Pod Insights Throughline How Bad Bunny took Puerto Rican independence mainstream About this episode How Bad Bunny became the global voice of a generation in crisis — and what it means when resistance becomes profitable.
Guests:
Carina Del Valle Schorske, writer, translator and wannabe backup dancer. She wrote a New York Times Magazine profile about Bad Bunny you can read here https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/07/magazine/bad-bunny.html.
Vanessa Díaz, professor of Chicano/a and Latino/a Studies at Loyola Marymount University. She’s been teaching a Bad Bunny college course 2023 and is the co-creator of the Bad Bunny Syllabus Project. She is also the co-author of P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance https://www.dukeupress.edu/p-fkn-r.
Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, professor of Puerto Rican, Caribbean and Latin American History at University of Wisconsin, Madison. He’s the author of Puerto Rico: A National History. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691231273/puerto-rico?srsltid=AfmBOoqo6KmNFPoVxC_cvo54bPA2MxlpAsxie8Hhrc7Qh9nbWgwM-iHx He is also the author of the history visualizers for Bad Bunny’s DTMF album.
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Transcript 7,310 words · 22 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This message comes from the Southern Environmental Law Center. No one voted for dirty air and water. That's why S E L C is fighting back to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on. Because it's not political, it's fundamental. Learn more at S E L C dot org.
0:18 Speaker 01 The National Football League welcomes you to the Apple Music Super Bowl 60 halftime show.
0:26 Speaker 02 Benito Antonio Martinez Acasio, who you know as Bad Bunny.
0:32 Speaker 03 Que rico es el latino. Hoy se ve.
0:36 Speaker 04 He's a Spanish-speaking artist from a colony, and he's performing at the Super Bowl.
0:47 Speaker 04 At a time when the Spanish language is being criminalized.
0:51 Speaker 05 The Trump administration can continue indiscriminate immigration stops targeting Latinos and Spanish speakers. We want to be with patriotic Americans, people who have great music, songs you've actually heard.
1:04 Speaker 06 I think it's simply political.
1:11 Speaker 07 What he did was show the world what Latinos have, and when he called out all of the countries.
1:24 Speaker 07 It was so special, and I got super emotional.
1:39 Speaker 06 Is it revolutionary? I don't think so, but it's political.
1:44 Speaker 06 You know, the NFL also wants to reach a broader international audience, and Benito's the biggest artist in the world.
1:52 Rund Abdelfatah? The biggest artist in the world performed mostly in Spanish at Super Bowl 60 in Santa Clara, which, yes, cost some fanfare. But the Puerto Rican singer and rapper, who's dominated global charts for the past eight years, isn't a stranger to politics. He refused to perform his most recent album in the continental U.S., saying he's worried that ICE will come after his fans.
2:17 Speaker 09 An idea he doubled down on after he won the Grammy for the Album of the Year and Best Musica Urbana Album.
2:24 Speaker 10 Before I say, thanks to God.
2:30 Speaker 10 I'm gonna say ICE OUT.
2:34 Speaker 09 When he took the stage at the Super Bowl, he made a statement and a compromise.
2:40 Rund Abdelfatah? He didn't speak out directly against ICE, but he did use the global stage to do what his music has always done: make the world look at Puerto Rico, a US Commonwealth whose people are US citizens, but who live in what some critics call the world's oldest colony.
2:58 Speaker 04 He's always said that he is producing music primarily for Puerto Rico, but he knows that the world's listening.
3:04 Rund Abdelfatah? And in that way, his music is...
3:07 Speaker 06 An archive of the current moment that we're living in, and we can use it to sort of understand this moment.
3:14 Speaker 09 As a musician myself, I love this idea of thinking about music as both an archive and a historical record or soundtrack to history. And so for today's episode of Throughline, all about Bad Bunny, we're gonna leave the politics surrounding the Super Bowl behind. And instead, we're gonna lean into that idea and look at what Bad Bunny's music tells us about Puerto Rico's history and vice versa. And we'll explore both sides of his meteoric success, how Bad Bunny has become a voice of a generation in crisis, and what it means when resistance becomes profitable.
3:52 Rund Abdelfatah? Before we get started, let me be the first to pedir disculpas, say sorry to all the Conejos and diehard Bad Bunny fans out there. We've only got an hour here, and there's gonna be some stuff we don't get to. Think of this episode as a Bad Bunny mixtape, Throughline-style.
4:08 Speaker 09 So don't press skip on that next track and stay with us as we dive into the life and music of El Conejo Malo and the island that made him.
4:23 Speaker 04 Hi, this is Megan from Rhode Island, and you're listening to Throughline.
4:28 Speaker 00 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
4:32 Speaker 11 Support for this podcast and the following message come from the Southern Environmental Law Center. No one voted for a dirty air. No one voted for polluted water. That's why S E L C is fighting back to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on, just as they've done for 40 years. Because clean air, clean water, and a healthy climate aren't political, they're fundamental. Learn more at S E L C dot org. This message comes from Live Right, publisher of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S. S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. "Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book," writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal,
5:16 Speaker 11 while author Hampton Sides proclaims it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.
