{"id":4734,"date":"2025-08-25T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/endless-summer-a-dispatch-from-bad-bunnys-san-juan-residency\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T20:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T20:00:00","slug":"endless-summer-a-dispatch-from-bad-bunnys-san-juan-residency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/endless-summer-a-dispatch-from-bad-bunnys-san-juan-residency\/","title":{"rendered":"Endless Summer: A Dispatch From Bad Bunny\u2019s San Juan Residency"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2224047301.jpg\" width=\"1290\" height=\"860\" alt=\"Bad Bunny onstage during the first show of his 30-date concert residency at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on July 11, 2025. (Credit: Ricardo ARDUENGO \/ AFP)\"><\/figure>\n<p>Home is a feeling. Home can be a mountain, an island, a stranger\u2019s home where you\u2019re welcomed like family.<\/p>\n<p>Benito Antonio Mart\u00ednez Ocasio, better known as Bad Bunny, decided he\u2019s homebound for the summer. During prime festival and touring season, the megastar\u2014whose latest album <em>Deb\u00ed Tirar M\u00e1s Fotos<\/em> (I Should Have Taken More Photos) hit No. 1 on the <em>Billboard<\/em> charts, his fourth album to do so\u2014leveraged his celebrity to manifest one of the underlying purposes of his art. After spending years bringing Puerto Rico to the world, his homegrown show at San Juan\u2019s famous Coliseo de Puerto Rico Jos\u00e9 Miguel Agrelot<em> <\/em>(El Choli, if you\u2019re local) was designed to bring the world to the island.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/08\/how-is-oasis-live-25-going-so-far-so-fuckin-brilliant\/\">How is Oasis Live \u201925 Going? So Far, So Fuckin\u2019 Brilliant<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/08\/playboi-carti-preps-massive-fall-tour\/\">Playboi Carti Preps Massive Fall Tour<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/08\/dominique-fils-aime-believes-love-is-the-ultimate-cure-for-the-world\/\">Dominique Fils-Aim\u00e9 Believes Love is the Ultimate Cure for the World<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Aptly named <a href=\"https:\/\/nomequieroirdeaqui.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>No me quiero ir de aqui<\/em><\/a> (I Don\u2019t Want To Leave), Bad Bunny\u2019s completely sold-out summer residency is an unabashed love letter to Puerto Rico. Entering the arena, the floor is flanked by two stages: a mountain that feels uprooted straight out of El Yunque National Forest, vaguely shaped like a cem\u00ed (a Ta\u00edno nature spirit), and a pink casita whose interior doubles as a VIP area. Anyone who sees the small house up-close can attest to the fact that the little house is authentic Caribbean architecture, the kind of space that could belong to any t\u00eda out in Fajardo or Ponce or Bayam\u00f3n.<\/p>\n<p>The spectacle opens theatrically: At center stage, a woman searches for a camera. At the same time, a man finds a blanket covering drums used for plena, a traditional Puerto Rican genre. Slowly, out of the mountain, dancers emerge donning traditional j\u00edbaro garb worn in Boricua folk tradition, some complete with pava straw hats (an unofficial symbol of this era that doubles as a show of Puerto Rican pride). The man of the hour subtly appears stage-left, kicking off the night with new song \u201cALAMBRE P\u00faA\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1290\" height=\"860\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2224047623-1290x860.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-471125\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2224047623-1290x860.jpg 1290w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2224047623-340x227.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2224047623-240x160.jpg 240w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2224047623-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2224047623-498x332.jpg 498w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2224047623.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1290px) 100vw, 1290px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A man wears a straw hat with the Puerto Rican flag in the background before the start of the first show of Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny\u2019s 30-date concert residency at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico in San Juan, on July 11, 2025. (Credit: Ricardo ARDUENGO \/ AFP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p><em>No me quiero ir de aqu\u00ed<\/em> is split into three of the island\u2019s key genres: plena, perreo, and salsa. Bad Bunny adapted his songs to each, plena drums replacing the dembow rattle on beloved hits like \u201cLa Santa\u201d (originally recorded with Daddy Yankee) and \u201cVete.\u201d When he appeared at la casita for the reggaeton-heavy section of the night\u2014which included <em>YHLQMDLG<\/em>-era opus \u201cSafaera\u201d (recorded in 2020 with Jowell &amp; Randy, and \u00d1engo Flow) and <em>Un Verano Sin T\u00ed<\/em>\u2019s \u201cTiti Me Pregunt\u00f3\u201d\u2014he comfortably waltzed between the roof and the front porch. His transition back to the mountain was soundtracked by local plena collective Pleneros de la Cresta, who thanked the audience after a lively jam out to \u201cCAF\u00e9 CON RON\u201d: \u201cThank you for getting the world to hear plena puertorrique\u00f1a!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One of the residency\u2019s biggest draws is the rotating cast of guests. For its 19th iteration,\u00a0 Lor\u00e9n Aldarondo Torres of Puerto Rican indie band Chuwi sang her \u201cWeltita\u201d verse from the mountaintop. Later, when the casita was transformed into a party de marquesina like the ones where reggaeton was born, the soundtrack was none other than Ivy Queen herself. The undisputed Queen of Reggaeton held court over the stadium from the casita\u2019s entrance with a medley of her hits, snarling signature song \u201cQuiero Bailar\u201d like it was the last time she\u2019d sing it. Before going back to the mountains, Bad Bunny tried bending the audience to his will again, encouraging everyone to turn off their phones and be in the moment. Most of the arena followed suit, and the audience presence was palpable.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Before switching to salsa, a video about the genre\u2019s African roots was played, and Benito emerged in a suit. Backed by <a href=\"https:\/\/remezcla.com\/music\/meet-los-sobrinos-bad-bunnys-tiny-desk-dtmf-band\/\" target=\"_blank\">Los Sobrinos<\/a>, he reinterpreted \u201cCalla\u00edta\u201d with timbaleros and bongos. If he wasn\u2019t already, Bad Bunny was fully in control of the audience for \u201cBaile Inolvidable\u201d, the salsa standout from this era. Arguably the show\u2019s biggest moment after his sobering rendition of \u201cLo Que Le Pas\u00f3 a Hawaii\u201d right before, it was a tremendous show of artistic growth, one where Bad Bunny channeled salsa legends like H\u00e9ctor Lavoe and Willie Col\u00f3n while remaining more himself than we\u2019ve ever seen him.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t until the end that I realized three hours had flown by. I was ready for more, almost disappointed that there wasn\u2019t. That feeling was a shock: A big-budget arena show can often drag. Bad Bunny\u2019s generosity as a performer is on full display from the moment you approach El Choli to the second you leave, an eternal moment frozen in the endless summer of the Caribbean heat. It\u2019s something that can only exist here, something Bad Bunny did well to remind us when he first popped out of la casita, right as the initial electric guitar chords of house-influenced banger \u201cNeverita\u201d reverberated through the arena: \u201cSummer ended in most of the world, but we\u2019re in PR.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>All quotes have been translated from Spanish<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Home is a feeling. Home can be a mountain, an island, a stranger\u2019s home where you\u2019re welcomed like family. Benito Antonio Mart\u00ednez Ocasio, better known as Bad Bunny, decided he\u2019s&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1267,435,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bad-bunny","category-live-reviews","category-pushly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}