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For the past week, nobleness number one song in high-mindedness world has been a plena. On January 11, the inscription track of Bad Bunny’s modern album,Debí Tirar Más Fotos, took over the number one blemish on Apple Music. It reached number one on Spotify’s international chart the next day, add-on remains in the number tune position on both streaming platforms. It also broke the transcribe for the Spanish language sticker to reach number one make real the most countries in Spotify history. “DtMf” is performed tight spot the Afro-Puerto Rican folk penalty style of plena, a categorize that most non-Puerto Ricans cabaret not familiar with. While strapping among Puerto Ricans and neat mainstay at Puerto Rican indigenous events, plena has never queer mainstream commercial success. Prior fit in “DtMF,” no plena song esoteric ever charted in any position.

MAG, the prolific Puerto Rican and Dominican producer from Borough who executive produced Bad Bunny’s third album El Último Trek Del Mundo and has because produced much of Bad Bunny’s catalog, including “DtMF,” tells Rolling Stone that the success human the song has been unblended surprise. “I didn’t expect that reaction, this reception. What’s contemporary with ‘DtMF’ feels like straight cultural movement. And it feels like the world is necking us and Puerto Rico, mount in such a beautiful way,” he says.

While “DtMF” is number one in primacy world, many listeners might remote even be aware of what genre they’re listening to. Loftiness release of the album’s YouTube visualizers (written by Puerto Rican scholar Jorell Mélendez Badillo) offered listeners historical context for goodness music. The visualizer for “DtMF,” which currently has over 24 million views, includes an brief history of plena and prestige related Afro-Puerto Rican music classic of bomba. The visualizer explains that the cultural practice catch the fancy of bomba (music and dance) emerged in communities of enslaved Africans in Puerto Rico and their descendants. About a quarter hundred after slavery was abolished double up Puerto Rico (1873), another Afro-Puerto Rican genre emerged known considerably the plena. Unlike traditional bomba, plena usually includes vocals (as well as differences in drums and instrumentation). On “DtMF,” All right Bunny decided to do “gang vocals with all the posterity who we now call representation ‘sobrinos’” MAG explains, referring gap the group of students stick up Puerto Rico’s Escuela Libre indicator la Música who are featured in multiple songs on rendering album. 

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While Bad Bunny has blended genres before, this single builds specifically on lesser-known Puerto Rican musical traditions like plena, and has brought it equal the global spotlight in involve unprecedented way. “I hope walk the legacy of this album…makes those very traditional, folkloric sounds something that’s accepted in significance mainstream. And I think turn joy that he found think it over that room with those scions, bringing his dream to strive, was contagious,” Latin Music Engineer at Apple Music Jerry Pullés told Rolling Stone. 

The soundtrack also predominantly features salsa, confidence its opening track “NuevaYol,” disloyalty closing track “La Mudanza,” tell off the chart-topping “Baile Inolvidable,” which reached number 1 on Apple Music on January 9 a while ago being overtaken two days afterward by “DtMF.” By hitting few 1, “Baile Inolvidable” became integrity first salsa song ever have knowledge of reach the top spot let the cat out of the bag Apple Music’s global charts. Salsa builds on Afro-Caribbean rhythms and emerged from the poor Latino communities in New York in probity 1960s, with a strong import and participation from Puerto Ricans in the diaspora. Although salsa achieved more commercial success modern the 1970s than folk genres like plena ever have, salsa was “in many ways feel like to how people thought earthly reggaeton when it first began,” explains Petra Rivera-Rideau, associate associate lecturer of American studies at Wellesley College and scholar specializing run to ground Latin music. Early reggaeton, regard salsa before it, and plena before that, were often denigrated because of their origins down working-class Black communities. 

As only of the most popular artists in the world, Bad Coney has brought together these historically marginalized genres in one recording as part of a dominant political statement. Debí Tirar Más Fotos is filled with messages warning of the risk ensure Puerto Rican culture — inclusive of its musical heritage — could disappear as a result be totally convinced by forced migration off the oasis and gentrification on it. These messages have clearly resonated barter listeners. Spotify’s Head of Descant, LatAm, Maykol Sanchez tells Rolling Stone that the success capture the album is its authenticity.“From the moment you press loom, it’s clear that Bad Coney is sending a message,” Carlos says. “Whether you’re Latino growth not, the album resonates considering it has a clear goal: to offer a powerful ride genuine representation of Puerto Law. Bad Bunny is not nonpareil celebrating the culture and inheritance of his people, but he’s also shedding light on their current realities.” 

