father’s parents lived in chicago, along with most of his side of the family. i saw them sparingly as a child, just once or twice that i can remember. my grandfather died when i was in second grade, and my grandmother is afraid of flying (just like me), so she didn’t make the journey to pennsylvania for a long time.
i’d listened to a little bit of bad bunny before. just a song here and there. “booker t” is awesome. i’ve heard a couple other songs just incidentally. i’ve always been nebulously fond of him the way i am of any famous puerto rican person, with exceptions. i saw the album cover on my spotify front page when the album dropped, and i thought well, maybe. then, a few weeks later, i was talking to my friend ines and it came up. listen to it! she said, and she’s my beloved twin, so i listened to it.
i didn’t expect debí tirar más fotos to make me cry. i didn’t expect to really feel too much of anything, but maybe that was foolish. reggaeton and salsa was what my father listened to when i was a child. i always get nostalgic when i hear those reggaeton beats—you know them—and my blood fizzes like there’s something in me that’s been waiting to hear those sounds all my life.
NUEVAYOL
it’s incredible how i’ve been doing this for almost a year (listening to music, that is) and i’ve yet to find an album with an opener that i’m truly disappointed by. once again, “nuevayol” is a fantastic opener. it immediately introduces the album’s musical thesis—the combination of modern reggaeton with traditional latino music like salsa, plena, and jíbaro.
this song throws you in the deep end. it’s as much a declarative statement—here we are! have some rum!—as it is a welcome into the album and the culture that you’re about to be sonically surrounded by. and it makes you feel like dancing. so, like. it’s perfect.
VOY A LLEVARTE PA PR
…that being said, not every single song is superlative. i don’t think there’s a single song on this album that’s total dogshit, but not every single one is special. “voy a llevarte pa pr” isn’t a fantastic follow-up to what i consider to be such a fantastic opener, but maybe that works in its favor. you’re caught up in the rapture of “nuevayol” and when it transitions to “voy a llevarte pa pr” the beat is enough to carry you through it without much complaint. it’s just fine!
BAILE INOLVIDABLE
my first favorite track off of the album. the horns that kick in at :47 make me levitate. the way they sound over the melancholy synth is nothing short of transcendent to me. then, after jacobo morales’s interlude (translated: “while one is alive/one must love as much as possible”), the synths fall away to salsa, and it becomes a track that would sound at home coming out of my dad’s stereo out in the barn in 2002. it’s beautiful.
i fucking love the refrain. the translated lyrics:
yeah, whatever, it’s nothing special lyrically. but it’s the delivery of the words, it’s the way that they sound on the track. the beauty of language is that each language has its own rhythm, its own poetry and whether you can understand it or not, the emotion comes through. unlike language, emotions are the same everywhere. it’s human, it’s beautiful.
as far as i’m concerned, this song is perfection.
PERFUMITO NEUVO, featuring RAINAO
WELTITA, featuring CHUWI
with “perfumito neuvo,” a superlative track has once again been followed by one that’s just okay. not bad, but not special. between the two collabs with female vocalists that he’s squished up against each other in the tracklist, i prefer “weltita.”
i don’t know why, but when i listened to this song while reading the translated lyrics it got my eyes all misty. i thought it was so sweet, particularly lorén aldarondo torres’s verse. her voice is so pretty, i might have to listen to chuwi. from her verse: “you take me to build sandcastles/and the castles turn into little villages/a small town where problems don’t exist.” it reminds me of something that leo said to me once that i hold dear.
VELDÁ featuring OMAR COURTZ & DEI V
a track that left little impression on me. i do like how most of its runtime is taken up by bad bunny’s guests—it makes it feel like he orchestrated this track just to get his friends in the studio for some fun.
EL CLÚB
KETU TECRÉ
BOKETE
KLOUFRENS
the four-song run of “el clúb,” “ketu tecré,” “bokete,” and “kloufrens” as melancholy club bangers is just fine. how many songs can a pisces male have about being sad that he broke up with his girl??? a lot!!! i do like all three of these songs. i must reiterate: i like every song on this album as a baseline. there are no stinkers. but just because they’re not stinkers doesn’t mean they’re special. they’re just fine. i do particularly love his vocal delivery on the chorus of “bokete.”
