ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Bad Bunny is one of the most popular musicians in the world, and he's built a huge global audience while remaining engaged in the politics of Puerto Rico, where he's from. His latest album, released in January, is his most explicitly political yet. It focuses on one particular issue that's crucial to people who care about Puerto Rico, which NPR's Anamaria Sayre discovered when she visited the island a week after the album was released.
ANAMARIA SAYRE, BYLINE: I land on the island, order my Uber, and the ricketiest old gold Kia Sedona pulls up. What do I hear blasting out the windows? "DeBi TiRAR MaS FOToS."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DEBI TIRAR MAS FOTOS")
BAD BUNNY: (Singing in Spanish).
SAYRE: Out hops my driver. His name is Kevin Torres (ph). He's got fluffy hair and the brightest smile. He's the exact same age as Bad Bunny, and they were born in the same place - Bayamon, Puerto Rico. But Torres was never really a fan. That is until this year, when he heard these words.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LO QUE LE PASO A HAWAII")
BAD BUNNY: (Singing in Spanish).
SAYRE: "They want to take away the river and also the beach. They want my neighborhood, and they want my grandma to leave." That's Bad Bunny's song "LO QUE LE PASO A HAWAii." It's a song about the fears many Puerto Ricans feel in the face of rising gentrification and tourism. A reminder that what happened in Hawaii, what many see as an erasure of culture and tradition - it could happen in Puerto Rico - a rallying cry to Puerto Ricans to stay, preserve their culture and fight for their island.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LO QUE LE PASO A HAWAII")
BAD BUNNY: (Singing in Spanish).
SAYRE: For Torres, the urgency expressed in this song - it's personal. He tells me that he's been hustling for 10 years on the island, trying to make ends meet. But he's at a breaking point, and he's making plans to move away within a few months.
KEVIN TORRES: I honestly - I don't want to go. I do not. Like, for the life of me, I do not want to go.
SAYRE: Bad Bunny and Kevin Torres' generation grew up in a Puerto Rico that was steeped in tension amidst ongoing rifts over colonial status, the overthrow of a governor, weakening power grids and rising gentrification. Maybe that's why their attachment to the island is so strong.
TORRES: It's like I've always said, (speaking Spanish) - like, I was born here. (Speaking Spanish) - I'll die here.
(SOUNDBITE OF NPR TINY DESK CONCERT)
BAD BUNNY: (Singing in Spanish).
SAYRE: Just a month later, I met Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio - Bad Bunny himself. He was in Washington, D.C., to play at NPR's Tiny Desk. Now, his music is typically built on synthetic rhythms, electronic percussion - more rapping than it is singing. But the first notes of his performance of "LO QUE LE PASO A HAWAii" at the Tiny Desk solidified how important the preservation of tradition is to him. He brought an ensemble who played classic Puerto Rican instruments - cuatro players, pleneros, gongeros (ph).
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SAYRE: I talked to him after his performance, and he explained this focus on preservation.
BAD BUNNY: (Speaking Spanish).
SAYRE: "One always lives in fear of losing something," he told me. "When you're afraid of losing something, what you do is take care of it even more - protect it, defend it."
For Bad Bunny, overcoming that fear, it's why he's chosen to surround his lyrics with music that upholds Puerto Rican traditions.
BAD BUNNY: (Speaking Spanish).
SAYRE: "I would tell you about so many things that maybe I am afraid of losing, but the action of starting to take care of and defend what one has is worth more than saying you are afraid. So before I say I'm afraid, I'm ready to overcome that fear."
That desire is something I heard clearly one month earlier in Puerto Rico, from Kevin Torres.
TORRES: I want to have something - I want to build something here that'll pay forward. I want to be remembered as somebody that did well for others, that helped build more people that build other people up.
SAYRE: As I continued listening to Bad Bunny's album, I couldn't get Torres out of my head. About a month after our initial conversation, I reached back out to him just to see if anything had changed. He was still listening to "DeBI TiRAR MaS FOToS" every day, and something had changed. Home was worth fighting for, and he had decided to stay.
TORRES: 'Cause I can't be a dying breed.
SAYRE: Anamaria Sayre, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF NPR TINY DESK CONCERT)
BAD BUNNY: (Singing in Spanish). Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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