YHLQMDLG: the new album by Bad Bunny

On Friday night, February 28, at midnight, Bad Bunny released YHLQMDLG (which is an acronym in Spanish for I do what I want), his new and highly anticipated album. For months, the reggaeton and Puerto Rican ragtag had his fans waiting for his new album, which he had announced at the end of last year. Two singles were already known: VETE and Ignorantes, the second in collaboration with Sech. However, these two songs would only be the start of this album that is driving fans crazy and marking the history of reggaeton.

YHLQMDLG

This is Bad Bunny's second studio album after X100PRE, which came out in 2018. His debut album had already been a success after only a couple of years of career in which he had collaborated with J Balvin and other renowned reggaeton singers. That previous album had nostalgic and sad tones with references that spoke to a generation.

In this new record, Bad Bunny vindicates and pays tribute to the reggaeton from before while transforming it to show that with the format and forms of reggaeton, new things can be said. With a list of 20 tracks, YHLQMDLG gives fans songs of heartbreak, perreo, trap, reggaeton sounds of the 2000s and incredible collaborations. He has songs with Daddy Yankee, Yaviah, Ñengo Flow, Sech, Mora, Jowell and Randy, Anuel AA, Myke Towers, Kendo Kaponi, Arcangel, Duki and Pablo Chill-E, so the album also collects the voices that are in this moment making and transforming reggaeton.

Many have said that reggaeton has had to whitewash itself to have international fame. J Balvin's songs, for example, feel closer to pop than to the hard and pure perreo of the 2000s when reggaeton started playing on the radio. With this album, Bad Bunny reverses this order and makes us see how after having gained international fame collaborating with pop artists like Drake, he puts the world to listen to the reggaeton of before but transformed with the influences of now.

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What is coming now for the bad rabbit?

Bad Bunny is a tendency every day. The night before the premiere of the album he was interviewed by Jimmy Fallon. When he sang at the show,  he was wearing a shirt that said "They killed Alexa, not a man with a skirt" so that the world would find out about the case of Alexa, a trans woman murdered in Puerto Rico for entering a women's bathroom. The Puerto Rican press began to cover the news saying that they killed a man with a skirt, against which Bad Bunny protested in the Jimmy Fallon show.

It could be said, then, that even the night before the release of his album, Bad Bunny is aware of the politics and manifestations he feels the need to make, so from this, we can expect more. On the other hand, the bad rabbit has also announced that in nine months he will launch his third record project and that after this he will retire, which is bittersweet news for his fans. Could it be true?