For a night each month at the Basement Nightspot — a party bar and nightclub popular with Pennsylvania State University students — the airwaves shift from U.S. chart-toppers to Latin dance music stretching from salsa to reggaeton.
“Yes, this includes Bad Bunny,” a promotional flier notes.
“When I play Bad Bunny in these club settings, it can relate to each and every single person that’s in there,” said Adam Romero Jr., a 21-year-old student of Puerto Rican descent known as DJ AD1 who hosts the 100 percent Latin Night. “Even though they don’t know the words, they’re enjoying the vibes.”
Since the Puerto Rican artist began sharing music on SoundCloud in 2016, Bad Bunny (Benito Martínez Ocasio) has seen a seismic rise. He’s a global superstar — the most streamed artist on Spotify globally for the past two years — and his latest album, “Un Verano Sin Ti” (“A Summer Without You”), has tied for the most weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart of any album in the past 10 years.
But the moment Bad Bunny is experiencing is of particular resonance to young Puerto Ricans on and off the island — and Latinos across America, who see him as more than just a Latin trap-reggaeton phenom. For his fans, his unabashed pride for Latino communities and the Spanish language, defiance of traditional gender norms and push for justice on a range of social issues, also makes him a de facto political icon.
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In Puerto Rico, Bad Bunny’s appeal has long been musical and political. When islanders took to the streets in 2019 to demand Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s ouster, Bad Bunny joined protests and released the song “Afilando los Cuchillos” (“Sharpening the Knives”), with Puerto Rican artists Residente and iLe. His new music video for his hit “El Apagón” (“The Blackout”) documents the island’s ongoing housing, electricity and corruption crises five years after Hurricane Maria.
Boricuas have taken note — as have members of Congress, including Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez (D-N.Y.), who called herself a proud tití — referring to both the Puerto Rican Spanish colloquialism for “auntie” and Bad Bunny’s song, “Tití Me Preguntó” (“Auntie Asked Me”).
“He is part of that generation that doesn’t have a memory of prosperity,” said Mayra Vélez Serrano, an associate professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras.
His political advocacy increasingly transcends Puerto Rico. In September, he hosted a survivor of the Uvalde, Tex., school shooting at his Dallas concert and made large donations to help her family buy a new home through his Good Bunny Foundation.
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Unlike many Latino musicians who aspire to become crossover artists, Bad Bunny is sticking to creating music for global audiences in his native tongue. What makes Bad Bunny distinct is how he mostly speaks in Spanish, said Yarimar Bonilla, a political anthropologist and the director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. “He’s so proud and doesn’t feel any kind of embarrassment, or like he has to accommodate an English-speaking audience. I think it’s something that Latinos admire, and speaks to them.”
To fans across the spectrum of latinidad, Bad Bunny has inspired pride in what it means to be Latino. During his Made in America festival performance over Labor Day weekend, Bad Bunny told fans, “Made in America, Latinos make America,” and encouraged fans to display flags representing a range of Latin American countries.
Victor Rangel, a 21-year-old Mexican American college student from Brownsville, Tex., attended the festival and said he found Bad Bunny’s words “really, really motivating.”
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“A lot of times people think America is the United States,” he said. “But the Americas are South, North and Central America. And [Bad Bunny] really pointed out that Latinos are the majority when you consider the Americas as a whole and … that Latinos have had a huge role in the culture here.”
Paula Jiménez Nieva, a law student who moved from Puerto Rico to Florida after Hurricane Maria, said she believes Bad Bunny is promoting the inclusion of Puerto Ricans in the American narrative. Despite being U.S. citizens, those living on the island cannot vote in the U.S. presidential general election and do not have voting representation in Congress.
“I feel like sometimes Puerto Ricans are forgotten,” she said. “And there is still a lot of ignorance in the world in regards to Puerto Rican individuals and the Puerto Rico status as a whole. So he really is spreading his awareness on how we are Americans.”
