Day 153: J Balvin & Bad Bunny – OASIS

We’re a few days away from the Superbowl and I live with an American football fan, so I’m prepping for the halftime show, which is arguably the only interesting part to someone who’s not into sports. I spend the rest of the time pretending I understand the rules and trying to choose who’s the hottest player. I’ve listened to this year’s halftime performer Bad Bunny’s DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS from last year but that’s about it, so I thought I’d dive a bit deeper.

Album cover courtesy of Universal Music Latino

After collaborating on Cardi B’s “I Like It,” J Balvin and Bad Bunny decided they wanted to collaborate on a full project, so they recorded OASIS and released it as a semi-surprise. J Balvin is a reggaeton superstar and Bad Bunny was a big name in Latin trap, so they weren’t exactly the likeliest pair, on top of the fact that both were huge artists in their own right. They said they were doing the collaboration not just for themselves but for their culture, with Bad Bunny saying “if I win, they win. If we win, we all win.”

The album was released in 2019 and reached number 1 on the Top Latin Albums chart, becoming the biggest chart debut of 2019. It features a tight collection of eight songs that have lyrics about women that seem to say that neither man has been to therapy and likes it a little bit toxic. True to the album’s name, the pair apparently did also have some sort of a public beef and falling out, but they’ve made up now, with Balvin appearing on the final night of Bad Bunny’s recent tour.

As a side note, I’ve ditched Spotify for the obvious reasons and I’ve just noticed that Apple Music has a feature to show you translated lyrics. What a world! Now I can actually understand things without googling, so goodbye Duolingo, hello J Balvin, I assume I’ll learn a thousand times faster by doing this. The best thing I’ve learned so far through this album is that booty in Spanish is just booty.

While J Balvin describes the project as “A very cool, historic album where a Colombian had never gotten together with a Puerto Rican [before]”, musically, it’s not exactly groundbreaking. There’s no great big banger or a song that’s particularly memorable, although “La Cancion” probably comes closest. Despite that, I could see myself pregaming to this somewhere sunny. It’s a perfectly fine album, but surely neither artists’ finest work. 6.5/10.