When
Bad Bunny released X100Pre (pronounced Siempre), his debut long-player on Christmas Eve of 2018, he revealed a singular ability to seamlessly move through urbano styles from reggaeton and Latin trap to hip-hop en español and dembow. Further, these party anthems and perreo jams contained lyrics in which the artist sang about his feelings, in striking contrast to his peers' boasting about wealth and sexual prowess. In keeping with the oddball issue dates,
YHLQMDLG ("Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana" translated as "I Do Whatever I Want") appeared on Leap Day, 2020. Here he turns the notion of the cohesive urbano statement into a sprawling 20-track mix of styles, production techniques, and completely accessible hooks in a work of peerless musical invention.
Bad Bunny spent six months working on
YHLQMDLG with 14 different producers (Subelo NEO and
Tainy chief among them). The shapeshifting nature of the music here begins with a Casiotone playing the riff from
Antonio Carlos Jobim's immortal "Girl from Ipanema" to introduce "Si Veo a Tu Mamá," a trap/bossa tune where
Bunny sums up past emotions and relationships to move toward new experiences. With its rolling, clattering 808 drums and stripped-down reggaetón beats, "Yo Perreo Sola" ("I Dance Alone") is aimed at club-going feminists. Oddly, his collaborator on the track, Puerto Rican singer and songwriter Nesi, goes uncredited. A collaboration with
Daddy Yankee on "La Santa" leans back toward reggaeton's early, raw dembow edges, as does the collab with
Anuel AA on "Está Cabrón Ser Yo." "Safaera" is a suite-like collage that changes tempos no less than eight times -- in five minutes -- with a new beat accompanying almost every verse. "Bichiyal" featuring
Yavia is a cauldron of burning perreo intensity. But there's plenty of radio-friendly urbano included as well, such as "Soliá," "La Zona," and "Ignorantes" featuring
Sech (
Bunny performed it on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon wearing a pink jacket, flowing skirt and dangling earrings in tribute to a transwoman shot and killed for using a woman's bathroom in Puerto Rico). Initially, “La Difícil” plays into urbano scene clichés in relating the tale of a hard-to-get woman exploiting her beauty. However, not to be misunderstood, in the video
Bad Bunny flips the trope it on its head in giving the woman her own story as a single mom trying to care for her daughter. The set's craziest jam is "Safaeram," a clubfloor banger with
Jowell & Randy and
Nengo Flow offering brittle, aggressive nods to old-school reggaeton with cut-and-paste sampling and jagged, shifting rhythms before champete urbana, and dembow claim the fore. Closer "<3 " is a trap meditation with harp samples that reveals
Bunny's intention to retire after dropping another album in December. He thanks fans for their support but states (translated): "… I already don’t sleep/And all this fame has made me sick." The tune's seeming darkness feels more like a promise than an idle threat.
Bad Bunny does whatever he wants, even if that means quitting when you're far ahead. If he does, we'll still have
YHLQMDLG, a transformative fever dream of an album that accents freedom by breaking all the rules without writing new ones. ~ Thom Jurek