Benito encourages us, “do take more photos”…

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Al Varela: Narratively, having “DtMF” be the last TikTok hit before it shut down would have been very fitting. A song about processing the fact that a major relationship in your life has ended, and all the regrets that flood in when you realize you didn’t cherish it as much as you should have. I think this is a feeling that’s especially resonant in the decade of COVID and social isolation where no matter how hard we try, things won’t be the same as they used to be. Having this song’s chorus be delivered through a big crowd chant makes it resonate as a communal experience. As lonely as the song is, it’s also a reminder that you’re not alone, and it’s not too late to start taking pictures. I should follow the song’s advice, honestly.
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Alfred Soto: As pervasive in Miami-Dade as standing water and bleeding-ear Trump flags, Bad Bunny is beloved because he incarnates what we Hispanics love best about our polyglot culture: the scamp and the storyteller in easeful co-existence. With voice suffused with echo as an attempt to counteract the Morse code beeps, he defends his penchant for taking photos over his girlfriend’s objections. He comes across as the kind of guy who after a confrontation will pull you close to dance in plays, which can suck too.
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Nortey Dowuona: According to Frances Aparicio, the plena is a mixture of Europena and African musical elements practiced by the African and mulatto peoples of then colony Puerto Rico, especially in southern and southeastern Puerto Rico where the sugar growing plantations were located, holding the African slaves brought to the island to plant then harvest the sugar crop for the Spanish, then Americans.A common story often shared by scholars says the genre took its name from two immigrants from St Kitts, a husband (John Clark) and wife (Catherine George aka Dona Catin) who made their living playing music, so when the husband would demand his fife to “play, Anna!” or “play now!”, which the Spanish would rewrite as plena. Joselino Oppenheimer aka Bumbun, who would plow the land on the plantation, singing and improvising plenas, taking the solos while his cuarteros would sing back refrains, is hailed by music scholar Juan Flores and by other plena fans and musicians as King of La Plena. Eventually, he left this job to create the first plena band, where he was well regarded as a panderetoro, famous for his virtuoso skills with the pandereta and high ability to improvise, as well as a common performance trick where he would hang it on his shoulder, bounce it off his head or rolling it on the floor. It does remind me of Benito, a oddball and spritelike figure whose charming, lively and genderbending affect recalls this proud, ebullient charisma despite it probably not directly being pulled from Bumbun’s example. “DtMF,” however, is a well trodden plena infused pop which sadly recalls the gently wilted relationship with a woman who he has lost, and ends directly pulling from that old practice as an unknown group of cuarteros gleefully sing the hook playing it back to us. At the end, one even improvises a line of his own, sparking laughter from probably not only his compatriots, but Benito himself. Bumbun would be proud.
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Julian Axelrod: It’s literally so hack and embarrassing to be like “wow this pop artist is using live instrumentation” but wow! Bad Bunny sounds really good with live instruments!
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Iain Mew: I love all the different bends and sways given to the beeps that keep popping up. Set against the live drums and crowd vocals, the effect is simultaneously nostalgic and urgent, a photo of a moment that hasn’t faded.
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Katherine St. Asaph: The best song that extols taking nudes while sounding like the Secret of Mana town theme.
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Melody Esme: A likable bit of reggaeton that moves between contemplative folk and anthemic dance music, complete with a group chant. I dig the Amber Alert siren, and the tom-heavy beat reminds of Ice Spice’s “Think U the Shit,” of all things. But the words, about nostalgia and how the superficial things in life all seem arbitrary when time passes and all you’re left with memories, are the true highlight.
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Will Adams: “I should have taken more photos” is a fascinating spin on the well-worn sentiment of not knowing how good you have it ’til it’s gone. Maybe we millennials with our selfies and our Instagram hashtags and our phones everywhere were simply using the tools we had to achieve the same goal: preserve happiness while we still have it. “DtMF” captures that feeling: a bustling groove, house-party shout-along backing vocals, and the weightiness of knowing that all this won’t last forever.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: An amendment to my prior statement on nostalgia: while appealing to the nostalgic impulse of the listening public at large is still a a hellish affliction, art about the experience of nostalgia has a very high chance of making me cry. If “DtMF” was just a sad banger that would be enough; instead, it’s a sad banger par excellence. Bad Bunny uses the steely arena-sized synths and reggaeton rhythms that he always tends towards, but here they feel alive in a way that his music — anyone’s music — only rarely does. By the time the song erupts into an island-sized gang vocal in its final minute, more and more voices filling the mix until you can barely make out his lead performance, I’m enveloped in the weight of its feeling.
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