Bad Bunny keeps winning

0:00It's been a huge week for Bad Bunny. Last Sunday, he made history by winning Album of the Year, a first for a Spanish-language album.

0:09Sean Rameswaram:I want to dedicate this award to all the people that had to leave their homeland, their country to follow their dreams. This Sunday, he'll be performing at the Super Bowl halftime show. The only thing I felt that was missing was I was like, man, if this guy could perform some of that. No, I know you can't contractually. I know you can't. Because it's the Super Bowl. It might be your first chance to see Bad Bunny perform this album. That is, unless you were one of the lucky few who got to see him perform in Puerto Rico last summer. He spent the summer doing a 30-show residency, celebrating the island and Puerto Rican identity and history.

0:46So, to help you prepare for this weekend's show, we wanted to bring back an episode from last summer. How Bad Bunny made Puerto Rico the center of the universe. Coming up on Today Explained from Vox.

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2:06Están escuchando a Hoy Explicado. You're listening to Today Explained. My name is Andrea González Ramírez. I'm a senior writer at The Cut, and I grew up in Puerto Rico. I would say it's like one of the biggest cultural events that we've seen, I think. in the island, Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, for those who would like his legal name too, is holding a 30-show residency in Puerto Rico, pegged to his most recent album, Devitieran Más Fotos. The first nine shows were open only to residents of Puerto Rico. You had to go in person to purchase tickets at different selling points across the island.

2:59And then from August 1st onwards, so like the next 21 shows, those you could purchase the tickets online, which is how I was able to do it. The experience of trying to get tickets for it, now I understand how Taylor's Foot fans felt during the Eros tour. Because that morning I did not get a code and I went through the five stages of grief before I actually got one to get tickets, right? But once we got there, I went with my husband outside El Choli, which is what we call the arena. This was kind of like a town festival, a fiesta patronal. You could get, like, beers, you could get your hair done, you could get your makeup done.

3:47And once you come in, obviously, the arena holds about, like, 18 ,000 people. So it's a lot of people and the energy is on hinge. I think like everyone's really excited to be there. There's a screen with a projection where they're like showing like Puerto Rican facts, like Puerto Rico is a U.S. colony. Salsa was invented between Puerto Rico and New York. There's two main areas where he performs. In the main stage, he kind of recreated rural Puerto Rico. And then the second stage is a pink casita that resembles a lot of homes in Puerto Rico. And that's where like the really filthy perreo happens.

4:34Like that area is reserved for the songs that you would probably not play to your parents because they're so, so filthy. I was pretty high up. I was in the last, literally the very last row of the top section, closer to God, that Bad Bunny. But you can see everything. And yeah, like it's really incredible because like a lot of people are wearing traditional clothing like Pabas or Hibara dresses. I was wearing a Roberto Clemente jersey. And then when the music starts, like, basically you get a musical arrangement of his newest song, Alambre Búa.

5:21That sounds a lot like Bomba and Plena, which are two traditional Perican music genres. And then he comes in with a bunch of, like, dancers in traditional garbs. And it just, you know, everyone went a little bit crazy when he was on stage. But it really looks like you are transported back in time to a Puerto Rico from 100 years ago. But also kind of like what a school performance would look if you celebrated Puerto Rican week, like La Semana de la Puerto Ricanida at school, right?

6:01It was insane. I cried, I danced, I laughed. I was very sweaty by the end of it. You know, it was so much fun. He plays over 30-something songs from his nearly decade-long catalog over three hours. You know, he kind of divided the show in four acts, I would call it. You have that first couple of songs where he's kind of marrying his modern music with some of these traditional musical arrangements.

6:42And then you have like a second section, which is almost like an acoustic set. And that was kind of like the Sad Bunny came out where he's just like singing a bunch of his most popular songs about heartbreak.

7:03After that, usually you have a VIP guest or someone from the audience say one of the phrases from one of his new songs, and you have someone saying like, like Puerto Rico is something else.

7:25And in that section, that's usually you have like the musical guest. And then the last section is kind of like his salsa portion of the evening.

