"DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS" A quesadilla without queso.

I know it's a bit strange to make a post about what is essentially a trailer for a music album, but in just 12 minutes, "Debí Tirar Más Fotos" by Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio (better known as Bad Bunny) is a brilliant audiovisual piece that not only knows how to start immersing us in what the project will be, but also has a powerful but subtle message that can move anyone.

And although the Puerto Rican singer has been taking advantage of his position of fame for several years to launch increasingly experimental projects (and albums like El Ultimo Tour del Mundo demonstrate this well), I don't think there is one as intimate and interesting as "Debí Tirar Más Fotos", a place where he mixes the sounds of the land where he was born with what we usually expect from modern urban music, creating a fun but at the same time melancholic tribute.

The short, on the other hand, uses this melancholy as a driving force to tell a simple and effective story, where we see an elderly man feeling nostalgic about his past, regretting not having saved more photos from his youth, remembering better times alongside Concho, a stop-motion frog with whom he spends his days without much to do.

At the same time, Debí Tira Más Fotos is a brilliant allegory to gentrification, a theme that is very present in several of the songs on the album (like LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii) and a growing problem in Puerto Rico, a place that seems to be increasingly dominated by the presence of North Americans who see their culture as the only viable way of life, even if this means leaving behind the things that made them move there in the first place.

Under the same direction of Benito, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” is a very effective and visually beautiful short, portraying the Puerto Rican landscapes with great fidelity and allowing us to connect with their conflict even when we are watching it from afar. Beyond a couple of easter eggs, it doesn’t have entire musical themes, but it has a tropical atmosphere that is perfect to prepare us for the album. It is available on Youtube and I honestly recommend it to anyone. I was left wanting more and I feel that was the goal.

This score was taken from my letterboxd account