Unhealthy Bunny Fears Puerto Rico Will Turn into the New Hawaii. He is Not Alone.

• Unhealthy Bunny’s new album, “Debir Tirar Mas Fotos,” dropped earlier this month.
• It options conventional folks music from Puerto Rico, the place the artist is from.
• The lyrics contact on the gentrification of Puerto Rico and draw a stark parallel with Hawaii.

Pristine sandy seashores, lush inexperienced rainforests, and azure waters that stretch so far as the attention can see.

To some, Hawaii is a paradise — however Unhealthy Bunny has a distinct view.

His new album “Debir Tirar Mas Fotos,” or “I Ought to’ve Taken Extra Pictures,” notched up greater than 150 million streams in its first week of launch this month, overtaking Taylor Swift on Billboard’s Prime 200. He is been one of many most-streamed artists on platforms akin to Spotify for a number of years.

Infused with conventional Puerto Rican folks music like plena, salsa, and bomba and that includes unbiased artists from the island like Los Pleneros de la Cresta and Chuwi, “Debir Tirar Mas Fotos” is an homage to Puerto Rico. It exhibits that Bunny not has to “lean on reggaeton” to dominate the charts, Nuria Web, a Latin music and tradition journalist, informed Enterprise Insider.

However except for the catchy rhythms and Bunny’s viral moments selling the album on TV chat exhibits, “concern pervades this whole document,” Petra Rivera-Rideau, affiliate professor of American research and co-creator of the Unhealthy Bunny Syllabus, informed BI.

It is most blatant on monitor 14, “Lo Que Pasó a Hawaii,” which interprets to “What occurred to Hawaii” — a tune reflecting rising concern amongst some Puerto Ricans that their island is at risk of struggling the identical overdevelopment as Hawaii.

An emblem of displacement

Those that grew up in Puerto Rico say it wasn’t unusual to listen to Hawaii talked about in debates round statehood — a query the island has wrestled with for greater than a century.

Like Hawaii, Puerto Rico was annexed to the US within the late nineteenth century. Whereas the previous went on to turn out to be a fully-fledged state, the latter stays a territory with restricted voting privileges.

“There was an inclination of evaluating,” mentioned Daniel Nevárez Araújo, a professor on the College of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras and coauthor of “The Unhealthy Bunny Enigma: Tradition, Resistance, and Uncertainty,” recalling his childhood.

For these in favor of statehood, Hawaii was typically held up as a “mannequin instance of what Puerto Rico ought to be — progress and absolutely American,” Web mentioned.

However the comparability has turn out to be extra sophisticated lately, Illeana Rodriquez-Silva, an affiliate professor of Latin American and Caribbean historical past on the College of Washington-Seattle, informed BI.

She mentioned a wave of prosperous settlers from the US mainland got here within the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which destroyed tens of hundreds of properties in 2017 and compelled about 130,000 individuals to relocate.

Lured by tax breaks that sought to assist Puerto Rico usher in funding and entrepreneurship, they purchased up property and land, Rodriguez-Silva mentioned.

“That is after I began listening to, ‘we’re going be like Hawaii,'” she mentioned. “And what they’re referring to is that this second within the late nineteenth century the place US white elites had been in a position to are available and truly begin taking land” in Hawaii, she added.

Simply as some Hawaiians lament vacationers treating their islands like theme parks and rising the price of dwelling, Puerto Ricans began feeling the affect of gentrification, Nevárez Araújo mentioned.

“If you happen to take a look at Rincon, Aguada, even Mayagüez, Aguadilla, there is a huge exodus of expats coming right here shopping for properties,” he mentioned. “Everybody else cannot afford to go to the grocery retailer.”

Nevárez Araújo mentioned Unhealthy Bunny is vocalizing considerations that the island is “slowly being emptied out” and turning into a spot that is “not for Puerto Ricans.”

Tempered optimism

On “Lo Que Pasó a Hawaii,” Bunny calls on Puerto Ricans to retain their flag and never neglect their roots.

It is a stark warning, however in “subverting the narrative” that the island ought to aspire to be like Hawaii, Web mentioned it affords hope and delight to Puerto Ricans who’ve grappled with a “nagging feeling that nothing we do is ever ok.”

Rivera-Rideau mentioned the tune additionally captures the political spirit of a brand new technology of Puerto Ricans, who, like Bunny, grew up seeing the island’s issues mount and now need change.

“His considerations about electrical energy and infrastructure, gentrification, tourism, the economic system, alternatives, development for the long run — these are considerations that many Puerto Ricans have,” she mentioned.

In recent times, occasions just like the ousting of the island’s former governor Ricardo Rosselló after widespread protests have proven that “younger adults are actually energized,” Rivera-Rideau mentioned.

In “Advertising Puerto Rico,” Bunny runs a danger of attracting extra mainlanders, individuals who take heed to the music just because they discover it “unique” and catchy, Nevárez Araújo cautioned.

Nonetheless, for a lot of younger Puerto Ricans, “Debir Tirar Mas Fotos” is “the closest they are going to get to voicing these fears and people anxieties” in regards to the island’s future, he mentioned.

Some TikTok customers have taken to posting images and movies of individuals and locations they’ve misplaced, set to the album’s title monitor, indicating that Bunny’s music is resonating on the island and additional afield.

“Many of those songs are declaring the story of displacement,” Rodriquez-Silva mentioned. “That’s one thing that’s so actual to many people right this moment.”