5:23 Speaker 00 This message comes from Whole Foods Market. Fall tastes better with better ingredients from Whole Foods Market. No added growth hormones or antibiotics in their meat department means slow-braised short ribs are even more satisfying. All seafood is wild-caught, like their vibrant sockeye salmon or verified responsibly farmed. And all sweets, including fall-themed cookies, are made without high-fructose corn syrup. Spice up fall at Whole Foods Market.
5:49 Speaker 12 Parte una. La isla donde nací. The island where I was born.
5:58 Speaker 13 My first impression of him was in the passenger seat of his manager's car when I went to meet up with him in the garage where he kept his Lambo. And he turned around from the front seat wearing a mask and said, "What's up?" He looks like any Puerto Rican boy I would meet, who's, you know, my little sister's age.
6:22 Rund Abdelfatah? This is Carina Del Valle Shorsky. She's a freelance writer, translator, and researcher.
6:27 Speaker 13 My connection to Bad Bunny is that my feature debut at New York Times Magazine was writing a profile about Bad Bunny in 2020.
6:37 Rund Abdelfatah? For that profile, Karina got to spend time with Bad Bunny in Puerto Rico. It was 2020 during the height of the pandemic, hence the mask he was wearing. And it was just four years after his first big hit in Puerto Rico, Soy Peor.
6:57 Speaker 09 We'll get back to that song.
7:01 Rund Abdelfatah? The year Karina first met Bad Bunny, he was the most streamed artist in the world.
7:06 Speaker 13 He has a sort of paradoxical combination of shyness and charisma that I think is palpable in his mode of performance and engaging the public. But what I remember is his willingness to think out loud in a way that was surprising to me for a figure of his fame.
7:26 Rund Abdelfatah? She calls Bad Bunny a modern-day hibaro, roughly translated, a modern-day Puerto Rican farmer. Hibaros actually play a mythic role in Puerto Rico in the same way that cowboys function in the western frontier of the United States, real, but also larger than life. And Bad Bunny is a little bit of both, a star who many people see as representing the essence of Puerto Rico and also just a guy from the countryside. His hometown is called Vega Baja.
7:56 Speaker 13 Vega Baja is a small town that's still in driving distance of San Juan or like where you could maybe commute in if you had a job there. You know, he's not from Monte, Monte, Monte Adentro, as we would say, like the kind of dramatic central mountains of Puerto Rico where, you know, it can be super off the grid. People still don't have water and light. Vega Baja is not like that, but it's distant enough that kind of hibarito culture would be fundamentally like who he is.
8:30 Speaker 09 Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny, was born on March 10, 1994.
8:38 Speaker 13 To a schoolteacher and a truck driver. He had what he's described as an extremely typical childhood. You know, his parents kind of struggling to make ends meet, but always providing for them in a really responsible and loving way.
8:55 Speaker 09 He was part of his church choir as a kid.
8:57 Speaker 13 And would perform at talent shows, you know, ballads, salsa, stuff like that.
9:03 Speaker 09 And he doesn't come from a family of Puerto Rican revolutionaries or anything like that.
9:07 Speaker 13 His nuclear family was PNEP, and that's the pro-statehood party.
9:13 Speaker 09 In Puerto Rico, there are three main political parties. There's the New Progressive Party, or PNEP, which wants to make Puerto Rico the 51st US state. There's the Popular Democratic Party, that wants to keep Puerto Rico as a Commonwealth, basically status quo. And then there's the Independence Party, that wants Puerto Rico to be its own sovereign nation.
9:35 Speaker 04 Not a lot of Puerto Ricans are necessarily growing up in massively radical, you know, revolutionary-type households.
9:41 Rund Abdelfatah? This is Vanessa Diaz. She's professor of Chicano-Chicana and Latino Studies at Loyola Marymount, and author of the book, "PFKNR: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance."
9:54 Speaker 04 There's a lot more people who probably grew up in a Commonwealth Party household, or a statehood party household, or a mixed household, like, a lot of mixed, kind of, political vibes in Puerto Rican families. And Bad Bunny kind of speaks to that.
10:08 Rund Abdelfatah? Because it wasn't his parents' political views that shaped him. It was just what he experienced growing up in Puerto Rico, the water he was swimming in.
10:17 Speaker 04 Bad Bunny, being born in 1994, I mean, it's a really important time.
10:22 Speaker 14 We live in an age of possibility. A hundred years ago, we moved from farm to factory. Now we move to an age of technology, information, and global competition.
10:33 Rund Abdelfatah? In 1996, when Benito was just two years old, his world would be reshaped by a decision made 1,500 miles away in the White House by then-President Bill Clinton.
10:46 Speaker 04 Clinton ends the Section 936 U.S. tax code that exempted corporations doing business in Puerto Rico from paying federal taxes on their profits.
10:56 Rund Abdelfatah? Once those businesses started to have to pay taxes, many closed up shop, including one of the cornerstones of Puerto Rico's economy: pharmaceuticals. Big companies like Pfizer and Procter & Gamble shuttered factories, and thousands of manufacturing jobs disappeared.
11:14 Speaker 04 In the mid-'90s, families were feeling it. They were feeling it big time. And this is really the beginning of what ends up becoming the financial crisis.
11:26 Rund Abdelfatah? To understand why this moment was such a big deal for Benito and his generation, we've got to give you a quick crash course in Puerto Rico's history.
