‘Bigger than Taylor Swift’: How Bad Bunny conquered the world

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:09Anamaria Sayre:Coming up, he's the triple Grammy winning Super Bowl halftime headlining, multi-billion streaming Puerto Rican musician that you might never have heard of. So who is Bad Bunny? As the day wraps up, get the scoop on what's been happening with Here's the Scoop, a new podcast from NBC News. with me, your host, Yasmin Vasugian. We'll take a deep dive into the day's top stories with NBC News' trusted journalist. It's a fresh take that's sharp, thoughtful, and it's informative, bringing you closer to the headlines and conversations that are shaping our world. From the front page to the zeitgeist, here's The Scoop from NBC News.

0:47Listen daily wherever you get your podcasts.

0:57Music, it always It will be my everything I was on stage in Puerto Rico last night

1:07Anamaria Sayre:Hi everyone, welcome to The Daily where we've another one of our weekend profiles for you Now if you've not been here before we take someone who's in the headlines and tell you all you need to know which in this case might be quite a lot because despite the three Grammys despite being Spotify's most streamed artist in three of the last five years despite having 10 songs on Apple's top 500 most streamed of all time he doesn't quite have the profile this side of the Atlantic as he does in the Americas. Born Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio he goes by the name Bad Bunny and the success has come in spite of or perhaps in part because of his use of the Spanish language in his music.

1:52Anamaria Sayre:He hails from Puerto Rico, a self-governing commonwealth of the United States, which is a complicated way of saying it's not a state, it has its own government, but it is still subject to US laws. And given what's happening with immigration in the United States, he has a complicated relationship with the current occupant of the White House. All of which makes the fact he'll be headlining next February's Super Bowl halftime show, as American as apple pie and weak lager, just a bit surprising. Here to tell us more is Anna Maria Sayre. She's co-host of US Network NPR's Alt Latino show, which focuses on alternative Latin music.

2:31Anamaria Sayre:Anna Maria, great to have you on the Sky News Daily. I suppose we have to start with the basics. Describe the man, because of course, you know, this is an incredibly well-known name around the world. But there are pockets of ignorance and you're speaking to one of them right now. Beautiful. Allow me to educate you. This is my favorite thing to do. He is an artist from Puerto Rico. He was originally billed as a reggaeton artist. He got kind of big just releasing tracks online. And by the time he actually released his first album, he had gained enough traction that it completely exploded. Since then, he's released a ton of albums and basically has just enjoyed this increasing, incredible exponential rise to the point where he has been the top artist on Spotify the past five years running.

3:20To call him a reggaeton artist would really be to oversimplify. I think what he does is effectively music from Puerto Rico would be a better explainer of it. And even then, it doesn't fully encompass all that he's become at this point.

3:32Anamaria Sayre:Give us a flavor of the musicality, the style, the lyrics. His last record touched a lot. There was obviously reggaeton on there. There was salsa. There was plena bomba, which are traditional styles of music from Puerto Rico. He's had bachata moments. He's had electronic moments. He has ballady-esque moments. I mean, he's really, truly unafraid to mix genre. And at this point in time, especially in the Spanish language of the Latin music space, mixing genre is very much the norm. It's kind of what I think people are finding most exciting at the moment. But he is definitely one of the pioneers and really being comfortable with doing that on a dime, within a lyric, within a song, within a moment.

4:14And that's kind of been a huge part to me, a key tenet of his project.

4:19Anamaria Sayre:How did he get started? I'm presuming he got his start in Puerto Rico. He really just started releasing tracks independently. His project has always been extremely organic to the point where he still technically at this stage is an independent artist although the independent label that he is on is called Rimas which has now grown to be this force of a label. Practically getting to the levels of major labels just made him who he is. He really just was always had this grassroots support from the beginning. But of course I mean it does strike me that Puerto Rico itself is absolutely central. I think to understand Bad Bunny as an artist, his art, his impact, you really have to take a step back and think about Puerto Rico.

5:03Puerto Rico is a very peculiar, beautiful, magical place. It is a place that because of its positionality in relation to the United States, in relation to the rest of Latin America, it's really consistently had to assert itself in terms of who it is and what it is and why and its value. There's this insistence, there's this need to constantly be so Puerto Rican because all forces around you maybe aren't acknowledging that or trying to take it away from you. And so I think what you get is this really distilled, powerful art form. And that's not just speaking about Bad Bunny. You know, Bad Bunny is obviously at this point as a representative, but he's one of many artists who create this really passionate and intense form of art that I think it's really easy to grab onto it because it's so sure of what it is and insistent on where it's from.

5:55And that's really, to me, what makes Bad Bunny so potent as an artist.

