Maps of Music

X 100pre (2018)

Where the lyrics of X 100pre take you, and where it was really made.

Bad Bunny's debut album was recorded not in a single studio but in hotel rooms across several cities.

Place unknown

Do you know where this album was recorded, or where its cover was shot? Tell us and we will add it to the map.

X 100pre (short for Por siempre, Spanish for Forever) is the debut studio album by Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny
Released December 24, 2018 by Rimas Entertainment
Features guest appearances from Diplo, El Alfa and Drake
Primarily a Latin trap and reggaeton album, also mixing pop, rock, hip-hop, R&B, bachata, dembow, reggae and dancehall
Also includes Andean, synth-pop, pop-punk, chillwave and synthwave elements

Bad Bunny toured La Nueva Religion Tour Part I and Part II in 2018, which ended in September and grossed more than $16 million worldwide
After several singles in 2018, he announced on December 23 via social media that the album would be released at midnight on Christmas Eve
After release, he said in an Instagram live video that he was not working under his first label Hear this Music or his previous manager DJ Luian, because he could not release albums under that management
Noah Assad signed him in April 2016 after hearing his SoundCloud songs

The album was recorded without a single studio, moving between hotels in Los Angeles, Miami, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic
Tainy was chosen as producer, with Diplo and Mambo Kingz also contributing

Cover illustration by Puerto Rican illustrator Sergio Vazquez, who worked closely with Bad Bunny
The cover shows an eye on a dark background, later identified as a third eye

Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, known as Bad Bunny, was born March 10, 1994, in Bayamón and raised in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico.
He wrote music from age 14 and rose to prominence in 2016 with the song "Diles", which led to a deal with Hear This Music.
His debut studio album X 100pre was released December 24, 2018.

Dubbed the "King of Latin Trap", he is widely credited with helping Spanish-language rap reach mainstream global popularity.
The single "I Like It" with Cardi B and J Balvin topped the US Billboard Hot 100.
YHLQMDLG (2020) became Spotify's most-streamed album of the year worldwide.
El Último Tour Del Mundo (2020) became the first all-Spanish language album to top the US Billboard 200.
Un Verano Sin Ti (2022) was the year's most successful album globally according to IFPI.
Debí Tirar Más Fotos (2025) became the first Spanish-language album to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.
He headlined the Super Bowl LX halftime show in February 2026, the first solo Latino artist to do so.
He also performs in professional wrestling for WWE and has appeared in films including Bullet Train and Cassandro.

Metacritic gives X 100pre a normalized score of 84 out of 100, based on five reviews from mainstream critics, which the site labels universal acclaim
Alexis Petridis of The Guardian praised Bad Bunny's off-kilter creativity
Petridis wrote that Bad Bunny feels less like part of the current pop landscape than an artist operating slightly adjacent to it
Petridis noted that the record mixes genres including pop punk, Andean music, Dominican dembow and windswept 80s stadium rock
Overall, critics gave the album positive reviews, though several had earlier underrated the impact of trap and of the artist

Rolling Stone ranked the album number 41 on its list of the 100 Best Debut Albums of All Time
The album was ranked number 447 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, one of five Spanish-language albums on that list

Debuted at number 29 on the US Billboard 200 with 30,000 album-equivalent units in its first week
Reached number 1 on both the Top Latin Albums and Latin Rhythm Albums charts in its first week
Peaked at number 11 on the Billboard 200 in its second week with 36,000 album-equivalent units
Certified diamond by the RIAA for more than 600,000 units sold in the United States
Sold more than 665,000 copies worldwide
Nominated for the 62nd GRAMMYs in the Best Latin Alternative Album category, announced November 20, 2019

The cover design by Sergio Vazquez inadvertently gave Bad Bunny the idea of using the third eye in many of his future shows
Nine commercial singles were released to promote the album, after which Bad Bunny toured with the X 100pre Tour in 2019
The track La Romana features El Alfa, a Dominican dembow artist