7:37He's dressed very much like Hector Labo in the 1970s and has like a live band of like 20 people up there. And it's like incredibly fun.

7:56His last two songs are the lead song of the album, Debitir Almas Fotos, and then La Mudanza. And during DTMF, Debitir Almas Fotos, he's talking about, like, oh, I don't want my people to move. And it's like a really moving song. you had like people hugging all over and like, you know, singing with their families. Like there was so much joy.

8:28I could not stop crying because I think that as someone who left Puerto Rico, like it just felt like a level of grief that we carry a lot if you're in the diaspora. and then like being there, feeling so at home, I was just like, this is the best thing and also I'm so incredibly sad right now. And I cried throughout like the entire song and then he wraps up with La Mudanza and I was still crying throughout. He's saying, like no one's gonna take me out of here. Like it's a very, it's like a, it's a very fun song But it's also, I think, as the closer in the album and the closer in the show, there's like a level of defiance and like pride that comes with that song.

9:24And it's very emotional. And I think that once my husband and I walked out, we're coming down the nosebleeds. You had like people chanting, Yo soy Boricua, pa que tu lo sepas. Like, I'm Puerto Rican, just so you know it. And it just felt very lovely and empowering to be surrounded by so many of us. And I don't know, I think there was like this sense of community that was like very beautiful and also very fun. And it kind of like healed me, whatever like trigger I had had two songs prior. Like definitely when we walked out, I was like, oh, I kind of love this a lot.

10:03What does it mean to have one of the biggest artists in the world do an exclusive residency on an island? What's the population of Puerto Rico? I don't even know. Is it like fewer than 5 million people? Yeah, it's like 3 million people at this point. Like there's 5 million Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. like stateside. It's like a smaller population than many, many states. Right. What does that mean for the island? It's a declaration he's making, right? That you can be the biggest artist in the world or one of the biggest artists in the world. And you don't have to compromise or change your art or attempt to cross over to appeal to an English speaking audience.

10:49And instead, you can just bring everyone to your home and show them what Puerto Rico is about. it's an incredible economic influx but I think it's also like a political statement in a way we are an American colony he very intentionally said that he was not going to tour in the US and instead he was going to do a global tour elsewhere after the residency, right? so I think it's just like demonstrating his love for Puerto Rico and reminding us that it doesn't matter if we're a tiny island of 3.5 million people or so that you can do really impressive art in there too.

11:34The concert itself is a love letter to Puerto Rico. I think it's also a love letter to our generation of Boricuas, people who, like me, are millennials or Gen Z and who grew up in a very different island from our parents. A lot of experts call us the crisis generation. We've lived through political changes, financial crisis, climate disasters. A lot of us, like me, have left. So yeah, I think that the show itself was a celebration of who we are and also a way to give people hope that you don't need to leave the island to pursue your dreams or to work for a better Puerto Rico.

12:30Andrea Gonzalez Ramirez's piece in the cut that inspired us is called Letting Go of My Diaspora Grief at the Bad Bunny Residency. You can read and support her work at nymag.com. We're going to hear what exactly Bad Bunny is trying to do in Puerto Rico from a guy who helped him do it when we return on Today Explained.

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15:44Today Explained, Sean Rama's firm here with Jor-El Melendez Badillo, author of Puerto Rico and National History. And he's a Bad Bunny collaborator.

15:56Last December, I was on vacation with my family in Portugal. I had left my computer behind, and I was contacted via Instagram message from someone in Benito's team saying that they were working with Bad Bunny, and they were interested in knowing if I was interested in having a conversation about a potential collaboration with Benito. My heart dropped, as you can imagine. They sent an NDA, an undisclosure agreement. But wait, you had to say no because you're on vacation with your family in Portugal, right? Exactly. Yeah, no, but my family understood. They're all Bad Bunny fans. We also have an altar, a shrine for Bad Bunny in our house.

16:36What? And so I had to say yes. Five minutes after we were on the phone and they were telling me that Benito was going to drop a new record in a few weeks. They talked about the sensibilities of the record, how it was an homage to Puerto Rican culture, how history was going to be central to the album's narrative. And so they were interested in incorporating Puerto Rican history into the visualizers. So visualizers are the ways that artists monetize in YouTube. And so each one of the 17 songs in the record has a historical narrative that goes all the way from pre-Columbian history to the current political and social moment in Puerto Rico.

