It’s a special Christmas for Bad Bunnyfans…
The 24-year-old Puerto Rican Latin trap and reggaeton singerreleased his highly anticipated, full-length debut, X100pre, on Christmas Eve.
Bad Bunny told Billboardhe was planning to finally release his 15-track first full album on Christmas Eve, “Real, real, real, real, I finished the album three days ago,” the artist born Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio said in a phone interview. “At that point I said I wanted to release it in Christmas. I didn’t want the year to end without releasing the album. I wanted to close 2018 with it.”
Bad Bunny said he’d been working on the project for six months, and recently finished it by wrapping the song “Como antes,’ the first track they recorded for the album. Though he’s established a rep as the king of the collaboration — appearing on such smashes as “Te Boté” with Ozuna and Nicky Jam and Cardi B‘s “I Like It” — X100preonly has three cameos: Diplo on “200 MPH,” Drake on the recent single “Mia” and Dominican singer El Alfaon “La Romana.”
The album opens with the urgent trap ballad “Ni Bien Ni Mal,” on which the singer promises a departed lover that “whatever happens, I’m not going to call you,” before sliding into the Diplo-assisted “200 MPH,” which trips along on a skittery beat and lyrics about gunning a jetski and partying in the tropics. On the melancholy“¿Quien Tu Eres?,” he croons “Who are you?/ Tell me partner, who are you?/ To get close to me, who are you?,” before basically daring someone to step to him, listing off his accomplishments and warning them to ask around about him in a fierce English-language outro.
The album also includes “Caro,” about how high-dollar Bad Bunny’s flow is, the fiery “La Romana” with the fleet-tongued El Alfa, the new wavey, guitar-spiked “Tenemos Que Hablar” and the broken-hearted “Solo de Mi,” which bounces from a midtempo lost love lament to a cranked up reggaeton jam in the second half, fueled by what sounds like a child’s keyboard.