Producer/Narrator (2:41)

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.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (2:59)

He's always said that he is producing music primarily for Puerto Rico, but he.

Producer/Narrator (3:03)

Knows that the world's listening, and in that way, his music is an archive.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (3:08)

Of the current moment that we're living in, and we can use it to sort of understand this moment.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (3:14)

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 going to leave the politics surrounding the super bowl behind and instead we're going to 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.

Producer/Narrator (3:52)

Before we get started, let me be the first to culpas Say sorry to all the Conejos and die hard 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 through.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (4:07)

Line style, 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.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (4:24)

Hi, this is Megan from Rhode island and you're listening to Throughline.

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Producer/Narrator (6:00)

Parte una la isla Dona Nacil, the.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (6:04)

Island where I was born.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (6:09)

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 looked like any Puerto Rican boy I would meet who's, you know My little sister's age.

Producer/Narrator (6:32)

This is Karina del Valle Shorski. She's a freelance writer, translator and researcher.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (6:38)

My connection to Bad Bunny is that my feature debut at New York Times Magazine was writing a profile about bad bunny in 2020.

Producer/Narrator (6:48)

For that profile, Carina 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 Peyot.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (7:08)

We'll get back to that song.

Producer/Narrator (7:12)

The year Karina first met Bad Bunny, he was the most streamed artist in the world.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (7:17)

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. For a figure of his fame.

Producer/Narrator (7:37)

She calls Bad Bunny a modern day Jibaro, roughly translated, a modern day Puerto Rican farmer. Jibaros 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. And also just a guy from the countryside. His hometown is called Vega Baja.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (8:07)

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 it can be super off the grid. People still don't have water and lights. Vega Baja's not like that, but it's distant enough. That kind of jibarito culture would be fundamentally like who he is.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (8:41)

Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny, was born on March 10, 1994, to.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (8:49)

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.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (9:05)

He was part of his church choir.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (9:07)

As a kid and would perform at talent shows. You know, ballads, salsas, stuff like that.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (9:14)

And he doesn't come from a family of Puerto Rican revolutionaries or anything like that.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (9:18)

His nuclear family was. And that's the pro statehood party in Puerto Rico.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (9:25)

There are three main political parties. There's the New Progressive Party or Penepe, 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.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (9:46)

Not a lot of Puerto Ricans are necessarily growing up in massively radical, you know, revolutionary type households.

Producer/Narrator (9:52)

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.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (10:05)

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.

Producer/Narrator (10:18)

That 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.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (10:28)

Bad Bunny being born in 1994, I mean, it's a really important time.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (10:33)

We live in an age of possibility. 100 years ago, we moved from farm to factory. Now we move to an age of technology, information, and global competition.

Producer/Narrator (10:45)

In 1996, when Benito was just two years old, his world would be reshaped by a decision made 1500 miles away in the White House by then President Bill Clinton.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (10:57)

Clinton ends the Section 936 US tax code that exempted corporations doing business in Puerto Rico from paying federal taxes on their profits.

Producer/Narrator (11:08)

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 and Gamble shuttered factories and thousands of manufacturing jobs disappeared in the mid-90s.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (11:28)

Families were feeling it. They were feeling it big time. And this is really the beginning of what ends up becoming the financial crisis.

Producer/Narrator (11:37)

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.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (11:47)

And that's why it's a good thing that we spoke to Puerto Rican historian Jorrell Melendez Badillo. He's a Latin American and Caribbean history professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (11:57)

I'm also the author of the book Puerto Rico A National History.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (12:02)

He's going to break it down for us.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (12:04)

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.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (12:32)

To this day, however, Puerto Ricans aren't fully protected by the US Constitution. They don't have voting representation in Congress. They can only vote in US presidential elections if they reside in one of the 50 US states. So not if they live in Puerto Rico.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (12:46)

Puerto Ricans are second class U.S. citizens, as scholars have argued.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (12:55)

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.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (13:07)

U.S. puerto Rican officials never articulated a national economic policy rooted in Puerto Rico itself. But we've always tried to attract foreign investment.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (13:18)

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 is flies out the door.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (13:29)

Welcome the Governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Rossello.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (13:35)

Pedro Rossello was the Puerto Rican governor for most of the 1990s. He's from the pro statehood party and.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (13:42)

Once he's elected he begins privatizing the health sector, the privatization of hospitals, etc.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (13:49)

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.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (13:58)

Mano dura contralcriming strong hand against crime.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (14:02)

Policies that largely over police, the island's projects and working class neighborhoods.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (14:08)

We have just begun to fight the forces of lawlessness and violence.

