Not many parties start with someone contemplating suicide. Yet that’s how Bad Bunny chose to begin the video for “Si Veo a Tu Mamá,” the opening track of his second album, YHLQMDLG. We see a close-up of a despondent young man, standing on a stool and staring through a noose, ready to hang himself as a party buzzes around him. He’s saved by an empathetic little boy who understands his pain, and introduces him to the cure: Listening to Bad Bunny.
It’s a macabre choice for a dance record, a collection of distinctly Puerto Rican party beats that pays homage to reggaetón’s past and future. And on its surface, the song, built atop a morose, Casiotoned version of the “Girl From Ipanema” bossa nova melody, might seem more suited for the elevator of a Florida nursing home than the club. But it’s also firmly aligned with the somewhat paradoxical ethos of YHLQMDLG (an acronym for Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana, or “I do whatever I want”). Bad Bunny might know what it feels like to be sad, but he also knows the path to salvation is believing in himself, and with that, he can do whatever he wants—and pull it off with swagger.
Bad Bunny rose to stardom riding the Latin trap wave, crooning over beats constructed with 808 drums, bleeding synth bass, and narcotized atmospherics. It all borrowed heavily from the sounds of late-’00s Southern hip-hop, adding the idiosyncrasies of the flow en Español and a Caribbean POV. For YHLQMDLG, he reaches back even further to the glory days of reggaetón, sidelining Anglo guest stars for OGs like Daddy Yankee, Yaviah, Ñengo Flow, and Jowell y Randy.
YHLQMDLG plays like a mixtape for a San Juan marquesina—the underground garage parties Bad Bunny referenced on X 100PRE’s “Cuando Perriabas.” He curates a playlist of diverse perreo jams with a singular, unwavering focus: having fun. Where X 100PRE felt like a tightly sequenced statement of identity, YHLQMDLG is both looser and freer, a party record made by a young star with nothing to prove. The highlights are plentiful; early singles “Vete” and “Ignorantes” occupy the suave sadboi lane he’s best known for, but “Yo Perreo Sola” and “Bichiyal” rock raw, stripped-down reggaetón beats evocative of the genre’s “Gasolina” era. And he doesn’t completely abandon the sounds of the trap, either: The Anuel AA collab “Está Cabrón Ser Yo” could just have easily found itself on the Migos’ Culture III.