For any boomer , the image of a child riding a bike at night can mean nothing more than ET . That sequence of the protagonist escaping from the police with his extraterrestrial friend, the climax of the sci-fi parable about the reconciliation of middle and white America with the other - the communist, the Latin, the black - during the last thrashes of the War Cold The cover of the new Bad Bunny album is a boy pedaling at night leaving behind a storm of lightning and fire. The boy who escapes his destiny is brown, dresses like the Puerto Rican artist, has his haircut and even his third eye of a tantric shaman. But here perhaps the other, the extraterrestrial, is now the boomer , the last generation that seamlessly embraced the dogmas of rock and the one with more perplexity and even irritation is receiving the new hegemony in popular music.
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Bad Bunny, the lion of the 'trap'
The album, its second feature, is another soup in the face of the old rules of aesthetics and industry. It is titled YHLQMDLG : I do what I want. It has been published on a Saturday, one day after the one established for the premieres. And for the second time, do it again without the support of a multinational. All this, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, the real name of the rabbit, presented it on Thursday in the Jimmy Fallon program. With painted nails, earrings hanging to the shoulders, skirt and a shirt that denounced the murder of a transgender woman in her country. You could even say that Benito is even a little fat for the mainstream beauty canon.
Bad Bunny could also say what they said in their day of Lola Flores: "She doesn't know how to sing, she doesn't know how to dance, don't miss it". It shows nothing exceptional but knows how to do many things well. Despite its nasal and serious monotone, packed with autotune , it is capable of sounding versatile and melodic. It is sticky, insolent and fun. It is the new pop. It is a period sound: in Spanish, black and Latin. A blender where Lil Yachty -in nappy trap fits -in But no longer-, a review of the entire Caribbean range - reggaeton , bachata, dembow , even reggae at your mercy - to samba classic samples - If I see your mom - or the sad Argentine trap - We'll talk tomorrow - accompanied by Duki, the new head of the southern cone.
Other giants of the genre -Daddy Yankee, Annual AA, Arcangel- walk through the album with the usual collaborative promiscuity. But over the years - eye, is 25 and until four years ago was a packer in a supermarket - Bad Bunny has been lowering the tone to the codes of the old school. Still dripping anguish and consumerist hedonism, marijuana, alcohol and sex without getting too out of the patterns of romantic love - eternity, regrets, despair, reproaches - from a masculine position. Although there are more and more exceptions. In Ella perrea alone she says: "That no slug sticks it / what the disc turns on when she arrives". And at your mercy : "I know that you are not a fan of romanticism / and that you are tired of these bastards telling you the same thing."
Bad Bunny could also say what they said in their day of Lola Flores: "Can't sing, can not dance, do not miss it"
His controlled demolition of the macho discourse was already seen in his first album ( X100PRE , 2018), where he definitely broke up with DJ Luian, the producer who helped him out of the Sounddcloud cave. For now, their allies at the controls of the machines remain Puerto Rican veterans such as Marcos Tainy Masis, Freddy Montalvo Jr. or José Cruz. The sound of the album is dry, sharp and in the passages most influenced by the dembow almost rubs the industrial, close to the avant-garde electronic music.
The whole album is crossed by an explicit subjectivism. There are hardly any changes in the point of view in the first person. Another sign of gender and period. The journey from the lumpen-punk attitude towards the codification of the self as merchandise, through the cartoon. Because "I was imprisoned, but it sounded on the radio / We were born poor 'pa' to die 'millionaire' / is it bastard to be me / La Lamborghini in the garage / More than one hundred thousand in the chain".