Every year, millions of tourists go to Puerto Rico, but at the same time, millions of Puerto Ricans leave. It is a pattern that is not exclusive to the island, but it is common in many developing countries, where places become destinations for strangers instead of stable and habitable houses for people who live there.
For Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican rapper and singer recognized worldwide whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, this tension is in front and the center in his last album I had to throw more photos (I Housing Tasks More Photos, 2025). Through the album, he raises the question: Can a country really maintain its identity if it is measured only in its ability to serve tourists?
When we talk about the cultural impact, the assumption is that this culture is used simply as a tool to build bridges between the country. But Bad Bunny is not playing that role. What represents Inte is a new wave of artists who are more interested in confronting the history of their homelands before translating them to a global audience.
It is a reminder that an artist can put his country on the global map, not packing his culture for mass attractiveness, but rejecting that same expectation. His work encourages reflection on identity and colonialism, using culture as a way of shedding light on injustices that are often ignored.
This is exactly the reason why the realization of this album did not follow the usual formula. Bad Bunny not only entered a study to establish some clues with emotional load on the missing home, or sprinkle some local snakes and instruments to manufacture a “global Puerto Rican sound.”
On the other hand, to give the real album the real weight, he collaborated with historians and ethnographers to unpack the legacy of Spanish colonialism and the United States in Puerto Rico, carrying the conversation about decolonization in the global mainstream.
Instead of distancing themselves from the Academy, which criticizes artists for converting culture into a merchandise, relied on it. He communicated with academics such as Jorell Melédez-Badillo, a historian from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who worked with him to write contextual tickets for 17 songs in just a week.
What left that was not just a music album; It was deeply human. Not only for global Titensers, but for the rich themselves, who found new layers of their own history that were developed on each track. The album is immersed in Puerto Rican history, touching everything, from the creation of the flag of the island and the Spanish conquest of 1508 to labor attacks in the sugarcane industry.
These theses come alive more vividly in the 12 -minute short film that accompanies the album, where an earlier version of Bad Bunny wanders for a Puerto Rico that no longer recognizes, now gentified and surpassed by English speakers. Culture feels distant, erased; A vision of what dissolves when the story is ignored and identity is rewritten.
In an interview with Apple Music this year, Bunny explained that this album was to return to Puerto Rico and take others with him. Not as a tourist, but as a lourning home. It is about reviewing their roots, reconnecting with the family and claiming their identity. A statement to a Puerto Rico stripped of foreign filters, one that speaks of its true self beyond the look of strangers.
One of the most powerful tracks of the album is tourist (tourist), a melancholic and stripped song where Bad Bunny reflects on a lover who only saw the glamorous lateral life, never pain under him. On the surface, it sounds like a ballad of heartbreak. However, as much of the album, it has a double more deep meaning.
Benead The Love Story is a criticism of tourism and privilege. He addresses tourists who go to the Caribbean for beaches, but turn to the struggles of the people who live there, calling American buyers who take properties in Puerto Rico, raising prices and push the premises.
“You just saw the best of me and not what I was suffering,” he sings. It is a message for those who consume the beauty of a country without committing to its reality. To those who visit Puerto Rico, but refuse to really connect with him.
Lessons for Arab artists
Bad Bunny may have helped catapullating Latin music to the global mainstream, but its success is based on the authentic counting of the complete history of where it comes from. Heigs in its history, its pain and its realities, providing something powerful than performance: a real and local perspective.
That son of authenticity has lessons for Arab and Egyptian artists who now gain global visibility. Around the last years, Egyptian musician Mohamed Ramadan acted in Coachella for the first time, rapper Wegz embarked on a world tour with a live nation, and Palestinian artists such as Elyanna and Saint Levant continue to build international followers.
There is much more in the Arab world and for Arab music, than what is commonly seen or understands today; Its history extends far beyond the narration of the conflict and agitation, rooted in a deep cultural legacy that goes beyond pharaonic icons and decorative Arab writing.
Embedded within this heritage there are philosophies, expressions and lasting wisdoms that have led generations through adversity with resilience.
There are also pressing problems that attract attention. The Arab world, and within its global diaspora, there is a growing identity crisis. The youngest generation is often disconnected, from the Arab language, from the ancestral dialects, from stories never transmitted or lost in translation.
This disconnection is deepened by the instability and the difficulties that many would prevent to return to their country of origin, not only physical, but emotionally and politically. For many in the diaspora, “Home” becomes a spoken place or in the past tens, or romantizing through the lens of the memories of their parents or grandparents.
It is time for us to reflect more deeply on what it means to remain connected to where we come. Beyond nostalgia, beyond summer visits and the stories we inherit, is the hardest and most essential return work, not only as tourists or guests, but as participants in the configuration of the future of our homelands.
What makes Bad Bunny’s success stand out is that it not only has a port of Puerto Rico; He studies it. For example, for your latest Rollout album, instead of a conventional song list revelation, the titles of retired songs through the GPS coordinates scattered throughout the island. Fans had to find them through Google Street View, turning Puerto Rico into a digital map of history, memory and meaning.
For the artists of the Arab world who take the world stage, there is a clear taking that everyone can benefit from the Bad Bunny album: representing the country, by itself, is not enough.
Because the cultural impact does not only come from visibility. It comes from telling the stories that others won, and doing it with depth, truth and purpose.