11:36 Speaker 09 And that's why it's a good thing that we spoke to Puerto Rican historian Jorrel Melendez-Badillo. He's a Latin American and Caribbean history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
11:46 Speaker 06 I'm also the author of the book Puerto Rico: A National History.
11:50 Speaker 09 He's going to break it down for us.
11:52 Speaker 06 When I talk to people that are not from Puerto Rico, particularly in the United States, I always begin with the same phrase, that Puerto Rico is a Latin American and Caribbean country colonized by the Spanish since 1493 until 1898, and by the United States since. After 1898, Puerto Rico becomes a colony of the United States. And it's not until 1917, with the passing of the Jones Law, that Puerto Ricans become U.S. citizens.
12:21 Speaker 09 To this day, however, Puerto Ricans aren't fully protected by the U.S. Constitution. They don't have voting representation in Congress. They can only vote in U.S. presidential elections if they reside in one of the 50 U.S. states, so not if they live in Puerto Rico.
12:36 Speaker 06 Puerto Ricans are second-class U.S. citizens, as scholars have argued.
12:44 Speaker 09 So Puerto Ricans live in a kind of limbo. The island officially became a Commonwealth in 1952. It has its own constitution. But even that constitution is, in a lot of ways, still beholden to the US.
12:57 Speaker 06 Puerto Rican officials never articulated a national economic policy rooted in Puerto Rico itself, but we've always tried to attract foreign investment.
13:07 Speaker 09 And in this crash course version of Puerto Rican history, we get to the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton changes the tax code, and that foreign investment flies out the door.
13:18 Speaker 03 Welcome the governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Rosell.
13:24 Speaker 09 Pedro Rosell was the Puerto Rican governor for most of the 1990s. He's from the pro-statehood party. And once he's elected...
13:32 Speaker 06 He begins privatizing the health sector, the privatization of hospitals, et cetera.
13:38 Speaker 09 The domino pieces were being lined up, basically, for a big economic crash. And at the same time, the governor rolled out a tough-on-crime policy.
13:47 Speaker 06 Mano dura contra el crimen, strong hand against crime.
13:51 Speaker 09 Policies that largely over-police the island's projects and working-class neighborhoods.
13:57 Speaker 15 We have just begun to fight the forces of lawlessness and violence.
14:04 Rund Abdelfatah? As a kid, Benito likely wasn't conscious of what was happening at that level. But he would have heard the music that was responding to all of this.
14:13 Speaker 06 Underground music, as it was called, stemmed from that sort of reaction to the violence of the state.
14:21 Rund Abdelfatah? Underground Puerto Rican rap and reggae, reggaeton, and later trap, were fast becoming the island's soundtrack. And the kid who would become Bad Bunny was all ears.
14:38 Speaker 13 By the time Bad Bunny was coming up as a child, reggaeton had kind of survived a major governmental crackdown and censorship program to triumph as the popular music of all young people in Puerto Rico.
14:58 Speaker 13 His mom wasn't crazy about him listening to reggaeton, but she would let him play. Like, and then he remembers driving to school in the morning and hearing Tego Calderón's "Pa Que Reto" sang on the radio and wanting to get in right on time because they would play it at the same time every day.
15:21 Rund Abdelfatah? The song is a hedonistic anthem. That's hard to translate because there's no perfect English word for "retosen." Karina says it's sort of like, "for your pleasure, so you can get down."
15:33 Speaker 13 And it was his jam.
15:40 Rund Abdelfatah? So Benito is coming of age in the heyday of 2000s reggaeton, getting this amazing sort of musical education from artists across Puerto Rico. Artists like Tego Calderón, who made dance tracks with the express purpose of centering black Puerto Ricans. And so the message Benito is getting is... About like being yourself, like owning who you are, not being afraid to be out there. He got so inspired that he decides to drop out of college, starts working at a grocery store and at home in his room. He's making beats.
16:13 Speaker 13 He came up as a rapper through SoundCloud, just like posting music, which allows musicians to post music for free.
16:21 Speaker 09 And that's how Bad Bunny is born. He picks his name based on an old photo of himself dressed as a bunny and keeps it until he is discovered off of SoundCloud and eventually gets his first big hit in Puerto Rico.
16:37 Rund Abdelfatah? The song, "Soy Peor."
16:39 Speaker 09 Told you we'd hear it again.
16:45 Speaker 13 "Soy Peor" is about how after a breakup, the singer, Bad Bunny, is even more badly behaved, neurotic. You know, if before he was a son of a bitch, now he's worse because of her.
17:04 Speaker 04 It has that very like trap beat.
17:07 Speaker 13 The beat is very sexy and then also his voice has always been so distinctive, you know, that like underwater sound.
17:20 Speaker 13 And then that chorus, ahora soy peor, ahora soy peor por ti.
17:24 Speaker 04 Soy peor literally is like, I'm worse off, right? Like, I'm worse off because of you.
17:29 Speaker 13 The idea of now I'm worse because of you, it's so easy emotionally to redirect that towards the empire.
17:38 Speaker 09 You heard that right, empire.
17:41 Rund Abdelfatah? So like we promised you at the top of the episode, this is a mixtape with a point of view. And we're looking at the songs that show us how Bad Bunny's music is rooted in and reflective of a broad Puerto Rican experience. And it all starts with this first big hit in Puerto Rico.
