What is great about the new Bad Bunny album.
You probably don’t know any Puerto Rican artists, and you’ve almost definitely never seen a Puerto Rican movie. You probably don’t know any Puerto Rican music either. The only Puerto Rican cultural work you’re likely familiar with is West Side Story — and even that uses Puerto Rico mostly as a plot device. It flattens the culture into a stereotype: “colorful immigrants with knives.”
It’s not that Puerto Rico doesn’t have great culture — it absolutely does. The problem is that most Americans never hear about it. Colonial repression, racism, and political neglect have created obstacles that keep Puerto Rican voices out of the mainstream. And when Puerto Rican art speaks openly — often saying, “We hate what you’ve done to us” — the United States doesn’t want to hear it.
Puerto Rico has pioneered many different musical genres over the years, but few individual artists have broken through globally. Cuba has Buena Vista Social Club, a supergroup of folk and jazz musicians who came together to preserve their country’s musical legacy. Puerto Rico never had its Buena Vista.
Bad Bunny seems to be trying to change that. His newest album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, feels like an attempt to create a pastiche of Puerto Rican musical culture. In the lyrics of the lead single, he name-checks multiple Puerto Rican genres: salsa, merengue, bachata, and reggaetón. He seems to ask, “How does my music compare?” His album tries to honor his country’s musical history, while still making something new.
The album title, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, literally means “I should have taken more photos.” It’s a fitting entry point for the album’s themes of memory, nostalgia, and regret.
I analyzed the lyrics of the lead single, “DtMF,” and here’s what I found:
Bad Bunny sings, with a call and response chant during the chorus::
Debí tirar más foto’ de cuando te tuve
Debí darte más beso’ y abrazo’ las veces que pude
Ey, ojalá que los mío’ nunca se muden
Y si hoy me emborracho, pues, que me ayuden
Which translates to:
I should have taken more photos from when I had you.
I should have given you more kisses and hugs whenever I could.
Hey, I hope my family never moves away.
And if I get drunk today, well, I hope they help me.
At first, it sounds like he’s mourning an ex-lover — someone who might even be dead. But the song becomes more interesting when you dig deeper. In the second verse, he mentions playing dominoes with his grandfather. His grandpa asks about the girl from the first verse, and Bad Bunny casually says he’s not with her anymore.
Zooming out, the meaning shifts: Bad Bunny is drunk, high, and hallucinating — imagining conversations with friends and family members who have either died or moved away. He’s not just pining for a lost love; he’s mourning a whole lost world. The ex-girlfriend probably isn’t dead — she just moved on long ago. The real loss is his grandfather. He isn’t playing dominoes with him now. He’s remembering playing dominoes years ago — or maybe he’s imagining it, wishing he could sit down with him one more time.
The album cover of DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS captures this feeling perfectly. It shows two cheap plastic lawn chairs under a few tropical trees — the exact kind of place where you might play dominoes with your grandfather. Since he doesn’t have any real photos of those moments, this empty scene is the closest he can come to capturing them now. The life has been stripped from the landscape, but the memory still lives through context and feeling.
It’s basically the equivalent of Jack’s shirt in Brokeback Mountain. Ennis doesn’t have any photos of Jack either, so he hangs up Jack’s shirt in his closet, preserving what little he can of a love he lost long ago.
I really love this album
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