TURISTA
here, the album shifts away from the club. we’re still sad about a girl, but we’ve left the club. maybe we’re drunkenly shambling up the road in tears. bad bunny compares the girl that’s broken his hear to a tourist—“you only saw the best of me and not how i was suffering.” that’s very cutting, considering he’s from a place that is constantly filled with vile american tourists. honestly, at some points during this song you start to wonder if he’s talking about a girl and calling her a tourist as a metaphor or if he’s just talking about tourists but likening them to a girl that’s broken his heart. the music is sweet, his voice even moreso. this is where the album comes back to life, for me.
CAFÉ CON RON, featuring LOS PLENEROS DE LA CRESTA
after all the songs about being sad over GIRLS, we finally have a song for the BOYS.
with “café con ron,” we have exited the ghetto of feelings, so to speak, and have reentered the neighborhood of “fuck yes.” i love this song. what isn’t there to love? the tracklist may say that it “features” los pleneros de la cresta, but this is just as much their song as it is bad bunny’s. don’t let my brevity fool you—i love this song. just listen to it!!! LISTEN TO IT!!! I CAN’T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT IT THAT THE SONG CAN’T SAY FOR ME!!!
PITORRO DE COCO
who wants to listen to a sad christmas song after christmas? i do. the bass(???) kicks in at :43 and makes you wanna say fuck santa claus. it’s crazy that the instrumental is so good and he’s just talking about being sad that santa didn’t bring him his girl.
LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAII
a ballad in which bad bunny begs for puerto rico not to bow to the united states the way that hawaii was forced to. puerto rico is, functionally, a colony of the united states. it exists in a kind of purgatory in which it is neither its own country nor a part of “ours.” puerto rico relies on the united states for support, and in return, the united states use it as a vacation destination. i can’t pretend like i’m intelligent enough to educate someone else on this topic. it’s the same as it is anywhere: the poor are displaced by capitalists that want to build resorts. of course, it’s more complex than that, and there’s a deeper history, but…
“lo que le pasó a hawaii” is a melodic ache. bad bunny paints pictures of the jíbaro left behind on the island. “no, don’t let go of the flag nor forget the lelolai,” he says, telling his people not to forget each other or their joy.
in 2021, i got to go to puerto rico for the first time. i went with leo and his parents, and we stayed at a resort. i’m very thankful i was able to go and i had a lovely time, but i also feel like i missed out on seeing so much. i barely saw san juan. i didn’t see the city my family is from. and that’s not their fault—they went on vacation. i should’ve been on a trip. and so i became some small part of the problem, vacationing at a resort that was surely once someone’s home, or someone’s planting field, or someone’s playground. where did they go? i don’t know, but the beach is for guests only, so at least it’s clean. right?
the song is appropriately barren. the music isn’t the point—it’s the message, and he lets that stand on its own.
EOO
you need a pick-me-up after that. we’re in the club again, but this song is sonically distinct from the chunk of club bangers in the middle of the album. this one’s very aggressive, which i love. it reminds me of the delivery on the daddy yankee tracks my dad used to listen to when i was a kid. at 1:10, we switch it up and slow it down for the rest of the song, which i love. i love a song with unexpected twists and turns. probably my favorite of the dance tracks on this album. in case it wasn’t clear just from reading what i’ve said, the back end of the album from “turista” on really shines for me.
DTMF
the penultimate track, which also happens to be the titular track. it’s beautiful and it makes me cry. even though the lyrics are so rooted in his own experience, in his own life, it’s a universal notion. “i should’ve taken more pictures.” “i should’ve enjoyed myself more.” “i should’ve lived more.” he yearns for his girl (typical), but he yearns for puerto rico, too. he namedrops friends at the beginning, and at the end it’s “now bernie has a baby, and jan has a girl.” life has gone on. unless you take pictures and make memories, there’s nothing for you to look back on. i don’t know, it’s not deep, but his delivery, the choir of joyous voices, the music—it’s everything.
LA MUDANZA
bayamón is the city that my father’s family is from. wow, he’s just like me fr.
i don’t think anyone would’ve complained if the album had ended with “dtmf.” honestly, i would’ve expected it. but i find “la mudanza” an appropriate bookend to the opening track “nuevayol.” they’re both so declarative. “nuevayol” says “we are here.” and “la mudanza,” with its prologue about bad bunny’s parents, says “i am here.”
best song? “baile inolvidable.”
Love this so much. 💕
Will you llevarme pa PR?