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Credit…Marta Lavandier/Associated Press

Late last month, on The New York Times’s weekly music podcast Popcast, my co-host Joe Coscarelli and I sat down with the global superstar Bad Bunny, one of the defining pop voices of the last decade, and perhaps the artist most responsible for helping catapult Spanish-language music into the modern pop mainstream.

The conversation was wide-ranging and loose, covering the peaks of Bad Bunny’s pop success, his struggles with the demands of superstardom, his response to toxic comments about Puerto Rico at a Trump rally last year, and his recommitment to the music of his home — not simply the reggaeton of recent years, but also plena, salsa and other styles of earlier generations.

On Sunday, he released his sixth solo album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” which he described as his “most Puerto Rican” album to date. For someone who has gleefully taken the sounds of his homeland and integrated them with countless other styles, this was a creative statement, as well as a personal and political one. After bringing Puerto Rican music out to the world, he’s now bringing the world back to Puerto Rico.

“Puerto Rico is a very small island. Maybe an artist from Mexico could be successful only in Mexico. Same with Brazil,” he said. “But I always knew that I could be big and successful being Puerto Rican, with my music and with my slang and with my culture, my everything.”

Below is a chronological primer for those looking to understand how Bad Bunny’s musical arc has unfolded — you’ll find one song from each of his albums, and a little more.

Debería haber escuchado más canciones,

Jon

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