“I Found the Sound That Represents Me:” Bad Bunny On Heartbreak and Returning Home to Puerto Rico With Debí Tirar Más Fotos

Last summer, the global superstar Bad Bunny was driving through the streets of San Juan, Puerto Rico, crying and feeling sad “about a lot of things.” As he looked out his window, he saw the city’s beaches filled with blissed-out tourists—which somehow made him feel even worse. He began thinking about the relationship between Puerto Rico’s external perception and its sometimes-harsh realities and how that relates to his personal life. 

“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,” he explained to TIME in a Manhattan hotel room in late December, days before another yet another blackout blanketed Puerto Rico in darkness. “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,” he says. “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.” 

Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, spent about half of 2024 abroad, showing off the best parts of himself: he wrapped up an arena tour that grossed more than $200 million, co-chaired the Met Gala alongside Jennifer Lopez and Zendaya, performed at Vogue World 2024 in Paris—where he took a private tour of the Louvre with his on-and-off love interest Kendall Jenner—and filmed Happy Gilmore 2 with Adam Sandler. He was the third-most streamed artist on Spotify, marking his sixth straight year in the top five. 

But all of his globetrotting and success only made Bad Bunny miss his home even more. Exacerbating that homesickness were the types of creeping criticisms that inevitably come with his level of success: from fans who accused him of abandoning his island for Hollywood; from critics who felt his 2023 album, Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana, lacked the joy or creative spark of his past music. On that album, Martínez seemed all too aware of his perilous position at the top: “I am the biggest star in the whole world,” he rapped on “Nadie Sabe.” “There are many people who want me to fail.”

Read More: Bad Bunny’s Next Move

For his next project, Bad Bunny could have attempted to reclaim his no. 1 position on Spotify (now occupied by Taylor Swift) by rapping in English or collaborating with superstars. Instead, he went in the opposite direction. Debí Tirar Más Fotos, his sixth solo studio album, which arrived Jan. 5, is his most culturally authentic, musically ambitious, and emotionally vulnerable album: a deep dive into his identity and sense of self. It shows him seeking refuge from heartbreak, stardom, and politics, all while plunging deeply into Puerto Rico’s musical history. 

This album is not for the tourists. Listeners will have to traverse deeper than the sandy coastlines of the island, and into the mountains: a place of resistance, he calls it. “This is an album of Puerto Rican music, and a completely different vibe from what any other artist has done,” he says. “I found what my roots are: the sound that represents me.”

Turning to Traditional Puerto Rican Music

For years, Bad Bunny’s signature songs about sex, pride, and heartbreak have been anchored by reggaeton beats ready-made for perreo in the club. But shortly after wrapping his 2023 trap-oriented album Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana, Martínez came to longtime producer MAG with an idea. “He wanted to create an album that takes you on a journey through the genres that make up Puerto Rican music,” says MAG, a Nuyorican-Dominican who produced most of Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti, which remains the most streamed Spotify album ever. 

Sitting in a hotel conference room, dripped in a heavy silver cross chain, long black trench, and Louis Vuitton sunglasses, Bad Bunny plays one of the first songs created for the record. “NuevaYol,” its distinct spelling an homage to the dialect of his people, is built around a sample from El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico’s salsa classic “Un Verano en Nueva York.” Salsa, with roots in Cuba that were further nurtured by Boricuas in New York in the mid-20th century, is a prime example of the richness of the Puerto Rican diaspora. But few artists have attempted to blend salsa’s lively congas and syncopated brass arrangements with the harder, sleeker beats from Dominican dembow. 

The resulting song, with its genre-melding, cross-generational attention to detail, set the tone for the rest of the album. “NuevaYol” nods to the Puerto Rican community in the Big Apple, with shoutouts to salsa legend Willie Colón and Maria Antonia Cay, better known as “Toñita,” the owner of the last-standing Latino social club in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—a historically Puerto Rican neighborhood now facing rapid gentrification. 

Martínez’s album concept coalesced further at the Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastián in January 2024. The music festival, also known as “San Se,” is Puerto Rico’s way of  marking the end of the holiday season, which lasts from November through mid-January. Yearning for the música típica of his childhood, Martínez started to write the plena-inspired “Café con Ron” sitting on a balcony as he watched the festival below. (Plena was birthed around a century ago amid Puerto Rico’s transfer from Spanish to U.S. rule, combining the musical traditions of freed African slaves, native Taino, and Europeans.) 

