It’s a busy week for Bad Bunny. Coming straight off a thrilling three-award win at the Grammy’s, he’ll take the Super Bowl halftime center stage on Sunday. His latest album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (“I Should’ve Taken More Photos”) made Grammy’s history as the first primarily Spanish-language album to win Best Album of the Year—all while Bad Bunny set the tone for the awards show in all ways. Many of the night’s acceptance speeches uplifted those whose land and autonomy has been stripped from them. Bad Bunny made a point to call for “ICE out” before thanking God.
A personal and heartfelt ode to resilience, every part of DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS—a blend of musical genres, lyrics, short films, and history lessons—is a thoughtful and raw reflection of Puerto Rico’s colonial history, diaspora, ecological vulnerability, and cultural legacy. From Hurricane Maria to gentrification, forced migration, and biodiversity loss, Bad Bunny has a long history of being an unapologetic voice for Puerto Rican struggles. DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS is the culmination of all this—and more—but it’s not his only ode to the climate movement.
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Here are 5 Bad Bunny songs that center environmental and climate justice:
1. “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” (“I should’ve taken more photos”)
Album: DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
The title track is a nostalgic display of the changes reshaping Puerto Rico and communities broken up by foreign involvement and displacement, as well as a call to protect the island’s culture, land, and natural beauty before it’s too late. In the short film released with the song, Puerto Rican icon Jacobo Morales struggles to buy food at an American-owned shop that has replaced his neighborhood bakery. He encounters El Sapo Concho, a recurring symbol in Bad Bunny’s portfolio that symbolizes the fight to preserve local biodiversity and its ecosystems amid the pressures of gentrification and development.
2. “El Apagón—Aquí Vive Gente” (“The Blackout: People Live Here”)
Album: Un Verano Sin Ti
“El Apagón” is a song Bad Bunny paired with a 20-minute documentary, to raise awareness about the widespread blackouts that persisted long after the Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017. This ongoing energy crisis has inhibited essential services and impacted people’s health. He calls out the foreign energy company that subsequently privatized the grid, as well as local government inaction and gentrification that forces people to relocate and amplifies the infrastructural vulnerability in the face of climate disasters.
3. “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii” (“What Happened to Hawaii”)
Album: DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
In this song, Bad Bunny warns that what happened to Hawaii—land loss, cultural erasure, and displacement—could happen to Puerto Rico. He centers the grief of the displaced “jíbaro,” the Puerto Rican self-sufficient farmer who symbolizes the island’s traditional connection to the land and rejection of colonial hierarchies across race, politics, and class. Bad Bunny even wears a jíbaro’s straw hat on the DTMF album cover.
4. “Una Velita” (“A Little Candle”)
Album: Una Velita
The Little Candle represents the fragile hope that has carried families through persistent energy blackouts long after Hurricane Maria. The song intentionally sheds light on structural inequalities and governmental neglect as the island awaits another storm. It highlights how communities had to lead the recovery efforts when systems failed.
5. “TURiSTA” (“Tourist”)
Album: DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
This song is an allegory. A lover who does not get to know Benito—Bad Bunny’s real name—at a deeper level is like a tourist who temporarily visits Puerto Rico. A tourist just enjoys beautiful beaches, dancing, food, and sunsets without having to grasp or deal with the deep-rooted pain of this U.S. territory.
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