Producer/Narrator (14:14)

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.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (14:24)

Underground music, as it was called, stemmed from that sort of reaction to the violence of the state.

Producer/Narrator (14:32)

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.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (14:49)

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. His mom wasn't crazy about him listening to Reeton, but she would let him play like. And he remembers driving to school in the morning and hearing Diego Calderon's Paquer sang on the radio and wanting to get in right on time because they would play it at the same time every day.

Producer/Narrator (15:32)

The song is a hedonistic anthem that's hard to translate because there's no perfect English word for retozen. Karina says it's sort of like for your pleasure, so you can get down.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (15:44)

And it was his jam.

Producer/Narrator (15:51)

So Benito is coming of age in the heyday of 2000's reggaeton, getting this amazing sort of musical education from artists across Puerto Rico. Artists like Diego Calderon, who made dance tracks with the express purpose of centering black Puerto Ricans. And so the message Benito is getting.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (16:10)

Is about, like, being yourself, like, owning who you are, not being afraid to be out there.

Producer/Narrator (16:15)

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.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (16:24)

He came up as a rapper through SoundCloud, just like posting music, which allows, you know, musicians to post music for free.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (16:32)

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. And eventually gets his first big hit in Puerto Rico.

Producer/Narrator (16:48)

The song Soy Bellor.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (16:50)

Told you we'd hear it again.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (16:56)

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.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (17:15)

It has that very, like, trap beat.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (17:18)

The beat is very sexy. And then also his voice has always been so distinctive. You know, that like, underwater sound. And then that chorus, Ahoras soy peor.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (17:34)

Por ti soy peor. Literally is like, I'm worse off, right? Like, I'm worse off because of you.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (17:40)

The idea of now I'm worse because of you. It's so easy emotionally to redirect that towards the empire.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (17:49)

You heard that, right? Empire.

Producer/Narrator (17:52)

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. And it all starts with this first big hit in Puerto Rico.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (18:09)

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.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (18:26)

Garcia Padilla gives this address where he's, like, very somber.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (18:30)

Alejandro Garcia Padilla was governor of Puerto Rico at the time.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (18:34)

And he's like, we cannot pay this $72 billion debt es impagable. This is like one of the most important addresses in Puerto Rican political history.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (18:53)

When the corporations started leaving in the 90s, Puerto Rico began accruing a huge debt and because it's a U.S. territory, it can't declare bankruptcy.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (19:04)

Instead, the 1952 Constitution argues that Puerto Rico needs to repay its debt before.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (19:10)

Paying for public services, 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 shut, shuttered with no end in sight.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (19:24)

So that was a recipe for disaster that exploded.

Producer/Narrator (19:30)

And then in 2016, the year soy Pejor became a hit.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (19:34)

People of Puerto Rico need to know that they're not forgotten, that they're part.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (19:38)

Of the American family.

Producer/Narrator (19:39)

The US under the Obama administration, comes in with a solution, a bill called promesa.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (19:46)

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.

Producer/Narrator (20:06)

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, which.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (20:15)

Evokes sort of those 1970s, 1980s sort of military juntas in Latin America. La Junta is very, very, very unpopular in Puerto Rico. So Benito's coming of age in a moment in which the crisis begins.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (20:36)

He was under 25 when Promesa was passed and lowered the minimum wage for people under 25 to below $5. An 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.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (20:55)

Even though this is not a perfect bill, at least moves us in the right direction.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (21:06)

Even though the song Soy Peor makes absolutely no gestures towards being ready as a political song, I always strongly associate the mood of that song with the passage of Promeza. Now I'm worse because of you.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (21:24)

It's, you know, a generation that feels that there's nothing for them, that any future that they might have had was stolen.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (21:34)

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.