Later in the year, Martínez called a slew of up-and-coming musicians into the studio, mostly from the local music school Libre de Música San Juan, and some of them teenagers. Together, they created “Baile Inolvidable,” a salsa track complete with wailing trombones and a piano solo; “Turista,” a heartbreaking bolero that explores the hollowness of tourism; “Bokete,” with just a sprinkle of bachata; and “Pitorro de Coco,” inspired by the jíbaro music that originated in the Puerto Rican countryside and one of the two singles released in advance of the album. Martínez says that his mother cried when she first heard the song, and wrote to him: “From trap to jíbaro music, my heart is very happy. I never imagined it.”

Martínez seems just as excited as his mom when he plays the album for TIME in New York. He sings along passionately to the lyrics of his collaborators—including the rising urbano artist RaiNao—and mimes playing the trombone and bongos.

Bad Bunny is far from the only young star channeling the music of the past. Fellow Boricua artist Rauw Alejandro covered the Frankie Ruiz classic “Tú Con Él” on his November album. Hopping on Grupo Frontero’s smash hit “unx100to,” Martínez also contributed to the rising popularity of Regional Mexican music, which artist Peso Pluma has further reignited through his corridos.   
Debí Tirar features much more live musicianship than Martínez’s past records. His bandmates on the project mostly come from a new generation of Puerto Rican musicians, including the producer Big Jay and the band Chuwi. Martínez sought to both channel their energy and encourage younger generations to pursue the music of their ancestors. “To be able to collaborate in that way, and give space to new people instead of looking for those who are established in the industry,” he says, “was something that for me was part of the purpose.”

Fighting For His Homeland

Bad Bunny has long been engaged in politics, and he’s had as much reason as ever to speak out in the lead-up to the new album. In 2019, he joined protests that led to the ouster of Governor Ricardo Rosselló. He has been vocal about LGBTQ rights, and songs like “Andrea” call attention to gender-based violence. In 2022, he released a 23-minute documentary about Puerto Rico’s life-threatening blackouts, which have continued following the privatization of the island’s power grid, and the more gradual threat of gentrification for the music video of his song “El Apagón.”

In October, Bad Bunny jumped into the U.S. election discourse after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe appeared at a Trump rally in New York at Madison Square Garden and declared: “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” Hinchcliffe later tried to dismiss the statement as a joke, but the backlash from the Latino community was swift and loud. 

Martínez responded quickly by posting a video on Instagram stories of Kamala Harris outlining her support of Puerto Rico. Martínez says he was in New York on the day of the rally with a group of badass friends (“cabrones”) who were all incensed. “We were playing [around] about getting there on the bus and prenderlo [lighting it up],” he says. 

Martínez says he understands, at some level, Hinchcliffe’s defense. “I consider myself a person who to a certain point likes dark humor,” he says. “But the detail was that it was not a standard comedy nor a comedy show, it was a political rally.” 

“Most people don’t know who the f-ck you are,” he continues, talking about Hinchcliffe. “They’re going to assume that you’re a politician at a political rally. So that awakens people who may be there and think the same as you, and say ‘Yes, Puerto Rico [is]….’ And all those racist people, at that moment, [it] gives them empowerment for a joke.” 

While this album is not always overtly political, Martínez does gesture toward Puerto Rico’s tenuous status within the American empire on the song “Lo Que Pasó a Hawaii.” Martínez says the song’s lyrics came to him in a dream, including the line “No quiero que pase contigo lo que pasó a Hawaii” (“I don’t want what happened in Hawaii to happen to you”). In 1898, both Puerto Rico and Hawaii were seized and declared U.S. territories. Hawaii became the 50th state in 1959 and is now significantly Americanized, while Puerto Rico remains an unincorporated territory and retains its own language and culture. Last fall, Martínez came out against the ruling New Progressive Party (PNP), which promotes statehood. 

Drawn by tax incentives, many wealthy foreigners have relocated to Puerto Rico, impacting locals’ access to housing and public beaches. Martínez contends that many show little interest in the island apart from what it can provide them. “Politically and historically, they know nothing about Puerto Rico, nor are they interested in knowing,” he says. “They don’t even know that Puerto Ricans on the island don’t even vote for the president, but they do know that they can go to the island to legally evade taxes. That’s something that shocked me.”

While he says that his song  “Lo Que Pasó a Hawaii” has a political bent, he asked that its message speak for itself. “Many times, when I want to express myself in a more political way, I do it in songs because it’s the best way I can,” he says. “I think that every Puerto Rican can listen to it and come to their own conclusion and do their research and understand it the way they think best.” 

Days before the album’s release, Martínez put out a short film which further explores those same themes of economic and cultural alienation. The film depicts an elderly man, played by iconic Puerto Rican filmmaker Jacobo Morales, coming to grips with a Puerto Rico in which country and rock tunes play on his walk to a gentrified bakery—which is staffed by an English-language server offering vegan quesitos. 

