Ramtin Arablui

You call these events like Hurricane Maria natural disasters, but really they're just natural events and unnatural disasters, human-made disasters.

This is where the benefits of being U.S.

citizens should be showing up, and it's not.

Because of the failure of the federal and the local government, a lot of people started having conversations about Puerto Rico's colonial relationship.

And I'm not talking about the circles that I come from, which are circles that have always been talking about this, but my family members, for the first time, were talking about imperialism, about colonialism.

It's that opening synth live.

That sounds so much to me like a choir of like electronic angels, you know, kind of cutting in and out through an unstable internet connection.

You know, it reminds me of dial-up internet, but it also reminds me of like trying to communicate with relatives after Maria hit.

Bad Bunny was on tour at the time.

When Hurricane Maria hits Bad Bunny is not in Puerto Rico.

He is out performing and he can't reach his family.

He finally connected with family and was able to return to Puerto Rico.

And then the following year.

He has his first album come out in 2018.

And in fact, the first single from his album is the song Estamos Bien.

Estamos Bien is a trap ballad that has a self-consciously political register.

It's such a complicated song, right?

Estamos bien means like, we're okay, we're good.

And so it's kind of hopeful, but it's also, you know, acknowledging, like he has a lyric about the fact that we don't have light in the house, right?

One of my favorite lines in the song is when he says, And if tomorrow I die, that's okay.