Producer/Narrator (21:49)

Coming up, there's a before and after.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (21:51)

Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

Producer/Narrator (21:53)

Bad Bunny makes his message clear.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (22:00)

Hi, this is Abdullah calling from the Bay Area in California, and you're listening to Throughline on NPR.

NPR Sponsor Announcer (22:09)

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Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (23:20)

Crisis generation.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (23:26)

On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm with 155 mile per hour winds, hit Puerto Rico.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (23:36)

It completely devastates the island. No one is left unaffected.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (23:42)

I'm really scared right now.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (23:44)

Homes were just obliterated. People can't get water, People can't get food.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (23:52)

The entire roof was blown off, she says.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (23:54)

Everything got soaking wet.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (23:56)

The response is horrifying on the part of the US Federal government. Tarps never get there. FEMA is like nowhere to be found.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (24:05)

They lied to Puerto Ricans saying that only a handful of people had died.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (24:09)

And we're seeing our family members die.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (24:11)

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 Calohalbisu and Harvard University basically argued that the number was more around 4,645 people. And that was a conservative estimate. You call these events like Uruguay, Maria, natural disasters, but really they're just natural events and unnatural disasters, right? Human made disasters.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (24:43)

This is where the benefits of being US Citizens should be showing up.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (24:47)

And it's not 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.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (25:10)

It's that opening synth line that sounds so much to me like a choir of like 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.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (25:36)

Bad Bunny was on tour at the time.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (25:40)

When Hurricane Maria hits, Bad Bunny is not in Puerto Rico. He is out performing and he can't reach his family.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (25:47)

He finally connected with family and was able to return to Puerto Rico. And then the following year, he has.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (25:54)

His first album come out in 2018. And in fact, the first single from his album is the song Estamos Bien.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (26:11)

Estamos Biang is a trap ballad that has a self consciously political register.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (26:18)

It's such a complicated song, right? Estamos bian means like, we're okay, we're good. And so it's kind of hopeful, but it's also, you know, acknowledging, like, he has a lyric about the fact that we don't have light in the house.

Producer/Narrator (26:33)

Right.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (26:38)

One of my favorite lines in the song is when he says.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (26:49)

And if.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (26:49)

Tomorrow I die, like, that's okay. I'm already accustomed to having my head in the clouds. And to me, that 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.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (27:08)

He is nominated for five Latin American Music Awards and is making his TV.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (27:14)

Debut with us tonight.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (27:16)

We're honored 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, roughly two.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (27:27)

Weeks after President Trump claimed he didn't believe thousands died in Puerto Rico due.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (27:32)

To Hurricane Maria, he appears on the Tonight show with Jimmy Fallon.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (27:36)

It's the first time that I think I heard Benito speak in English. And he addresses President Trump directly in national television.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (27:46)

And he says, after one year of.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (27:51)

The hurricane, there's still people without electricity in their homes. More than 3,000 people die, and Trump is still in denial.

NPR Sponsor Announcer (28:01)

But you know what?

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (28:05)

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.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (28:32)

While Soy Peor had captured the mood of Puerto Rico by mere coincidence, Estamos Bien was catchy and intentional.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (28:41)

It was very organically taken up as an anthem.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (28:45)

It was everywhere. I remember when it came out, it was absolutely everywhere.

Producer/Narrator (28:49)

Bad Bunny was growing as an artist, and at the same time, he was singing and talking about what he and other Puerto Ricans had age were seeing and feeling.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (29:00)

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 Belle Serrano, in which she argues that for the past two generations, the only thing that these people have known growing up is crisis.

Producer/Narrator (29:17)

And as Bad Bunny's career continued to take off, topping the charts with Cardi B And J. Balvin on I Like it, the crises kept coming for Puerto Rico.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (29:33)

In summer of 2019, just two years.

Producer/Narrator (29:35)

After Hurricane Maria, Governor Ricardo Rossello, yes, the son of Pedro Rocello, who was governor when Benito was born, was caught in a major scandal. His private communications were leaked to the.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (29:49)

Press, all of them from a telegram chat in which Ricardo Rossello was talking to a group of friends, some of them in the government, others in the private sector.

