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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny (Benito Ocasio) fused reggaeton and trap in songs
such as Diles (2016),
Vuelve (2017),
Te Bote' (2017), Mayores (2017),
Ahora Me Llama with Karol G
and
I Like It (2018) with Cardi B.
A deluge of hit singles led to
his debut album X 100pre (2018), which stands for "forever",
one of the best-selling albums of Latin trap, mostly crafted by
hitmaker Marco "Tainy" Masis;
but he also flirted with reggaeton, pop, salsa and soul, making him a global star.
It contains La Romana, perhaps the best demonstration of his crooning/rapping skills, and
Mia (a collaboration with Drake).
Oasis (2019), produced by
Marcos "Tainy" Fernandez,
was a collaboration with J Balvin that contains the singles Que Pretendes and La Cancion.
In 2020 Bad Bunny was the most streamed artist worldwide thanks to his
second album YHLQMDLG (2020), whose title
which stands for "Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana" ("I Do Whatever I Want").
The title is probably the most intelligent thing on the album, mostly
produced by Subelo Neo.
Safaera is the least predictable and the standout, followed by the
traditional reggaeton numbers like
Tainy's La Santa and Bichiyal, and another eccentric concoction,
Hablamos Manana (with the best coda).
Bad Bunny racked up three of the top-ten songs in Spotify's Global 50 (if you trust Spotify's numbers).
Las Que No Iban a Salir (2020) collects garbage from from the album sessions.
El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo (2020), mostly produced by
Marco "Mag" Borrero, offered more of the same trivial party music, basically 16
cases of dejavu, but certainly masterly produced.
The 23-song Un Verano Sin Ti (2022),
that can be read as both
a love letter to his homeland of Puerto Rico and a sunlit tribute to the Caribbean musical heritage,
is both his least creative album yet
and his most eclectic. Half of it is a trivial repetition of the music that
made him famous, from muscular reggaeton (Moscow Mule) to
trap in the style of La Romana (Titi' Me Pregunto').
But a good chunk experiments with creative hybrids like
mambo-meringue (Despues de la Playa),
dub-soul (Me Fui de Vacaciones) and
disco-bomba (El Apagon).
However, the album peaks with the one song that doesn't seem to belong, a
sort of Latin dream-pop: Otro Atardecer.
At its peak of popularity the album,
which debuted at number one of the Billboard charts and remained there for 13 weeks,
was boasting 100 million daily streams world-wide.
Bad Bunny had become one of the world's biggest pop stars.
The album's seamless Spanish-language fusion of pop, soul, reggaeton, mambo, dembow, bachata, cumbia and bossanova was the soundtrack of 2022.
Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Manana (2023) is an over-bloated,
trap-obsessed mess, clearly concocted to exploit Bad Bunny's moment of fame.
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