In January 2025, Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny released his newest album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. It was a genre-blending protest album, a love letter to Puerto Rico, and a radical departure from his previous work. More importantly, it was a massive hit. I could wax poetic about how big of an impact this album has made here on the island, but, well, I’m sure most of our readers here at the University of Puerto Rico have stepped outside recently. He swiftly followed up the popularity of this album with news of his late summer 2025 residency, No me quiero ir de aqui, at the Coliseo, which sold out every single one of the 31 shows in record time and flooded millions into the local economy. Intent to prove that he truly is on a generational run, Bad Bunny just won the coveted Album of the Year award at the Grammy’s just last week with DTtMF being the first Spanish-language album to ever receive the honor. The record-breaking artist is also slated to perform in what may be the most controversial Superbowl halftime show ever this February 8, 2026.
Don’t be fooled though, I have no intentions of discussing the drama surrounding the SuperBowl. Instead, I would like to focus on Benito’s artistry — especially when so many Americans seem to only be able to think about him as a MAGA-offending machine. This album is truly a masterpiece, and I don’t want his artistic merits to be overshadowed by his convenience as a political bludgeoning tool. DtMF could perhaps be best described as a homecoming for Benito, where he explores the experience of coming back and recommitting to the island after several years of being a global superstar. He experiments not only with el género urbano, what he’s most known for, but also with salsa and a myriad of other traditional music genres seldom known outside the island. Many have even speculated that the success of songs like “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” could even herald a comeback for salsa music in upcoming years.
DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS is not only a tribute to the culture of PR, but also a love letter to its people — an idea Benito truly commits to. The album is shaped by the inclusion of dozens of young aspiring artists from around the island; most notably the traditional music group Los Sobrinos, which, as the name implies, is made up entirely of high school and college aged musicians. It’s rare for an artist forged in the fires of el género urbano to devote so much time into helping pull other artists up to share his fame. It is this humility, this constant sincerity in his desires for our people that have truly earned him the hearts of so many Boricuas. It’s a reminder that Puerto Rico is not simply a beautiful Caribbean destination full of people tripping over themselves to be nice and pleasant towards tourists, but a sum of a people marked by our talent, our strength, and our sheer drive to keep moving forwards.
More than that, DtMF carries with it a melancholy romanticism that is deeply, achingly vulnerable. It’s a beautiful expression of the sadness that permeates our colonial existence. Despite the idea that Puerto Ricans are loud and proud in our patriotism, our survival is a quiet one. The slow deterioration of our infrastructure and the systemic dismantling of all our most important institutions (such as the University of Puerto Rico) is a war of attrition upon everybody on the island. The fear of being starved out of your home, of the constant knowledge that one day everything you so desperately cling to will turn to sand between your fingers, of the tragedy that is only having pictures to remember it all by is one of the central themes of the album. Its presence thrums as it intertwines with the joy and love and pride of the album, a cold breeze on a night out partying.
If you are like me, the experience of listening to the album may leave you wondering: what happens to us now? Who even is “us”? If the election season in 2024 taught us anything, it’s that Puerto Rico is more divided than ever. With everything that has happened since then, the days of Dalmau’s governor run seem further than ever. Even as we all scramble for a solution, it almost feels like everyone is looking forward to a different horizon, and much like a horizon, the finish line is nothing but an unreachable illusion. We are Puerto Rican, but what does that even mean?
I believe that Benito can give us the start of an answer. After all, this piece of music that has resonated so widely showcases many different sides of Puerto Rico. In “NUEVAYoL,” he portrays the island as a sort of Promised Land for the diaspora, who through establishments like the iconic Caribbean Social Club, have made it so that “PR se siente cerquita.” And yet, even these attempts to recreate Puerto Rico leave something to be desired, as he asserts in “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii” that those who have left the island dream of returning. To islanders, he speaks both about minor inconveniences (such as the rather silly comparison between dodging a bad relationship and a pothole) and of a wider nationalistic ideal. Throughout the album, he calls back several times to historic nationalist movements in Puerto Rico, especially through his song “LA MuDANZA.” The image of Puerto Rico he ascribes to those who live on the island is one where oppression and injustice run rampant, but also one where our best memories are made — a beloved homeland that we must defend. To the rest of the world, he presents an irreverent challenge, saying “a mi me importa un b*ch* lo que a ti te vale v*rg*,” full of confidence as he knows he has brought Puerto Rican culture into the global spotlight. It’s an assertion: we are here and you will acknowledge us, sí o sí. It speaks about how he, and by extension, all of us who resonate with his music, ideate ourselves as a people. These visions of Puerto Rico that Bad Bunny offers us are not just some sanitized amalgamation of Latino identity built off nostalgia and convenience, but the shape of an ever evolving national identity: an identity that Benito has firmly cemented himself as a part of.