Producer/Narrator (29:58)

People in the group were mocking Puerto Ricans who died in Hurricane Maria.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (30:04)

Don't we have some cadavers that feed our crows? Making jokes about everyday folks in Puerto Rico, Congresswomen, people in their party.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (30:17)

I'm salivating to shoot her.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (30:21)

After those chats were leaked, people took to the streets. And that's when El Verano Boricua. The summer of 2019 really started.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (30:30)

People started protesting every single day. Protest grew and grew and grew.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (30:39)

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. And in the middle of all of this, he's in touch with Residente, who has been at. You know, he's been in the protests already.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (31:10)

Residente, as in Rene Perez Huglar, the frontman of Calle Trece, a group he formed with his siblings Ile and Visitante.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (31:20)

Their first super big, super big hit was.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (31:29)

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.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (31:51)

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. 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 Rossello and his cronies. It is so pointed in the sense that they're talking about the protest specifically, Like, oh, the protesters are in the streets and they're doing graffiti and defacing. And Bad Bunny has a lyric where he's like, no, this isn't graffiti. This is basically us taking back what's ours. 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. They go to the streets and Afilando Los Cuchillos is literally like, they're on a truck. They're blasting this song. It's being heard everywhere. They posted it to YouTube. So it just, like, immediately becomes this soundtrack of the moment.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (33:43)

It became an anthem for the people in the protest. You know, people were singing it, and still, I think it became part of the broader cultural repertoire of protest music in Puerto Rico.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (34:09)

In the end, he steps down. It's seen as the people. The people ousted him.

Producer/Narrator (34:19)

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. No more fear. Puerto Rico doesn't back down. Welcome to the generation of yo no. Which loosely translates to the generation I'm not to be messed with.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (34:50)

It was this unifying moment, I think, that really changed and actually provided a kind of new opportunity for. 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.

Producer/Narrator (35:11)

Independence, 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. And perhaps even us rule.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (35:28)

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.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (35:41)

And from that point on, Bad Bunny got more political, producing dance tracks that celebrated perero queerness and Puerto Rican youth culture while still keeping focus on big issues facing the island.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (35:54)

So he has this song, El a Pagon, that again references the blackout.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (36:04)

The song came out in 2022 and directly addresses the ongoing blackouts in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, blackouts that continue to this day.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (36:14)

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 estabien cabron, right? Which is Biancavron 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?

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (36:37)

In the music video for El Apagon, Bad Bunny takes this political critique a step further. Right in the middle of the music video, he. He and his team insert an entire short documentary called Aqui Vive Gente, or People Live Here.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (36:57)

With the reporting of Bianca Garalao is sort of talking about the reality of displacement of people that don't want to leave.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (37:04)

The documentary looks at how laws touted as good economic policies for Puerto Rico.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (37:09)

That seek to attract millionaires are actually.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (37:11)

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.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (37:22)

These are conversations that are happening in Puerto Rico, and Benito is using his platform to amplify it.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (37:29)

And then, of course, right the end of that song where we have the chorus that he wrote. 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. Say, And this is a direct reference to gentrification and to the influx of mostly, you know, wealthy American business people. Esta soo. 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.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (38:27)

Coming up, bad bunny picks a.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (38:34)

Hi.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (38:35)

This is Yvonne Ampuero from Eden Prairie, Minnesota. I love your show.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (38:41)

You're listening to throughline support for npr.

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Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (39:48)

Independencia Independence.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (39:53)

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. My therapist that I was going to leave my computer behind for. For that break. On December 24th 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. I immediately said yes.

Producer/Narrator (40:32)

The record in question was Bad Bunny's 2025 album De Bitirar Mas. Photos. 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.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (40:48)

They basically said so. Benito wanted to use his platform to amplify Puerto Rican history.

Producer/Narrator (40:55)

The idea was to have Jor? El 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 songs on YouTube.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (41:07)

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.

Producer/Narrator (41:22)

Bad Bunny has created a whole universe around debitirarmas photos, or DTMF for short, that is unapologetically a celebration of Puerto Rico and a kind of political treatise on the future of the island.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (41:37)

In addition to the visualizers, Bad Bunny released a short film featuring an animated toad called Concho.