17:58 Speaker 09 Remember the row of domino pieces that cobbled together Puerto Rico's economy throughout Benito's childhood? Well, in 2015, the last domino piece drops.
18:15 Speaker 04 García Padilla gives this address where he's like very somber.
18:19 Speaker 09 Alejandro García Padilla was governor of Puerto Rico at the time.
18:23 Speaker 04 And he's like, we cannot pay this $72 billion debt. Es impagable. And this is like one of the most important addresses in Puerto Rican political history.
18:42 Speaker 09 When the corporations started leaving in the 90s, Puerto Rico began accruing a huge debt. And because it's a US territory, it can't declare bankruptcy. Instead.
18:55 Speaker 06 The 1952 constitution argues that Puerto Rico needs to repay its debt before paying for public services.
19:02 Speaker 09 Meaning that until Puerto Rico paid off its debt, it couldn't really function as a local government. Pensions were cut, hospital hours were cut, schools were shuttered with no end in sight.
19:13 Speaker 06 So that was a recipe for disaster that exploded.
19:19 Rund Abdelfatah? And then in 2016, the year "Soy Peor" became a hit.
19:23 Speaker 16 People of Puerto Rico need to know that they're not forgotten, that they're part of the American family.
19:28 Rund Abdelfatah? The US, under the Obama administration, comes in with a solution: a bill called PROMESA.
19:35 Speaker 06 And so what the PROMESA law did is that it created a fiscal oversight board of eight unelected members that have more power than the executive branch, meaning the governor of Puerto Rico, the highest elected office, and the legislative branch in Puerto Rico, meaning the Puerto Rican Congress.
19:55 Rund Abdelfatah? The board's job is to restructure and reduce the debt, and they can make cuts to get it done. Puerto Ricans call it "la junta."
20:03 Speaker 06 Which evokes sort of those 1970s, 1980s sort of military juntas in America. La junta is very, very, very unpopular in Puerto Rico.
20:21 Speaker 06 So Benito's coming of age in a moment in which the crisis begins.
20:25 Speaker 13 He was under 25 when PROMESA was passed and lowered the minimum wage for people under 25 to below $5 an hour. The school he went to, when his elementary school no longer exists, it was one of the schools that was shut down through the austerity.
20:44 Speaker 16 Even though this is not a perfect bill, at least moves us in the right direction.
20:55 Speaker 13 Even though the song "Soy Peor" makes absolutely no gestures towards being read as a political song, I always strongly associate the mood of that song with the passage of PROMESA. "Now I'm worse because of you."
21:13 Speaker 06 It's, you know, a generation that feels that there's nothing for them, that any future that they might have had was stolen.
21:23 Speaker 13 I've always thought of Bad Bunny's music as kind of giving room for the hopelessness and ugly feeling and disappointment of our generation.
21:38 Rund Abdelfatah? Coming up.
21:39 Speaker 06 There's a before and after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
21:43 Rund Abdelfatah? Bad Bunny makes his message clear.
21:49 Speaker 17 Hi, this is Abdullah calling from the Bay Area in California, and you're listening to Throughline on NPR.
21:57 Speaker 11 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. Support for this podcast and the following message come from the Southern Environmental Law Center. No one voted for a dirty air. No one voted for polluted water. That's why S E L C is fighting back to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on, just as they've done for 40 years. Because clean air, clean water, and a healthy climate aren't political, they're fundamental. Learn more at S E L C dot org. This message comes from Live Right, publisher of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S. S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book,
22:42 Speaker 11 writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.
22:52 Speaker 00 This message comes from Whole Foods Market. Fall tastes better with better ingredients from Whole Foods Market. No added growth hormones or antibiotics in their meat department means slow-braised short ribs are even more satisfying. All seafood is wild-caught, like their vibrant sockeye salmon, or verified responsibly farmed. And all sweets, including fall-themed cookies, are made without high-fructose corn syrup. Spice up fall at Whole Foods Market.
23:17 Speaker 12 Parte dos, generación crisis. Crisis generation.
23:27 Speaker 09 On September 20th, 2017, Hurricane Maria, a category four storm with 155 mile-per-hour winds, hit Puerto Rico.
23:37 Speaker 04 It completely devastates the island. No one is left unaffected.
23:43 Speaker 17 I'm really scared right now.
23:44 Speaker 04 Homes were just obliterated. People can't get water, people can't get food.
23:52 Speaker 18 The entire roof was blown off, she says. Everything got soaking wet.
23:56 Speaker 04 The response is horrifying on the part of the US federal government. Tarps never get there. FEMA is like nowhere to be found.
24:05 Speaker 06 They lied to Puerto Ricans, saying that only a handful of people had died.
24:09 Speaker 04 And we're seeing our family members die.
24:12 Speaker 06 They said that they had done a good job because only a handful of people had died. The reality was different. A study by the Universidad Carlos Albizu and Harvard University basically argued that the number was more around 4,645 people. And that was a conservative estimate.
24:35 Speaker 06 You call these events like Hurricane Maria natural disasters, but really, they're just natural events and unnatural disasters, right? Human-made disasters.
24:43 Speaker 04 This is where the benefits of being US citizens should be showing up, and it's not.