It’s easy to speak about countries and states and nations nowadays. The status issue is an evergreen political talking point, and we all have an opinion. It’s easy to speak about Puerto Rico as an amorphous concept that means anything that we ourselves mean by saying it. But what isn’t so easy is to talk about what Puerto Rico is right now.
We could be a colony, too. I’d certainly say we are, though some may disagree. But even then, I’m uncomfortable defining Puerto Rico as solely a colony because it’s far more than just a colonial status. And yeah, sure, Puerto Rico is technically “El Estado Libre Asociado,” or a supposed commonwealth if we go by the American translation. We all know that it technically means something, but we also know that it doesn’t really mean anything either. It is a term best described by what it is not.
Puerto Rico is not a country. It is not a sovereign state, or even an U.S. state for that matter. Puerto Rico is not a country, because a country is, essentially, the geographical boundaries of a state. And it’s not a sovereign state either because sovereign state refers to the political body that governs a country. Very cyclical definitions, but it’s a cycle that we are not in, anyways. It’s certainly not an U.S. state. However, isn’t it kinda weird that if we’re not a state, or a country, or anything else really, that Puerto Rico can even have a national identity?
Well, that’s because we actually are a nation. In political science, nation is not actually synonymous with country, but a different concept entirely. A nation is not defined by its government, or its structure, or the land it covers, but by its people. It’s a group of people who share a collective political identity usually based on things like ethnicity, culture, or language. So, Puerto Rico, or more specifically we as Puerto Ricans, are a nation.
This is why I say that by portraying all these different visions of Puerto Rico, Bad Bunny is actually speaking to a sense of national identity within our shared experiences. I know this can sound a bit confusing, because well, it is, so let me try and put it differently. We all recognize our slang, we all know the frustration of an apagón, we’ve all dodged potholes on the streets, and we all have experienced the scent of fresh coffee in the morning. We all recognize the love we share for our island, and, for those of us who’ve left it at some point, we know what it is to yearn to be back home. We all have shared the grief of being stuck in the mud that is our political system, of feeling like things can’t ever get better and hoping anyways, of life during el Huracán Maria. These are things that those who have never lived here will never understand, even as we have carved them into our bones. This is why we’re a nation.
Political status is a lot of things to Puerto Ricans. By its nature, it can only ever be something ephemeral. We spend so much of our time trying to understand ourselves through it, trying to hold on to our favorite option and make it a part of ourselves in the hope it will stick, but I believe that this is ultimately an useless endeavor. All these identities we try to adopt contradict each other, and none fully fit. Puerto Rico isn’t a country, or a sovereign state, or a U.S. state. Puerto Rico may be a commonwealth, or a colony, but the first has always been seen as transitional and the second imposed by someone else. In this limbo of identity, there really is one thing we know for certain: Puerto Rico is a nation. We are Puerto Rico.
I’d like to go back to Bad Bunny to end here. The article was originally about him, and I’d feel guilty if I just used DtMF as a Trojan Horse for my ranting about nationhood. Specifically, I’d like to go back to the one theme of Bad Bunny’s songs I’ve been skirting around to avoid having to use extreme amounts of asterisks to discuss. Yes, I’m talking about the sex, and the partying, and all that advertiser unfriendly jazz. It’s the aspect of his music that made Bad Bunny famous to begin with. It’s really easy to dismiss it all as just some vulgar, drug-fueled hedonism with zero value, but I actually think it ties into my thesis quite nicely.
In using DtMF to describe the Puerto Rican experience, Bad Bunny still chose to include all of these aspects despite the fact that many use them as a way to dismiss the entire album. It may seem a bit odd when he clearly went into a more serious direction here, but look at it from a different direction. The album is about people’s relationship to Puerto Rico, and, as I’ve stated before, Puerto Rico is its people. Doesn’t it make sense that another strong theme of the album would be our relationships to each other? And yeah! I’m partially talking about the sex! But also, the sex…isn’t actually about the sex. It’s about human connection. It’s about love, about friendship, about family, and about all the ways that people share their lives with each other. Nations are, by nature, living, breathing things. We are so much more than just beaches, or food, or even traditions. As cheesy as it sounds, Puerto Rico is us, all of us, together. Puerto Rico, the experiences we share, all that we remember about all the small and large ways our lives touch. And that is why, I should have taken more pictures.