Benito “Bad Bunny” Ocasio still hasn’t had a proper hit single over here, unless you count a brief appearance on Cardi B’s I Like It in 2018. He’s never played a London show. His “World’s Hottest Tour”, which made the Puerto Rican singer/rapper the highest-grossing touring artist of 2022, didn’t even make it over to this side of the world.
But anyone still waiting for him to write songs designed to cross over to English-speaking audiences can whistle. If anything, Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana (“Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow”) is even more uncompromising than its predecessors, built on murky trap sounds, angry bragging and bitter break-up songs.
This fifth album, only announced at the start of this week, maintains a prolific work rate as his fourth release since 2020, with 23 songs that will occupy you for almost an hour and a half. When he finally revealed its existence, he posted a tracklist on social media on which every song was called “Fuego” (“Fire”).
Well might he boast. The former choirboy and grocery bagger from Vega Baja has been the world’s most streamed musician for the last three years running, outdoing former holders of that title including Ed Sheeran and Drake. He’s become the first to top the US charts with an album sung entirely in Spanish, the first Latin artist to headline the huge Coachella festival, and the first to earn a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year with a Spanish language collection.
Meanwhile he is dating Kendall Jenner, has acted opposite Brad Pitt in the movie Bullet Train and developed a bizarre side hustle as a WWE wrestler. He has spent more time in LA as his star has risen, but Nadie Sabe… is Puerto Rican through and through.
Unlike Shakira, who only became a real global superstar once she made an album in English, or Ricky Martin, who taught us how to live la vida loca but otherwise delivered that hit song in our tongue, Bad Bunny sits back and waits for us to cross over to him. On the title track, which outlines his stellar rise over grand orchestral strings, one couplet translates as: “Everyone wants to be number one, I don’t understand the effort/If you want I’ll give it to you, bastard, I don’t even want it.”
There are no familiar guests, but plenty to like about the husky flow of female Puerto Rican newcomer Young Miko on Fina and the sudden violence of Luar la L’s arrival on Teléfono Nuevo. Bad Bunny himself makes it sound easy, his regular cries of “Ey!” dotted between laidback, semi-sung rhymes.
The boom-chk-chk reggaeton beat that he has sometimes favoured is almost entirely jettisoned in favour of the anxious hi-hats of the trap sound and a few livelier house tracks. The smooth R&B of Los Pits stands out as a more melodic potential hit, but there’s no doubt this will be a gargantuan smash whatever he does. It really is about time we caught up.