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His influence stretches beyond politics, though. Fans also hold Bad Bunny up as challenging the traditional machismo that often characterizes reggaeton, such as when he dressed in drag in his “Yo Perreo Sola” (“I Twerk Alone”) music video, wore a skirt and a T-shirt that called attention to the murder of a transgender woman in Puerto Rico on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” and kissed a male backup dancer during his MTV Video Music Award performance in August.
Share this articleShare“He’s really combating the stereotypical norms that Latino men usually have in our community,” said Juan Diego Mazuera Arias, a 24-year-old Colombian American graduate student. “And I think for Latino men, it just, in a way, opened the doors to being more comfortable with your sexuality, whether you are straight, or gay or bi or pan.”
(To be sure, there are still examples of traditional machismo in his videos, fans say, including hypersexualized women twerking and lyrics that some listeners find misogynistic.)
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While fans have praised him for speaking out in support of disenfranchised Puerto Ricans, some have also pointed to Bad Bunny’s initial silence when Black Lives Matter protests erupted early in the summer of 2020. Weeks later, he released a statement in Time magazine titled “Perdonen” (“Forgive”), in which he mentions how he was teased for having “bad hair” growing up as a White child in Puerto Rico, just as his Black neighbors were. Others contend he has not sufficiently acknowledged the Black history behind reggaeton, which originated in Afro Latino communities.
Sujeylee Solá, a publicist for Bad Bunny, told The Washington Post that Bad Bunny “has grown as a person and artist, and his music reflects this evolution.” She also said “the comments regarding ‘bad hair’ are out of context, as he was not trying to claim to be a victim of racism but pointed out a societal problem.”
Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, an assistant professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said he is glad Bad Bunny has taken a stand on a range of social issues. “But I think that we cannot expect him to lead any sort of movement. He is, like us, a person that learns new things every day.”
While some fans believe his being a cisgender White Latino may have contributed to his success compared to other reggaeton artists who are Afro Latino or women, they also praise Bad Bunny for helping lift less-privileged communities up, including transgender people and women through his activism.
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“Unlike other artists with the same privilege, that have had the same opportunities like he has, at least I feel like he’s turned around and … tried to uplift those communities as well,” said Rangel, the college student from South Texas. Rangel added that he is impressed by Bad Bunny’s range of backup dancers who are women, Afro Latino and “of all body types.”
Rangel, Mazuera Arias and other non-Puerto Rican Latinos have felt Bad Bunny’s impact reverberate in their own communities, from western Arizona to Texas to Pennsylvania.
For Nallely Guadalupe Gonzalez, a 21-year-old Mexican American college student from Parker, Ariz., Bad Bunny inspires her to be proud of her Latina identity in the face of racism.
“I definitely do think that he has helped me be more in tune within my Latino side,” Gonzalez said, adding that her non-Latino friends often send her Bad Bunny songs playing on the radio or in restaurants. “And it just makes me feel seen, it just makes me feel so good on the inside when they do that.”
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At Penn State, Romero is on the executive board of the Latino Caucus, an organization encompassing various Latino student groups on campus. This year, the university honored Hispanic Heritage Month from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, with the theme “Nuestra Música.” The month featured a series of events focused on Latin music and culture — including Bad Bunny’s contributions to it.
“Bad Bunny is really a pivotal icon for Hispanic Heritage Month this year, because not only is he an inspiration to many young Latino music listeners, but he’s a political icon as well,” said Latino Caucus President Michael Garza, a 19-year-old Mexican American student originally from Houston.
What’s refreshing about Bad Bunny, said Meléndez-Badillo, is that he does not claim to represent everyone. “When you have an artist, talking about joy, talking about how ... awesome Puerto Rico is, I think that it’s highly political as well,” he said. “It’s so interesting for me … that he got so far talking about things that were so colloquially Puerto Rican.”
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Perhaps there’s universality in specificity — and in highly specific acronyms. For Meléndez-Badillo, the title of Bad Bunny’s second solo album, “YHLQMDLG” (“Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana”), encapsulates the superstar’s approach to life and music — a mind-set that is resonating with fans across the Americas.
“He is not necessarily leading the conversation or speaking on behalf of anyone. He is doing lo que le da la gana — whatever he wants.”
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