NPR Sponsor Announcer (41:44)

Wow.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (41:47)

Concho is not just any toad.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (41:50)

He's a the Puerto Rican crested toad. It is endemic to Puerto Rico.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (41:54)

It's also endangered and at risk of disappearing. In this 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. I should have taken more photos, lived more, I should have loved more when I could. A nod to the titular song.

Producer/Narrator (42:37)

And then there's the album itself.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (42:40)

I would say that.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (42:43)

Is a kind of irreverent ode to Puerto Rican roots music. And it's also his coming out party as an independentist. Well, obviously, Loki Le Pasoa, Hawaii. I mean, that's like. You can't be more clear in your stance against statehood. There's.

Producer/Narrator (43:35)

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 Lai.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (43:46)

I don't want Puerto Rico to become Hawaii, which is a state.

Producer/Narrator (43:51)

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.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (44:06)

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. He says the lyric like akima genteel or sacar la bandera. They killed people for having the flag here, right? And that's referencing a lot of these massacres that happened against Puerto Rican independence advocates. 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 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 ag yo so independentista, 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 going to be like, oh well, he is for independence. But if you know those things, then you know that that's exactly what he's saying.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (45:36)

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, El Pueblo la Gente Puerto Rico. And also bought billboards against the pro Statehood party.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (46:07)

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 is the PNP which is the New Progressive Party's fault.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (46:21)

And in many ways his pro independence stance is again reflecting back what so many in his generation feel.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (46:29)

Benito is 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.

Producer/Narrator (46:52)

And Bad Bunny has doubled down on Puerto Rican independence. Rather than tour in the continental U.S. in 2025, he set up a months long residency in Puerto Rico with many shows exclusively for Puerto Rican residents. Karina went to one of the shows.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (47:13)

The show was amazing.

Producer/Narrator (47:15)

The residency made news. It brought hundreds of millions of dollars into the Puerto Rican economy. But Carina also has critiques.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (47:24)

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 chinchorro, you know, kind of reproducing like tropes of rural life in corporate plastic.

Producer/Narrator (47:44)

Because 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.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (48:01)

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, 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 extension explainers. We are, you know, setting up a fortune telling booth. And outside his concert, we are all these things are things that people I know are doing for Bad Bunny. And, and some. 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.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (49:22)

And this raises big questions, because Bad Bunny's pro Puerto Rico message raises awareness, but it also makes him money. And the. The money and the politics can often be at odds.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (49:35)

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.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (49:44)

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 and Puerto Rico badge.

Guest Contributor (Karina del Valle Shorski) (50:00)

I doubt that the partnership with Amazon will be a kind of unblemished tale of upliftment and sovereignty. For Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans.

Historian/Expert (Jorrell Melendez Badillo) (50:12)

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 curtails 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 he's living. We've seen Benito grow in the spotlight.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (50:45)

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 okay. 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.

Producer/Narrator (51:31)

That's it for this week's show. I'm Rund Abdelfatah.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (51:34)

I'm Ramtin Arablouei and you've been listening to Throughline from npr.

Producer/Narrator (51:39)

This episode was produced by me and.

Producer/Reporter (Rund Abdelfatah) (51:42)

Me and Julie Kane, Anya Steinberg, Casey Miner, Christina Kim, Devin Kadayama, Irene Noguchi.

Producer/Narrator (51:50)

Kiana Mokhetam, Thomas Coltrane.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (51:53)

Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Voelkel.

Producer/Narrator (51:58)

Thank you to Emmanuel Martinez, Luis Treyes, Johannes Durgi, Rebecca Farrar, Dylan Kurtz, Susie Cummings, Beth Donovan and Tommy Evans. And a special thanks to Westwood One Sports.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (52:13)

Also, thank you to Desiree Bayone. This episode was mixed by Robert Rodriguez.

Producer/Narrator (52:20)

Music for this episode was composed by Ramptin and his band Drop Electric, which.

Host (Ramtin Arablouei) (52:24)

Includes Naveed Marvi, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani. And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us@the throughlinepr.org and make sure you follow us on Apple, Spotify or the NPR app. That way you'll never miss an episode.

Producer/Narrator (52:43)

Thanks for listening.

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