Bad Bunny’s first concert residency uplifts Puerto Rico more than its leaders could

Six days after Puerto Rico’s outdated infrastructure and colonial politics led to islandwide blackouts, Bad Bunny gave the island and the diaspora a massive and beautiful gift: “DEBÍ TiRAR MÁS FOToS” (“I Should’ve Taken More Photos”), which he calls his “most Puerto Rican” album ever. Released Jan. 5, DtMF is currently Billboard’s top streaming album.

As if that weren’t enough, on Monday Bad Bunny handed out another gift when he announced his first-ever residency in Puerto Rico. He’s now the island’s cultural and political pulse, the beating heart of a new generation impatient for change. The title of his residency is “No me quiero ir de aquí,” or “I do not want to leave here.” Tickets for the first nine shows are only open to residents of Puerto Rico and can only be bought in person. Those sales started Wednesday. Tickets for the remaining shows will be available for online pre-sale next week.

“Tourists come here to enjoy the beautiful places, and then they leave, and they don’t have to deal with the problems that Puerto Ricans have to deal with day to day,” the 30-year-old Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (Bad Bunny’s birth name) told Time magazine in an interview about DtMF. “Translating that analogy to a romance, there are also people who arrive to share [memories with you] and only see the best part of you, the most beautiful part of you. And they leave. They couldn’t see that part of each one of us: the defects, the trauma, the worries, the pains, the wounds of the past. It’s like they were a tourist in your life.”

There’s a deep understanding in Bad Bunny’s music, a feeling that his art offers a vision for all Puerto Ricans, on the island or in the diaspora. Tracks like “Nueva Yol,” a definitive tribute to New York City’s Puerto Rican population, and “La Mudanza” drip with Puerto Rican pride.

“DeBí TiRAR MáS FOToS is more than just a means of liberating the hips; it arrives amid a broader narrative of the island’s struggle for sovereignty, rooted in compounded centuries of Spanish, then American, colonization,” Tatiana Lee Rodríguez wrote in Pitchfork.

She’s right. It’s not just an album. It’s a statement about Puerto Rican unity. A reminder that Puerto Rico won’t be erased, pushed aside or disrespected, no matter how many “garbage” jokes get told by Trump-loving insult comics. This is Puerto Rico’s future, and Bad Bunny is at the forefront, ensuring the island’s identity is never lost. 

This “love letter to Puerto Rico,” as one headline about the album puts it, isn’t just entertainment. Working with Jorell Meléndez-Badillo of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Puerto Rico: A National History,” Bad Bunny includes 17 mini-history lessons about the island, one for each song.

“[Bad Bunny] was really interested in having that sort of historical component, so people were not only listening to the songs on YouTube, but learning their history while they do so,” Meléndez-Badillo told the Los Angeles Times.

On the same day Bad Bunny brought the house down in a New York City subway station and on “The Tonight Show” with Jimmy Fallon, Puerto Rico Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón was flaunting a letter she wrote to President-elect Donald Trump about Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Maduro, who was responding to Trump’s musings about annexing Greenland, Canada and Panama, suggested that Brazil should “liberate” Puerto Rico from the U.S. González-Colón looked silly for appearing to take Maduro’s “threat” seriously.

The contrast is clear. Unlike the island’s governor, Bad Bunny is the serious one right now. He’s using his music to bring attention to Puerto Rico’s problems: blackouts, displacement, gentrification and a distrust of a political system many see as corrupt and ineffective. He is using his platform to uplift Puerto Rico. Republican González-Colón, who favors statehood and is hoping to convince Trump to pay attention, is not. She’s touted the fact that a congratulatory letter to her from Trump was read at her swearing-in ceremony for governor; even so, despite her desperation to curry favor with the president-elect, don’t expect Trump to entertain demands for Puerto Rican statehood.