24:49 Speaker 06 Because of the failure of the federal and the local government, a lot of people started having conversations about Puerto Rico's colonial relationship. And I'm not talking about the circles that I come from, which are, you know, circles that have always been talking about this. But my family members, for the first time, were talking about imperialism, about colonialism.
25:10 Speaker 13 It's that opening synth line. That sounds so much to me like a choir of like
25:19 Speaker 13 electronic angels, you know, kind of cutting in and out through an unstable internet connection. You know, it reminds me of dial-up internet, but it also reminds me of like trying to communicate with relatives after Maria hit.
25:37 Speaker 09 Bad Bunny was on tour at the time.
25:40 Speaker 04 When Hurricane Maria hits, Bad Bunny is not in Puerto Rico. He is outperforming, and he can't reach his family.
25:48 Speaker 09 He finally connected with family and was able to return to Puerto Rico. And then, the following year.
25:54 Speaker 04 He has his first album come out in 2018. And in fact, the first single from his album is the song "Estamos Bien".
26:11 Speaker 13 Estamos bien is a trap ballad that has a self-consciously political register.
26:18 Speaker 04 It's such a complicated song, right? Estamos bien means like, we're okay, we're good. And so it's kind of hopeful, but it's also acknowledging, like, he has a lyric about the fact that we don't have light in the house, right?
26:38 Speaker 13 One of my favorite lines in the song is when he says...
26:49 Speaker 13 And if tomorrow I die, like, that's okay. I'm already accustomed to having my head in the clouds. And to me, that like combines in a really beautiful way some of the kind of nihilism or hopelessness I was talking about before with a kind of like spiritual commitment to dreaming.
27:08 Speaker 19 He is nominated for five Latin American Music Awards and is making his TV debut with us tonight. We're honored.
27:17 Speaker 04 We get to see it really come through as a protest song in his very first appearance on American television, which is in 2018, almost exactly a year after Hurricane Maria.
27:27 Speaker 09 Roughly two weeks after President Trump claimed he didn't believe thousands died in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria.
27:34 Speaker 04 He appears on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
27:37 Speaker 06 It's the first time that I think I've heard Benito speak in English. And he addresses President Trump directly in national television.
27:46 Speaker 04 And he says...
27:48 Speaker 10 After one year of the hurricane, there's still people without electricity in their homes. More than 3,000 people died and Trump is still in denial. But you know what?
28:05 Speaker 04 And in the background, we have this imagery of like the force of Hurricane Maria and devastation. And then we get to these like images of like joy and happiness. And I think that this really shows the kind of messaging that he's always been about, which is the highs and the lows. Like Puerto Rico is beautiful and wonderful and full of pride and full of culture. And also, it's really messed up.
28:33 Speaker 09 While Soy Peor had captured the mood of Puerto Rico by mere coincidence, Estamos Bien was catchy and intentional.
28:42 Speaker 13 It was very organically taken up as an anthem.
28:45 Speaker 06 It was everywhere. I remember when it came out, it was absolutely everywhere.
28:50 Rund Abdelfatah? Bad Bunny was growing as an artist. And at the same time, he was singing and talking about what he and other Puerto Ricans his age were seeing and feeling.
29:00 Speaker 06 Benito is the product of the crisis generation, which is a concept that I take from a colleague at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayra Vele Serrano, in which she argues that for the past two generations, the only thing that these people have known growing up is crisis.
29:17 Rund Abdelfatah? And as Bad Bunny's career continued to take off, topping the charts with Cardi B and Jay Balvin on "I Like It",
29:26 Rund Abdelfatah? the crises kept coming for Puerto Rico.
29:33 Speaker 06 In summer of 2019.
29:35 Rund Abdelfatah? Just two years after Hurricane Maria, Governor Ricardo Rosselló, yes, the son of Pedro Rosselló, who was governor when Benito was born, was caught in a major scandal. His private communications were leaked to the press.
29:50 Speaker 06 All of them from a Telegram chat in which Ricardo Rosselló was talking to a group of friends, some of them in the government, others in the private sector.
29:58 Rund Abdelfatah? People in the group were mocking Puerto Ricans who died in Hurricane Maria.
30:04 Speaker 09 Don't we have some cadavers to feed our crows?
30:07 Speaker 06 Making jokes about everyday folks in Puerto Rico, congresswomen, people in their party.
30:16 Speaker 09 Estoy salivando. I'm salivating to shoot her.
30:21 Speaker 04 After those chats were leaked, people took to the streets. And that's when El Verano Boricua, the summer of 2019, really started.
30:31 Speaker 06 People started protesting.
30:34 Speaker 06 Every single day, protest grew and grew and grew.
30:40 Speaker 04 Bad Bunny is in Europe on this tour. And he decides that he's going to abandon his tour. He does a video. He starts encouraging people to come. He's like, "We have to get out there. I want you to come with me." Like, you know, he's telling people, "We are never gonna back down. Like, we have to get out there."
31:01 Speaker 04 And in the middle of all of this, he's in touch with Residente, who has been in the protests already.
31:10 Speaker 09 Residente, as in Rene Perez-Huglar, the frontman of Calle Trece, a group he formed with his siblings, Ile and Visitante.
