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Bad Bunny‘s new work has resonated around the world for its intricate ode to Puerto Rico, and the socio-political undertones that fuel it.
In the promotional short film with which his seventh album was presented, titled the same way as the album, ‘DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS’, he imagines a Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans as part of the current critique of the gentrification of the island associated with the loss of cultural identity. Bad Bunny reinforces his narrative through analogies and/or cultural or gastronomic symbols such as the sale of ‘quesito sin queso’ (cheese without cheese). In other words, a product that has lost its identity, its true essence.
In one scene, the legendary Puerto Rican filmmaker Jacobo Morales goes to a gentrified bakery where he is offered that ‘quesito without cheese’ which is one of the incentives offered to the US to move to the island, ‘kicking out the locals’. A cultural and social displacement that Puerto Rico faces in the aftermath of the pandemic.
In the same sequence, the protagonist orders other local or indigenous foods such as a ‘tripleta’, a classic bakery item in Hispanic Caribbean neighbourhoods. This is known as the working class ‘worker’s sandwich’ and is made with three different cuts of meat and lots of condiments. Not having it on the premises, he ends up ordering a pastrami sandwich, originally from and representative of the USA, with a certain apathy. The order ends up coming to 30 dollars, a glimpse of the excessive price inflation unleashed by gentrification.
Bad Bunny‘s metaphors in ‘Debí tirar más fotos’ are thus presented as a socio-political critique of the current replacement of Puerto Rican tradition by soulless and/or superficial modern versions without substance in which there is nothing inside; there is nothing beyond.
