Review: Fame is a frenemy in Bad Bunny’s ‘Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana’

By the onset of 1977, Héctor Lavoe, the Puerto Rican salsero of legend, was down and out. Such is the spiritual root of “Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana,” the fifth solo studio album by the Puerto Rican-gone-global superstar Bad Bunny, released on Friday, Oct. 13. Benito, who first won hearts with early Soundcloud bangers like “Diles” and “Soy Peor,” teleported back to 2016 to add dimension to the full-circle moment he commemorates in “Nadie Sabe.” It’s with those hard-edged beats that one can more fully appreciate Bad Bunny — not just as the Latino heartthrob, nor the Puerto Rican resistance leader we got to know in previous eras, but as a rapper’s rapper. “God hears me and says, ‘Wow, why does this f—er complain?’” In “Nadie Sabe,” Bad Bunny proves that not even his peers in the music industry are safe from his ire. He spits, “I’m from P.R., where the real ‘bichotas’ come from.” Bad Bunny then made headlines Friday with a tiraera aimed at his “Oasis” collaborator J Balvin, in the Eladio Carrión-assisted drill track “Thunder y Lightning.” In what can be construed as a dig at Balvin’s readiness to concede authenticity for commercial gain, Bad Bunny raps in Spanish: “You’ve seen me with the same people while you are friends with the whole world like Balvin.” Ultimately, the Bad Bunny we get to know in “Nadie Sabe” is a much-beloved superstar who has been hunkered down on the defensive too long — whether from critics, haters, alarmingly possessive fans, or other entities that have seemed to whittle away at his humanity.