31:20 Speaker 04 Their first super big, super big hit was "Atrevete." "Atrevete, te salta de closet, te estápate, quítate el esmalte."
31:30 Speaker 09 Residente had grown up in a revolutionary household. But Bad Bunny had grown up listening to Calle Trece. And early on, Residente had given him some advice about navigating the music industry. And so in 2019, in the midst of the protests, they reconnect. And Bad Bunny, Residente, and Ile make a song.
31:51 Speaker 04 The three of them each have a role. Residente and Bad Bunny exchange verses. Ile does the chorus. And each of them, none of them were together, right? They all record their components. And it comes together. And then the day, basically, Bad Bunny gets to Puerto Rico from Europe. And the song's ready to drop.
32:17 Speaker 10 ¡Ah, le estamos afilando las navajas, dale! Llegó el afilador de navajas. Truco.
32:22 Speaker 04 So, the song, the song is called "Afilando los Cuchillos", which means "sharpening the knives", and this song is a takedown. It is a takedown of Ricardo Rosselló and his, you know, cronies. It is so pointed in the sense that they're talking about the protests specifically.
32:46 Speaker 10 ¡Que se mete todas las paredes, dice Ricky, vete! ¡Ey! Y no es vandalismo, vandalismo. Es que nos tiramos nosotros mismos.
32:54 Speaker 04 Like, oh, the protesters are in the streets and they're, you know, doing graffiti and defacing. And Bad Bunny has a lyric where he's like, "No, like, this isn't graffiti, this is like basically us taking back what's ours, right?"
33:09 Speaker 10 ¡Ey, es hora de sacar la rata! Que se vaya Ricky, que se vaya el otro, que se vaya Tata.
33:15 Speaker 04 Just like rats, we need to clean everything out, right? We gotta start from scratch because what we have right now is not serving us. And he and Ile and Residente and other artists like Ricky Martin, they go to the streets and "Afilando los Cuchillos" is literally like they're on a truck, they're blasting the song, it's being heard everywhere, they posted it to YouTube. So it just like immediately becomes this soundtrack of the moment.
33:44 Speaker 06 It became an anthem for the people in the protests. Uh, you know, people were singing it. Uh, and still, I think it became part of the broader cultural repertoire of protest music in Puerto Rico.
34:04 Speaker 20 Hoy les anuncio que estaré renunciando al puesto del gobernador.
34:09 Speaker 04 In the end, he steps down. It's seen as the people ousted him.
34:15 Speaker 10 Esta vez hubieron muchas personas que salieron a manifestarse por primera vez.
34:20 Rund Abdelfatah? Bad Bunny is out in the streets with everybody celebrating. At one point, he addressed the crowd and he's like, "So many people that have never protested showed up because there's no more fear."
34:33 Speaker 10 Que quizás tenían el miedo, pero ese miedo se acabó. Puerto Rico no se va a dejar. Bienvenido a la generación del Yo No Me Dejo. Los quiero, Puerto Rico.
34:40 Rund Abdelfatah? Puerto Rico doesn't back down. Welcome to the generation of Yo No Me Dejo, which loosely translates to "The generation I'm not to be messed with."
34:51 Speaker 04 It was this unifying moment, I think, that really changed and actually provided a kind of new opportunity for how we've seen not just Bad Bunny evolve as an artist, but even the growth in young people becoming increasingly in favor of Puerto Rican independence.
35:12 Rund Abdelfatah? Bad Bunny was once again tapping into his role as the voice of his generation. Like so many Puerto Ricans, he wanted more and was increasingly in favor of dreaming about an island free from corruption and perhaps even US rule.
35:28 Speaker 04 Like, I do not think that we get to where we are now with Bad Bunny's music. Without 2019, there's just no way.
35:40 Speaker 09 Puerto Rico. And from that point on, Bad Bunny got more political, producing dance tracks that celebrated perro, queerness, and Puerto Rican youth culture, while still keeping focus on big issues facing the island.
35:54 Speaker 04 So he has this song, "El Apagón", that, you know, again, references the blackout.
36:05 Speaker 09 The song came out in 2022 and directly addresses the ongoing blackouts in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, blackouts that continue to this day.
36:14 Speaker 04 But it's also a party song. It's a protest song and it's a party song. And it says in the beginning, "Puerto Rico está bien cabrón", right? Which is... Bien cabrón can mean it's the shit, it's awesome. It also can mean it's messed up, it's fucked up. We're fucked, right?
36:38 Speaker 09 In the music video for El Apagón, Bad Bunny takes this political critique a step further. Right in the middle of the music video, he and his team insert an entire short documentary called Aquí vive gente, or People Live Here.
36:57 Speaker 06 The reporting of Bianca Gralau is sort of talking about the reality of displacement of people that don't want to leave.
37:05 Speaker 09 The documentary looks at how laws touted as good economic policies for Puerto Rico
37:09 Speaker 06 that seek to attract millionaires.
37:11 Speaker 09 are actually pushing Puerto Ricans out as investors buy properties, raise rents, and block off access to treasured beaches, which are, according to Puerto Rican law, public land.
37:23 Speaker 06 These are conversations that are happening in Puerto Rico, and Benito is using his platform to amplify it.
37:29 Speaker 04 And then, of course, right? The end of that song, where we have the chorus that he wrote.
