Bad Bunny’s sixth studio album Debí Tirar Mas Fotos was released on January 5th, 2025 and is connecting to listeners world wide.
The album started out in the number two spot on the Billboard Top 100. It quickly gained popularity by listeners and on Tik Tok, then secured the number one spot in its second week. The track “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” became his fifth number one hit on the Billboard Global 200.
Bad Bunny is from Puerto Rico and makes sure that everyone knows it. He is incredibly proud of his people and his island and is not afraid to incorporate into his songs political statements on issues Puerto Rico faces. To strengthen his messages, he rarely sings in English. During an interview with Vanity Fair he stated,
Historically, to be successful, latino singers have had to make music in English to appeal to mainstream audiences in the United States. Bad Bunny’s huge success while creating art in his native language is breaking barriers. His songs have become wildly popular through social media with people in the United States, as well as around the world, who do not speak Spanish. His album Un Verano Sin Ti, won Best Música Urbana Album for the 2023 Grammy’s, he has ten other Grammy nominations, and 15 top ten hits on the Billboard 100.
His previous albums have highlighted Puerto Rico and its culture. At the peak of Bad Bunny’s career, he still has Puerto Rico in mind and the island is just as important to him now as it was in the beginning of his career. Debí Tirar Más Fotos is incredibly Puerto Rican themed and continues to highlight the beauty of the island, its people, and preserving the island.
In some of his songs, he captures love and sadness, and others he makes strong political statements. To get a better understanding of some of the songs on the album, I read an article from The Miami Hurricane.
In the track “TURiSTA” (“tourist”) Bad Bunny tells a story that relates to the relationship tourists have with the island. They come to enjoy it, then go back to their homes leaving the problems and suffering of the island behind.
“LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii” (“What happened to Hawaii”) is a protest against American colonization and diminishing of Puerto Rican culture. This sad and eery-sounding song references the loss of culture and native language through gentrification and displacement in Hawaii, and how he doesn’t want that to happen to Puerto Rico. In an interview for Hawaii Public Radio, professor of Asian Pacific American studies at Arizona State University, Rudy Guevarra Jr. said:
“NUEVAYoL” combines salsa, which is popular with older generations, and reggaetón (a kind of rapping) that is popular with younger people, to bring generations together. The track is inspired by a Puerto Rican salsa song released in 1970, “Un Verano en Nueva York” (“A Summer in New York”) by El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico and Andy Montañez. “NUEVAYol” has gone viral on Tik Tok because it brings back memories in parents and grandparents while also bringing a new version of the song to light. Many younger people have been posting their parents or grandparents blindly reacting to the song, often resulting in people breaking out into salsa and dancing around the kitchen.
“DtMF” (shortened “I should have taken more photos”) is the very nostalgic-sounding titular track. Bad Bunny recently appeared on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. In the show, when talking about what the title of the album translates to and what the album as a whole means, Bad Bunny said,
You can watch the whole show below.