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Even blue blood the gentry upbeat “Baile Inolvidable” — which Bad Bunny told Rolling Stone is his “favorite [song] reminder the album” — has extensive significance beyond being the pull it off number one salsa song call history. The track “Baile Inolvidable” is a six-minute live contributory salsa in which Bad Cony is accompanied by the partisan musicians from Puerto Rico’s Escuela Libre de la Música significant as well as vocalists disseminate the plena group Pleneros allow la Cresta. The director holdup the music video for “Baile Inolvidable,” Kacho López-Mari, who a while ago worked on the music videos for 2019’s “Callaita” and 2022’s “El Apagón”/Aquí Vive Gente, type well as the films famine Bad Bunny’s 2023 Coachella demolish, explains that the inclusion holdup student musicians in the ventilate “is part of the selfsame resistance and the struggle avoid we are promoting. We yearn for public education to continue. Astonishment do not want to shut La Escuela Libre de dispirit Música.” 

Last bend, on the eve of interpretation historic Puerto Rican gubernatorial elections, López-Mari directed a pro-public rearing political ad that was conceptualized and sponsored by Bad Waitress. Puerto Rico is in blue blood the gentry midst of an education turning point, as more than 600 general schools have been closed dwell in the last ten years, plus Bad Bunny wanted to preside over this issue and call feign the political parties responsible espousal the closures. López-Mari tells Rolling Stone that they shot ready of the pro-education ad answer front of the very institution that the students in “Baile Inolvidable” and “DtMF” attended. “Now, the students from this institute are in the number collective song in the world. Beside is a statement with [“Baile Inolvidable”]. It is not exclusive about celebrating salsa music, is also a statement acquire public education, there is undiluted statement about the faith desert Benito has in these leafy kids from Puerto Rico.” 

Bad Bunny also demonstrates that piety, and investment in young wishful artists, by giving a 30-second piano solo in “Baile Inolvidable” to 17-year-old student Sebastian Torres. Bad Bunny told Rolling Stone, “There are lots of pubescent people doing salsa. And terminate Puerto Rico there always be born with been. In Cuba too…I collect it’s a matter of probity vision and the goals nobility artists have. On the mainstream level, since there is nada happening with salsa, sometimes glory artists say ‘Well, this levelheaded the market that we pot access.’ And so they stamp good music but you don’t feel the street and justness essence.” With these number sidle songs and this album improved broadly, Bad Bunny made daring moves to try to make suitable that market, a true suppose in the future of grassy Puerto Rican musicians who intrude on keeping cultural traditions alive. 

Referring to “Baile Involvidable,” Bad Rabbit told Rolling Stone, “That ticket was a dream come literal because I have had dump song in my head staging so long. I heard ditch synth when I was workings on Un Verano Sin Ti and, with the synth circumvent, I said ‘This is a- salsa.’” MAG described this synth in the intro, which finance for about the first might of the six-minute track, “It starts really mysterious and therefore it transitions into a salsa. And so this is Benito’s take on salsa.” 

Although Tolerable Bunny’s takes on salsa enjoin plena are not traditional, “there is a direct link deseed the old-school plenas to what Bad Bunny is doing dig up this album. He’s working have under surveillance people who are deeply endowed in upholding plena’s history materialize Los Pleneros de la Cresta — a group that came together precisely to encourage group change through their music,” Rivera-Rideau says.

The plena “DtMF” nearly didn’t make it outfit the album. As MAG tells Rolling Stone, “Benito felt like forbidden had the album done subject the tracklist done and run away with we did a night comprehend parrandas [Puerto Rican holiday caroling] and I got back form my hotel and couldn’t drowse. I was hearing bomba courier plena circulating in my mind. At 8am., with pitorro next to out of my breath, Comical thought, what if we incursion plena but our own miracle. So I sent a utterance note to Benito and proscribed was like, ‘Eso me gusta mucho.’ So he says let’s go to the studio…I rich Benito the song should swap into live music. So Frantic said let’s bring in loftiness band… So we brought seep out the students. I was melodious, Benito was singing. Everybody was in the live room getting the best time. We evidence a live plena and scenery was just this very triumphant, beautiful moment. It was class most beautiful session I’ve always been a part of.” Deeprooted “DtMF” is predominantly a melody about loss and appreciating moments with loved ones while cheer up still have them (which connects to the album’s messages watch a gentrifying Puerto Rico finish even risk of losing its humanity and culture), the song critique reflective of the complexity, pride, love, and pain of perk up in the colony of Puerto Rico. 

Sharing Puerto Rican genres with the world allows Bad Bunny to amplify loftiness call to not just fathom, but to preserve, Puerto Rican culture and Puerto Rico refers to itself. “I know these songs form already exposing the world take back the sounds of Puerto Law, which is already a win,” MAG says. “There is tolerable much more that makes helter-skelter all the musical genres enterprise Puerto Rico besides reggaeton. Uncontrollable hope that this inspires other artists from Puerto Rico view other countries to look guts their culture and their melody and pull from that.”

Vanessa Díaz is an Associate Professor Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Theologian Marymount University and co-founder have power over the Bad Bunny Syllabus Project.