37:45 Speaker 04 Yo no quiero irme de aquí. I don't want to leave here. They should leave. These people want to take from me what's mine, but they should be the ones to go, que se vayan ellos.
37:59 Speaker 04 And this is a direct reference to gentrification and to the influx of mostly wealthy American businesspeople.
38:11 Speaker 04 I think that it definitely showed the intention behind him as an artist, which is that you want to listen to my music? You're going to learn some history.
38:27 Speaker 09 Coming up, Bad Bunny picks a side.
38:35 Speaker 20 Hi, this is Sibon Amfuero from Eden Prairie, Minnesota. I love your show. You're listening to Throughline.
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40:05 Speaker 12 Parte tres, independencia, independence.
40:11 Speaker 06 So I was traveling with my family on vacation. We were in Portugal. I'm a bit of a workaholic, and so I had promised my partner, my kid, my therapist, that I was going to leave my computer behind for that break on December 24 of 2024, Christmas Eve. I was added by three different people in Instagram, and so I immediately got a message from one of them, who's a producer for Bad Bunny, and asked me if I was interested in having a potential collaboration with Benito. You know, my heart dropped.
40:48 Speaker 06 I immediately said yes.
40:50 Rund Abdelfatah? The record in question was Bad Bunny's 2025 album, Debí tirar más fotos, "I Should Have Taken More Photos", which made history at the 2026 Grammys as the first Spanish-language album to win the Grammy for Album of the Year.
41:06 Speaker 06 They basically said, so Benito wanted to use his platform to amplify Puerto Rican history.
41:13 Rund Abdelfatah? The idea was to have Jorau write quick explainers of different moments in Puerto Rican history that would be the backdrop or visualizers that would play in the background of Bad Bunny's songs on YouTube.
41:25 Speaker 06 Benito really wanted the history of political repression in Puerto Rico throughout the 20th century. There's no such thing as objectivity in historical writing and historical thinking. And so I think that for Benito, this is also a political move.
41:40 Rund Abdelfatah? Bad Bunny has created a whole universe around Debí tirar más fotos, or DTMF for short, that is unapologetically a celebration of Puerto Rico and a kind of political treatise on the future of the island.
41:55 Speaker 09 In addition to the visualizers, Bad Bunny released a short film featuring an animated toad called Concho.
42:02 Speaker 20 Wow! Esta foto me gusta mucho.
42:05 Speaker 09 Concho is not just any toad. He's a...
42:08 Speaker 04 The Puerto Rican crested toad. It is endemic to Puerto Rico.
42:12 Speaker 09 It's also endangered and at risk of disappearing. In the short film, Concho is talking with famed Puerto Rican director Jacobo Morales about how the Puerto Rican way of life is also disappearing due to gentrification. Morales tells Concho that he should have...
42:30 Speaker 21 Debí tirar más fotos. Haber vivido más. Debí haber amado más cuando pude.
42:40 Speaker 09 "I should have taken more photos, lived more. I should have loved more when I could." A nod to the titular song.
42:55 Rund Abdelfatah? And then, there's the album itself.
42:58 Speaker 13 I would say that "Deritira más fotos" is a kind of irreverent ode to Puerto Rican roots music. And it's also his coming-out party as an independentist.
43:21 Speaker 13 Well, obviously, "Lo que le pasó a Hawaii."
43:25 Speaker 13 I mean, that's like, you can't be more clear in your stance against statehood there.
43:52 Rund Abdelfatah? He sings, "They want to take my river and my beach too. They want my neighborhood and for grandma to leave. No, no, don't let go of the flag or forget the lelo lie."
44:04 Speaker 04 I don't want Puerto Rico to become Hawaii, which is a state.
44:08 Rund Abdelfatah? And he's asking people to not let go of the Puerto Rican flag. Meaning, "We are our own nation. We have our own flag. Don't forget that." And that flag comes up again.
44:24 Speaker 04 Then he has "La Mudanza." And "La Mudanza" has lyrics where he talks about things like the gag law, which was the law that made it illegal to display the Puerto Rican flag or even to have it in one's home.
44:48 Speaker 04 And he says the lyric, like, "Aquí mataron gente por sacar la bandera." "They killed people for having the flag here." And that's referencing a lot of these massacres that happened against Puerto Rican independence advocates.
45:06 Speaker 04 And it's specifically about the light blue flag, which is the flag color, right? It was light blue with red. And that was not under US rule. They made that flag illegal. And then it was rebranded with dark blue. And the dark blue then could be seen as more associated with the US.
45:30 Speaker 04 And in the video, we see him running with the light blue flag, right? Which is, he's not saying I'm an Independence Party advocate, or I just say independencia, I believe in independence. He's talking about it through the flag, through the color of the flag. You don't understand the significance of the light blue, then you're not gonna be like, oh, well, he's for independence. But if you know those things, then you know that that's exactly what he's saying.
45:54 Speaker 09 DTMF is an extension of an anti-colonial politics that Bad Bunny has become much more open and direct about. In the last gubernatorial election, he spoke in support of the independence candidate.
46:20 Speaker 09 And also bought billboards against the pro-statehood party.
46:25 Speaker 06 I was driving my kid to school, and I would read banners in like, black background, white font that said, "Every time you lose power, remember that that is the PNP, which is the new progressive party's fault."