Read More: How Puerto Ricans Are Fighting Back Against the Outsiders Using the Island as a Tax Haven

Despite Martínez’s devotion to his island, his ascension on the global stage and his association with the Kardashians has been taken as proof by some that he’s out of touch with his roots. But Martínez’s Puerto Rican heritage is the thing that will always differentiate him, particularly in white-dominated spaces like Hollywood. It’s a topic that comes up indirectly throughout the interview, especially as the conversation veers from politics to music and back again. He has used his music and platform to repeatedly show how the political is personal: How politicians have made decisions about the island’s roads, access to electricity, and public spaces, with foreigners attempting to privatize beaches for high-end luxury resorts, and all of these moves are felt acutely by locals. Puerto Rico has one of the highest poverty rates in the U.S., and Congressional actions in 2016 resulted in austerity measures that cut back public services on the island. 

Debí Tirar Mas Fotos’ focus on Puerto Rico is both a rejoinder and an attempt to create a safe space. If his 2022 smash album Un Verano Sin Ti represented Puerto Rico’s sunniest beaches, then Debí Tirar is a family affair in the campo, or countryside, of the island, he says. “They’re trying to take away my beaches, little by little: they keep coming and selling them,” he says. “There are a lot of people who are fighting, raising their voices, and protecting the beaches, but at the same time, it’s like we’re looking for a refuge in the countryside. A resistance in that way.”

Healing and Nostalgia 

Nearly two years ago, Bad Bunny became a sudden fixture of U.S. gossip sites when he was photographed with the world’s highest-paid supermodel, Kendall Jenner. In the summer of 2024, they appeared together in Paris in matching outfits. But they are now rumored to no longer be together. 

Often embedded between upbeat melodies and rhythms, lyrically, Debí Tirar deals heavily with heartbreak: the longing for a text or phone call from a lover, making peace with the end of a relationship, and trying to get over the potential of what could have been. The titular song on the album, “DtMF,” touches on that feeling as Martínez mulls over what he neglected to do: kiss, embrace, and photograph a love he now misses. 

However, Martínez says that the songs on Debí Tirar aren’t necessarily about specific people. “I have written songs inspired by people that people don’t have a f-cking clue who they are,” he says. “The meaning of the song can vary in many things, like the absence of a person who is no longer with you, or a love. But it can be many other things too, that are no longer there.” 

To solely identify Debí Tirar as an album about romantic love would be an incomplete reading. In retreating further to his roots, Bad Bunny delivers authenticity as he celebrates the markers of his heritage as a way to bring back joy—a feeling that Martínez has sought both in the midst of heartbreak and as his career has taken him away from Puerto Rico for prolonged periods. “At times you are perhaps a little nostalgic, a little sentimental… But at the same time, you are enjoying other things: playing dominoes with grandparents or with the family,” Martínez says. “Since we are also in Puerto Rico, we are at home, we are with the group: That is a reason to be happy, to be content.” 

The search for that nostalgic element is reflected in the date of the album release, which Martínez intentionally chose to fall on Víspera de Reyes, a celebration within Puerto Rico’s Christmas season in which revelers listen to jíbaro, plena, and bomba. “It can be mixed with lots of modern-day music and rhythms,” he says, reminiscing on the sounds of his grandfather’s favorite music that he hopes will now be heard year-round. 

Whereas in Nadie Sabe, Bad Bunny gloats about his achievements and success, Martínez is more humble about his stardom during our discussion about Debí Tirar’s final track “La Mudanza.” “People see me as this giant superstar who has done all these things and is recognized,” he says, “But nothing would be possible if my parents hadn’t met and made me.” The final track of the album, which he says is all about his rise to global fame, is partially a tribute to his family. Artfully rapping over a salsa beat, he shares the story of how his parents met, giving shout-outs to his grandparents, nieces and nephews, and ultimately, his countrymen. “Yo soy de P f-ckin’ R,” he deliberately includes on the last song, a reference to his 2020 hit that became an anthem of Puerto Rican pride.

Martínez understands all too well the push and pull between immigrants chasing their dreams abroad while still yearning for home. Sitting in the hotel room, some 10 miles from where he performed two iconic sold-out shows at Yankee Stadium and shot part of his music video for the massively popular “Tití Me Preguntó,” he speaks tenderly of New York. He recounts a memory of when he was 12, and his mom surprised him with a trip to the city. “I started to cry, and she thought it was because I was so excited,” he recalls. “It was because I didn’t want to go. I said, ‘I don’t want to leave. I’m never going to leave Puerto Rico.’”