17:20Wow. Yes. Tell us about this history. Yeah, absolutely. So Benito wanted for me to write about the general history of Puerto Rico, but he was also very adamant that there were certain things that he wanted to include, like, for example, the history of surveillance and repression in Puerto Rico throughout the 20th century, the history of colonial governance in Puerto Rico, the history of La Plena and Bomba, which are two Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and how it influenced reggaeton. In addition to the Visualizer videos, I also collaborated with Benito in the residency in Puerto Rico. The team wanted me to write about 40 historical texts of Puerto Vican history and Puerto Vican culture itself.

18:05So it was an opportunity for me to highlight certain things that don't usually get mentioned in Puerto Vican history. Punk bands.

18:17Tito Trinidad, our boxer.

18:19Sean Rameswaram:And the record for Felix Tito Trinidad, well known to most boxing followers. Our basketball team and how they beat the U.S. Dream Team in Athens in 2004. They were called the Dream Team, but now some people are calling them the Cream Team.

18:41Which Benito talks about in one of his songs. So for me, it was also mind-blowing to see my work not only in Benito's visualizers, but also to be part of the residency in Puerto Rico, which is a historic residency. When this album came out, I remember streaming it all weekend that first weekend and feeling like, oh, wow, this is this like incredible, comprehensive survey of like the history of Puerto Rican music. You can just tell that from all the genres that are incorporated into the album. But I know nothing, zero, about the history of Puerto Rican music. How did it feel to someone like you who's like dedicated their life to this?

19:31You know, I became an academic and a scholar, the first in my family, because I wanted to take these knowledges out of the ivory tower of academia. I wanted to democratize access to our history, to knowledge. And so it was mind-blowing to, when the record came out, January 5th at noon, just to put the YouTube visualizers and see Puerto Rican history accompanying these sounds.

20:04The record is very political, even in the soundscape that it creates. Mixing plena, salsa, all these sort of Caribbean rhythms. It was mind-blowing. You know, Benito did not have to do this. He could have kept talking about expensive cars, you know, his life in Monaco, flying in private jets. Dating a Jenner. Dating a Jenner. That was a tragic moment in his career. A lot of, in Puerto Rico, you know, Benito's like that primo, that cousin that made it. And that, you know, cousins sometimes do things that you do not agree with, but you still love him. And he spent time in L.A., but then he came back to Puerto Rico.

20:45And I think he's also, there's something about being, you know, in diaspora, in exile, about connecting with your roots and your identities. And I think that this record is sort of an exploration into what it means for him to be Puerto Rican. And here you have, arguably, or empirically, the biggest star in the world, you know, move to the side, Taylor Swift or Queen Bee, Beyonce. You have the biggest star in the world using his platform to amplify Puerto Rican history and Puerto Rican culture.

21:20I'm glad you brought up the world because after Bad Bunny finishes his stint in San Juan, he's taking this show on the road. And he is one of the most streamed artists in the world, like top five. Typically, he's been number one before. What do you think he wanted the world to learn about Puerto Rico by putting out this album? So in a sense, I think that Bat Bunny wanted his listeners to understand the colonial reality of Puerto Rico. You know, when we think about Puerto Rico, it's always joy, it's beaches, it's tropical paradise. But there's other realities, right? And Benito is, I think, using his platform to highlight the colonial dimension of Puerto Rico to the United States.

22:01You know, Puerto Rico has been undergoing a fiscal and political crisis since 2006. And it has exacerbated throughout the last two decades, particularly after 2015, when the U.S. federal government in a bipartisan bill, It was a bill created by Republicans and signed by President Obama, created a fiscal oversight board of unelected members that have more power than the executive and legislative branches in Puerto Rico. And President Trump fired five of the members of this board, which, you know, triggers a conversation about the colonial relationship of Puerto Rico. that first we cannot elect the president of the United States, and second, that we cannot elect the people in this highly unpopular fiscal oversight board.