"Bad Bunny makes a salsa-inspired album" was not on our 2025 bingo card — at least not before the GRAMMY winner released the album singles "EL CLúB" and "PIToRRO DE COCO," in December. The distorted strains of música jíbara on the former and the plena-inspired guitar on the latter were a tip-off that a new chapter was opening.

Debí Tirar Más Fotos ("I Should Have Taken More Photos"), announced in the final week of 2024 and released on Jan. 5, sounds like nothing he’s done before. While 2023’s cinematic, trap-filled Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana  — which is nominated for Best Música Urbana Album at the 2025 GRAMMYs — was more obviously ambitious, Bad Bunny’s follow up is even more of a feat. The perpetually shapeshifting artist took distinctly Puerto Rican musical styles, including very old folk rhythms and used them both to explore his personal roots and as a symbol of resistance.

The album’s cover art is a photograph of what looks like someone’s backyard, bordered by banana trees. The only objects in the frame are two mismatched white plastic chairs. In the promotional photos for the album, he appears sunburned and dressed down in a way that suggests a rural lifestyle well inland on the island. Like many of Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio’s artistic choices, it’s both serious and self-consciously ironic. In this case, it’s an assertion of Puerto Rican identity and a deadpan comeback for critical fans who say he went Hollywood on his last album. 

It’s true that BB’s feet haven’t touched the ground for, oh, his entire career. He spent 2023 doing the bicoastal hustle between New York and Los Angeles. In 2024, his Most Wanted Tour took him across North America for 48 dates, including three nights in San Juan, Puerto Rico. With upcoming roles in ​​Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore 2 and the Darren Aronofsky picture Caught Stealing, he clearly isn’t done with Hollywood. Still, Debí Tirar Más Fotos finds Bad Bunny returning his attention to Puerto Rico, and finding fresh inspiration there. 

Here’s five more key points we gleaned from el conejo malo’s latest.

He’s Feeling Very Grounded 

Between his often emotionally honest lyrics, and history of political advocacy, no one would call the maverick of Latin trap shallow. However, until March 2024, he was twenty-something. Debí Tirar Más Fotos is an encouraging look at how the wunderkind (who will turn 31 in just a few months) has changed so many rules in the music industry, and is stepping into his third decade of life as well as the second decade of his career. 

The 17-track release has intense Saturn-return energy. It finds him sounding grounded in a way that’s new. This is a mature Bad Bunny, dispensing wisdom like, "While you're alive, you should love as much as you can" — even when he’s speaking through Puerto Rican filmmaker Jacobo Morales. 

If you are feeling the need to plant your feet in terra firma to prepare for whatever 2025 might hold, this is the album to add to your rotation.

It’s A Roots Album…

This is a consciously Puerto Rican album, musically as in every other way. It’s well documented that Bad Bunny loves salsa, and on "BAILE INoLVIDABLE" and "NuevaYol" he reinterprets salsa with the ear of a passionate, lifelong young fan. He also goes beyond the mezcolanza of sounds and influences identified as salsa to delve into the many roots of Puerto Rican music, including bomba and plena. 

"Café con Ron" draws on plena with an assist from Los Pleneros de la Cresta. Meanwhile, the raw sound of "EoO" and "Voy a llevarte pa PR" references reggaeton’s ’90s roots.

…But It’s More Than A Roots Album

Going back to your primordial musical roots is a tried and true move for an artist at a certain point in their career, and an album that tosses a few folksy references into the mix as a statement can find its way to a corny place. Debí Tirar Más Fotos never gets there. 

Expressive and thoughtful production from MAG, Tainy, and La Pacienca (the singer’s usual team of collaborators) gives the album an ethereal feel. This elevates the more traditional, acoustic elements and helps blend them into the reggaeton and electronic sounds. In the process, they end up creating entirely new fusions, as is the case with the electro-plena of "EL CLúB." 

As always, Bad Bunny is more concerned with what he has to say than meeting anyone's external expectations. Figuring out where to file Debí Tirar Más Fotos is someone else’s problem.

It’s Personal, Even At Its Most Unspecific

With its eclectic mix of sounds and dreamy production, the album takes on a free-associative quality that feels like a trip through Benito's mind. 

There are many singer/songwriter moments that border on Latin indie: "WELTiTA" is an actual collaboration with Puerto Rican indie band Chuwi; "TURiSTA" is a sensitive bolero sung to a past lover. "En mi vida fuiste turista / tu solo viste lo mejor de mi y no lo que yo sufría," he sings in the latter song. ("You were a tourist in my life / You only saw the best of me and not what I suffered") It can be read as a love song or a rueful reflection on actual tourism.

"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 told TIME magazine. "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."

He has said that none of the lovelorn songs are about anyone in particular, but that’s neither here nor there. The album as a whole — the tributes to the music and artists who made him, the admission that it all represents who he is — is more vulnerable than any romantic confession could be. The permission he seems to have given himself to be this genuine, also gave him the freedom required to take his art to new heights.

It's Political & Full Of Boricua Pride

There are layers of meaning in the Debí Tirar Más Fotos’s emphatic Puerto Rican-ness. Some of those go beyond the personal and speak to larger issues around the island and its history. The album was entirely recorded in Puerto Rico and everyone involved is Puerto Rican. In addition to those already mentioned, he pulled in fellow islanders RaiNao, Omar Courtz and Dei V. The "BAILE INoLVIDABLE" features young instrumentalists from the music school Libre de Música San Juan. 

"Every one of them is Puerto Rican and there for a reason," Bad Bunny told The New York Times. "When I listened to them, I felt like I was there in Santurce, hanging out."

It goes beyond feel-good gestures and includes direct protest against those who would exploit Puerto Rico and its resources and the expense of its people and culture. On "LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii" he sings "Quieren quitarme el río y también la playa, quieren al barrio mío y que abuelita se vaya, no sueltes la bandera … que no quiero que hagan contigo lo que pasó a Hawaii." ("They want to take away the river and also the beach, they want my neighborhood and grandma to leave, don’t let go of the flag … I don’t want them to do with you what happened to Hawaii.")