On January 5, 2025, the eve of the Día de los Reyes—the Puerto Rican vacation often known as Three Kings Day—Unhealthy Bunny dropped his sixth studio album, titled Debí Tirar Más Fotos (stylized as DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS).
Followers already had a collection of hints in regards to the album’s themes, together with the standard Christmas aguinaldo in its second single, “PIToRRO DE COCO,” and a Google Map/Spotify scavenger hunt main followers round Puerto Rico to search out titles of songs, to a brief movie starring legendary Puerto Rican actor and director Jacobo Morales. The album has rapidly risen up the charts, and for the primary time in historical past salsa and plena reached primary on Apple Music. DTMF has additionally acquired critical acclaim from publications and music critics.
As with the artist’s 2022 album Un Verano Sin Ti, many opinions have referred to DTMF as a “love letter” to Puerto Rico, however labeling this album a mere love letter massively oversimplifies what Unhealthy Bunny is doing right here. This album is a warning to all Puerto Ricans—each these residing in Puerto Rico and within the diaspora—in regards to the state of their “archipélago perfecto” (as he refers to Puerto Rico within the album’s closing observe “LA MuDANZA”), and a rallying cry to deal with the myriad crises dealing with their homeland.
Many reviewers have identified the album’s fusion of reggaetón with extra conventional Puerto Rican rhythms like plena (showcased in “DtMF” and “CAFé CON RON”) and Seventies salsa (as heard in “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” and “LA MuDANZA”). Unhealthy Bunny has at all times blended genres with reggaetón, however the extra conventional Puerto Rican music right here is notable and a testomony to the pliability of the artist alongside along with his longtime producers Tainy, MAG, and La Paciencia. The album attracts from the lengthy historical past of Puerto Rican music-making as a type of resistance, notably towards U.S. colonialism, and using artwork and dance to inform tales of on a regular basis Puerto Rican life, pleasure, and battle.
However the Puerto Ricanness of this album extends far past the rhythms. DTMF, in addition to the media that accompany it, highlights how essentially the most fundamental parts of Puerto Rican life and id are quickly altering and, in some circumstances, even disappearing. Since their nation grew to become a colony of the U.S. in 1898, Puerto Ricans have spent the previous 126 years enduring all the pieces from forced sterilization and labor exploitation to the U.S. military’s decades-long practice of testing bombs on Puerto Rican lands. Over the previous 20-plus years, a devastating debt crisis has had disastrous results on public training, well being care, infrastructure, and extra. These issues have been solely compounded in 2017 when Hurricane María decimated Puerto Rico, leaving many Puerto Ricans with out energy for nearly a 12 months and killing at the least 4,645 folks. Each the U.S. and Puerto Rican governments have responded with more and more harsh austerity measures, in addition to the implementation of varied tax incentives in an effort to lure rich People to the archipelago. Concurrently, Puerto Ricans have migrated to the US—as they’ve finished for greater than a century—searching for higher alternatives.
Activists have organized towards gentrification, privatization, and displacement for years. Unhealthy Bunny already addressed these points in what many have thought-about his most political tune “El Apagón” (till DTMF got here alongside), which included a 20-minute documentary about these points in its music video. However in DTMF, the message is extra clear than ever earlier than—his lyrics rejoice Puerto Rico as essentially the most lovely, great place on the earth, they usually additionally warn that all the pieces that makes it particular is in danger.
That is maybe finest exemplified by the image of the sapo concho, the endangered crested toad native to Puerto Rico, which appeared in lots of the teasers for DTMF, together with the short film that Unhealthy Bunny launched simply days earlier than the album. Sadly, invasive species of overseas toads and the destruction of its pure habitat as a result of land improvement has pushed the sapo concho to the brink of extinction—and, all of the sudden, the hyperlink between the existential menace towards this small creature’s existence and the album’s political and cultural commentary turns into crystal clear. Within the brief movie, actor Jacobo Morales walks to purchase meals for himself and his pal Concho at a neighborhood bakery—a pursuit that takes him previous houses occupied by People taking part in loud rock and nation music, in distinction to the reggaetón that when stuffed the air. There, Morales encounters an English-speaking cashier who gives him unusual variations of Puerto Rican meals, most notably a conventional quesito (a cheese-filled puff pastry) with out the cheese. In a poignant second, a younger Puerto Rican man pays for Morales, who doesn’t have a cellphone to make use of on the newly cashless bakery. “Seguimos aquí,” he tells Morales. We’re nonetheless right here. Similar to the endangered sapo concho, what’s at stake is the lack of not simply Puerto Rican tradition, however Puerto Rico as a complete. Puerto Ricans should proceed to combat for his or her tradition and their group.
Picture courtesy of artist.
Whereas nearly each tune addresses this theme, maybe none does so in addition to “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii,” which interprets to “what occurred to Hawaii.” The sluggish, haunting tune warns Puerto Ricans that their land, their tradition, their very existence would possibly disappear. Like Puerto Rico, the U.S. acquired Hawaii in 1898. Regardless of receiving its standing as a state in 1959, Hawaii faces lots of the identical points as Puerto Rico, together with rich People taking on Indigenous Hawaiian lands, usually by unlawful means, and the decimation of Hawaiian tradition. In his tune, Unhealthy Bunny warns, “They need to take my river, and likewise the seashore/they need my neighborhood, and for my grandmother to go away.” He implores Puerto Ricans to carry onto their flag and their tradition. To hammer these messages house, the artist launched a collection of visualizers for the album on YouTube with textual content written by Puerto Rican historian Jorell Meléndez-Badillo detailing histories of Puerto Rican resistance and US colonialism on the archipelago.
DTMF thus paints a bleak portrait of Puerto Rico’s current and future if issues don’t seriously change, and shortly. Nonetheless, it additionally gives a message of hope. Along with collaborating with up-and-coming Puerto Rican stars, together with RaiNao and Dei V, Unhealthy Bunny labored with younger folks from Puerto Rico’s Escuela Libre de la Música, a music-focused faculty for center and highschool college students. These younger persons are the way forward for Puerto Rican music—each in shaping the place it’ll go and in preserving its musical traditions alive. Consequently, Unhealthy Bunny told the New York Times that these college students labored on the salsa songs for DTMF. The album’s ultimate tune, “LA MuDANZA,” is a salsa that ends with the triumphant chorus, “Yo soy de P FKN R”—a line that references considered one of Unhealthy Bunny’s first anthems of Puerto Rican pleasure “P FKN R.”
In that very same tune, Unhealthy Bunny declares that they need to “play my tune on the day they convey again Hostos,” referring to Eugenio María de Hostos, a nineteenth century Puerto Rican mental and independence activist. Having died in 1903, Hostos is interred within the Dominican Republic, the place he said he wanted his remains to remain till Puerto Rico gained independence. By referencing the return of Hostos, Unhealthy Bunny supplies a direct problem to Puerto Rico’s colonial standing and the issues it has wrought for residents. In the end, although, it gives a glimmer of hope: a name to think about a special form of future. So, sure: DTMF is a love letter, however it’s rather more than that. Although it’s cautious, tender, and nostalgic, it’s also a daring warning—and a rallying cry.
Vanessa Díaz is an Affiliate Professor Chicana/o and Latina/o Research at Loyola Marymount College. Petra Rivera-Rideau is an Affiliate Professor of American Research at Wellesley Faculty. Díaz and Rivera-Rideau each train programs about Unhealthy Bunny at their universities and they’re the co-founders of the Bad Bunny Syllabus Project.
