The full title of this article by Leila Cobo (Billboard) is “Residente Asks, Bad Bunny Answers: A Wide-Ranging Chat about Puerto Rican Identity, Acting & a ‘Surprise’ Musical Project.” She writes, “Bad Bunny became a global superstar, and the next Super Bowl headliner, by leaning into his native Puerto Rico — which remains the driver of his creativity.” Here, we share excerpts of the article and interview. For full article, visit Billboard.
On the penultimate night of his sold-out 31-show residency in San Juan, a visibly emotional Bad Bunny stood in front of the towering “mountain” he had ordered erected on the floor of the Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot and delivered a message of love.
“Value every minute, every second that life and God gifts us,” he told the crowd of 15,000, his voice shaking at times. “Thank you, thank you. And to those who one day left Puerto Rico dreaming of coming back, and to those of us who are still here, I don’t want to leave!”
“I don’t want to leave” — No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí — the name Bad Bunny gave his Puerto Rican residency, is intrinsically tied to his album DeBÍ TiRAR Más FOToS (I Should Have Taken More Photos), a love letter to Puerto Rico and the island’s music that Bad Bunny dedicated on its back cover “to all the Puerto Ricans around the world.”
It may as well have said, “To all the world around Puerto Rico.” Since the album’s Jan. 5 release (on the eve of Three Kings’ Day, a significant holiday on the island) and since the July 11 launch of the residency, “No me quiero ir de aquí” has become a rallying cry of pride for both Puerto Ricans and the multicultural global diaspora that has seen itself reflected in Bad Bunny’s most autochthonous songs.
Just nine months after its release, the success of DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS — which spent four nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — has been breathtaking, particularly for an album that delves into styles like plena and salsa and that Bad Bunny describes as a labor of love with “zero” commercial expectations. Globally, it’s a phenomenon, a unifier of cultures, an incentive to dance, an enraptured call for love and celebration. It all boils down to Bad Bunny’s island, with its dichotomy of stunning natural beauty and miasma of economical issues, the place he calls home and says he “always returns to.” As his star has risen, the performer born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio has become the most passionate and effective ambassador in Puerto Rican history. Come February, he’ll have his biggest platform yet when he headlines the Super Bowl LX halftime show in Santa Clara, Calif.
Hundreds of thousands of fans — who can now distinguish between a plena and a salsa and know that the old man in Bad Bunny’s videos is 90-year-old Puerto Rican actor Jacobo Morales — flocked to Puerto Rico to see the residency, which ran from July to September. Once there, audiences experienced a “party de marquesina” (backyard party) set to the backdrop of the production’s massive mountain and its now-iconic casita (little house) — designed to resemble the houses found in a typical Puerto Rican neighborhood — built inside the Coliseo. A host of celebrities, from LeBron James to Jon Hamm, partied at the casita, and dozens of artists — including Young Miko, Arcángel, Ricky Martin and Rubén Blades — performed as guests at the show.
Among them was longtime pal Residente (real name: René Pérez Joglar), the irreverent Puerto Rican rapper known for incisive lyrics, social pronouncements and his passion for the island’s politics. [. . .]
Residente: Man, I’m so pumped to be interviewing you right now. First off, I wanted to ask about your creative process behind this concert’s concept — like the mountain, the little house, flamboyán tree, the space where the cuatrista plays. Where does all that come from?
Bad Bunny: The way I work is kind of messy, but it works for me. I start with one idea, and as I go, other things pop up, and somehow everything fits together. For this show, the first thing I envisioned was the mountain. I had this fantasy of putting an actual mountain in the middle of the Choli [the Coliseo] — like someone took a chunk of the island’s center and dropped it in the Choli.
Since concerts usually need a screen, I thought of using a billboard on the mountain — a kind of ironic take on nature being disrupted. Then the team working on the mountain brought in ideas like the flamboyán tree and the banana plants. I love when people surprise me with ideas I didn’t think of.
The casita came later. You know how VIP sections are sometimes awkward, with all the celebrity stuff? I wanted to flip that and make it fun, interactive and cool. So the VIP became Stage B — the house from the album, Jacobo’s house, with a kitchen, a sofa, everything. It was like a party de marquesina. People could hang out, be part of the show, and I could share moments with them. [. . .]
For full article, go to https://www.billboard.com/music/latin/bad-bunny-residente-interview-billboard-cover-story-1236078727/
[Photo above by Diwang Valdez.]