46:39 Speaker 09 And in many ways, his pro-independence stance is again reflecting back what so many in his generation feel.
46:47 Speaker 06 Benito's part of that broader phenomenon of a younger generation that has been tired of living through crisis after crisis and crisis after crisis, and that think that the future has been robbed from them. I think they're losing that fear of what independence might be.
47:10 Rund Abdelfatah? And Bad Bunny has doubled down on Puerto Rican independence. Rather than tour in the continental US in 2025, he set up a months-long residency in Puerto Rico, with many shows exclusively for Puerto Rican residents.
47:29 Rund Abdelfatah? Karina went to one of the shows.
47:31 Speaker 13 The show was amazing.
47:33 Rund Abdelfatah? The residency made news. It brought hundreds of millions of dollars into the Puerto Rican economy. But Karina also has critiques.
47:42 Speaker 13 Honestly, it was like a theme park, all of San Juan, and even some of the other little towns I went to on that trip, felt like a Bad Bunny concert theme park. You see Church's Chicken doing a pop-up looking like a little roadside chinchero, you know, kind of reproducing like tropes of rural life in corporate plastic.
48:02 Rund Abdelfatah? Because Bad Bunny, for all his political causes, is also a brand. And he's just one person. And yet, in many ways, he's become the stand-in for all of Puerto Rico, which has its pros: it brings attention to the island. And its cons.
48:19 Speaker 13 Whenever Bad Bunny does anything, I get 100 emails. And then, when in the times in between, I have trouble placing stories that have to do with other elements of Puerto Rican culture or politics. So one begins to resent kind of the dominance that Puerto Rico only matters if it's through Bad Bunny's voice. And sometimes it feels like we're all working for him. We're embroidering his guayaberas. We are doing the research, sourcing archival footage for the short films that go before his concerts. We are writing the explainers. We are, you know, setting up a fortune-telling booth.
49:03 Speaker 13 And outside his concert, we are... All these things are things that people I know are doing for Bad Bunny. And sometimes it inspires like deep pride and a sense that together, well, we're quilting something very large and very beautiful. But at the end of the day, it's all attributed to him. You know, and I think however much he tries to hold up the mirror and say, you know, it's you. I know that you've made me. That's not how it gets treated in the mainstream media. And I think some of us are left imagining and desiring other possibilities.
49:39 Speaker 09 And this raises big questions because Bad Bunny's pro Puerto Rico message raises awareness, but it also makes him money. And the money and the politics can often be at odds.
49:53 Speaker 13 These days, it seems like Bad Bunny can do no wrong. I didn't see that much skepticism, people expressing that much skepticism about the Amazon partnership.
50:02 Speaker 09 Karina questions Bad Bunny's decision to stream his last show on Amazon and his work to create an Amazon digital storefront committed to selling Puerto Rican products, including food, music, and books, all sporting an "ECHO EN PUERTO RICO" badge.
50:18 Speaker 13 I doubt that the partnership with Amazon will be a kind of unblemished tale of upliftment and sovereignty for Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans.
50:30 Speaker 06 He is a brand. He is producing sort of a product, and it has a market, and it sells. I don't condemn Benito for being a millionaire. And, you know, I think that curtail some of the things that he can say and cannot. Pop culture will not save us. You know, for me, it's very simple. Coming from the punk community, kill your idols. This is a person that is trying to make sense of the life, his living. We've seen Benito grow in the spotlight.
51:03 Speaker 04 The point is that he's an artist, that he has contributed a lot of really consequential art, that he's provided the tools to get people excited to think about and learn about Puerto Rico. But that doesn't make him perfect, and that's also OK.
51:20 Speaker 04 You know he stands for Puerto Rico, whether you're Puerto Rican or not. You know he stands for that. And that means something, right? Because we all have a homeland.
51:49 Rund Abdelfatah? That's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Abdelfatah.
51:52 Speaker 09 I'm Ramtin Arablouei, and you've been listening to Throughline from NPR.
51:57 Rund Abdelfatah? This episode was produced by me.
51:59 Speaker 09 And me, and?
52:01 Speaker 12 Julie Kane. Anya Steinberg. Casey Minor. Christina Kim.
52:06 Speaker 09 Devon Katayama.
52:07 Speaker 12 Irene Noguchi.
52:08 Speaker 00 Kiana Mulholland.
52:10 Speaker 09 Thomas Coltrane. Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vogel.
52:16 Rund Abdelfatah? Thank you to Emanuele Martinez, Luis Trejas, Johannes Dergi, Rebecca Farrar, Dylan Kurtz, Susie Cummings, Beth Donovan, and Tommy Evans. And a special thanks to Westwood One Sports.
52:31 Speaker 09 Also, thank you to Desiree Bayonet. This episode was mixed by Robert Rodriguez.
52:38 Rund Abdelfatah? Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes?
52:43 Speaker 20 Navid Marvi. Sho Fujiwara.
52:45 Speaker 00 Anya Mizani.
52:47 Speaker 09 And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on this show, please write us at [email protected] . And make sure you follow us on Apple, Spotify, or the NPR app. That way, you'll never miss an episode.
53:01 Rund Abdelfatah? Thanks for listening.
53:07 Speaker 00 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
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