▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. J Balvin and Bad Bunny: “La Canción”
“Oasis,” Bad Bunny’s 2019 collaboration album with the Colombian reggaeton star J Balvin, wasn’t quite the world-dominating creative team-up it might have been, but it did spawn “La Canción,” a blissfully ethereal duet about heartbreak in which Balvin sounds sweetly cloying, and Bad Bunny sounds as if he might faint of heartache.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Bad Bunny, Jowell & Randy and Ñengo Flow: “Safaera”
Especially early in his career, Bad Bunny was pegged as a kind of outsider curiosity, an eccentric with a fluid approach to songcraft and visual presentation. But what’s always been lurking underneath those poses is a reverence for the history of Latin music. His nods to classic reggaeton are clear on this track from his second studio album, “YHLQMDLG,” which features earlier-generation artists like the duo Jowell & Randy and the rapper Ñengo Flow.
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5. Bad Bunny and Zion & Lennox: “Más de Una Cita”
This teamup with the crucial reggaeton duo Zion & Lennox — from “Las Que No Iban a Salir,” an odds-and-ends compilation from 2020 — demonstrates how Bad Bunny innovated on the reggaeton he was raised on. There’s a certain acidity in the voices of Zion & Lennox, a sense of scraping against the beat, while when Bad Bunny arrives, he floats, and then sighs, and then melts.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Bad Bunny and Jhayco: “Dákiti”
One of the biggest songs of Bad Bunny’s career — a career practically overflowing with big songs — is “Dákiti,” a duet with Jhayco from the third Bad Bunny project released in 2020, “El Último Tour del Mundo.” This is reggaeton-shaped club-pop, dreamy and celebratory and anchored by one of the most convincing drum patterns of the last five years.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. “Tití Me Preguntó”
The commercial peak of Bad Bunny’s career so far has been the 2022 album “Un Verano Sin Ti,” his most musically ambitious and diverse release. “Tití Me Preguntó” shows him dabbling in Dominican dembow, a fast and salacious style, with equally fast and salacious lyrics.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. “Cybertruck”
Bad Bunny’s 2023 album “Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana” felt a tiny bit like a dare — after the huge pop success, a retrenchment. Some of the experimentation on this LP was with the most forward-thinking production styles of the year, including this relentless, undeniable flirtation with drill music.