6:03Anamaria Sayre:If we are looking for an example of just how much he feels tied to and supported by his homeland, we should probably talk about the residency. Yes. Bad Bunny had a 31 show residency on the island in Puerto Rico this past summer. Basically unprecedented. I mean, you don't see a major artist electing to as opposed to go on a world tour, which he has now started. He's like, I am so prolific. I'm so deeply beloved that I'll bring everyone to me and I want everyone to come and experience my music in my home. I went five times this summer. Oh, well done. Five. It was quite the accomplishment. It really was an ambitious production.

6:47I mean, I would argue that it really, really did redefine what a live music project of that scale can be. Not to mention that 200 million, 300 million are what people projected and talked about being the revenue from this residency. But beyond that, I mean, the cultural impact, it's hard to quantify, honestly, how much it meant, I think, for Puerto Ricans to experience what it was, the power that it generated culturally for an island that doesn't have technically autonomy or political independence in the way that you think of most countries having.

7:18Anamaria Sayre:How important has it been that so much of the music is not in English? There was long this idea within Latin America, within the Spanish language world, that in order to cross over or in order to have some level of global or substantial cultural impact, there was a need to change your language, to sing in English at some point. almost like you would always reach a ceiling if you would only communicate in your native language and um if you wanted to go past that to the level of true legend status or at least global recognizability you would have to change he has not obviously i think the circumstances of the world and other artists that have come and have paid a path before him that have allowed for that to happen but i do think his insistence that again i would tie it back to honestly his intense Puerto Rican-ness and just who he is as a person, his insistence on continuing to make art in the language that he speaks in, I think has completely redefined what successful art can be, what impact can be.

8:29And most importantly, I think it had to come from an artist who's so deeply aware of an affront on language and the value and the importance of staying true to your mother, Tom.

8:38Anamaria Sayre:I wonder then, is he political in the music as well? I think to be Puerto Rican is political. I think to be Latino in the United States, which Puerto Rico technically is, is political. I think generally being consistent and being who you are, if that's anything outside of like the stereotypical United States person, I think that's considered political. I mean, life is politics, of course. I don't think that he had a necessarily specific political agenda in a traditional sense of like, you should vote for independence. You should vote for this candidate. He, outside of his music, has been very vocal politically, especially this past year.

9:21He insisted that people value where they're from and be who they are and stand their ground on their land. And I think that can be called politics and it can also just be called authenticity.

9:31Anamaria Sayre:You've already alluded to the fact that he is the world's most played artist in 2025, the best part of 20 billion streams. Why? Why is he so popular? He's honest. He is true. I think what he has done, especially in this last record, is touched on concepts and themes and ideas that are deeply resonant in a lot of parts of the world. I mean, I could say Latin America. I could say beyond Latin America. This idea of fighting for where you're from, of trying to show up and be who you are in the midst of forces that might be trying to infringe on that. Ojalá que los míos nunca se muden is one of the most resounding lines on his big song off this record, Debe tirar más fotos.

10:17And that means I hope that mine never move. I mean, it's pretty simple, but it says so much about where a lot of Latin America is right now. The fear, one of the deepest fears that they have. And I think that that's applicable probably outside of Latin America and the Latin American diaspora. So I think there is a deep resonance to his specificity, to his insistence in being not only Puerto Rican, but just being Benito. Beyond that, the music is amazing. I think it's fun to dance to. I think that that works still in many ways.

10:47Anamaria Sayre:In terms of the politics, I have found that it has tended to focus around the immigration debate that is going on in the United States right now. the incredible crackdown that there has been on immigration in the United States, all of which I suppose makes it slightly curious that he has been selected as the halftime act for the biggest event in the American cultural hinterland, the Super Bowl. I mean, how has that happened? I mean, if I had to guess, dollars. Yeah. You know, I think that there can be all kinds of rhetoric or opinions or feelings in the United States that obviously did also come to the fore in a more dramatic way when this was announced.

11:27But if I had to guess why the NFL picked him, he just has an undeniable cultural capital that I think a lot of people didn't attribute or notice about a lot of Latin American artists or audiences in the past for whatever reasons. But yeah, I think it's pretty simply that.

11:46Anamaria Sayre:Do you think, though, given the opportunity, given the literal stage that he will be given, at halftime during the Super Bowl, that we should expect something unexpected. I would bet money on it. I thought you might. If there is one thing that Bad Bunny has been extremely consistent about, it's the fact that he does not care. He pretty explicitly many times has said he's not interested in talking about U.S. politics. I think his lack of a stance is a stance. His stance has always consistently, if you look at what he says, has been in support of his island, in support of his home, and that's kind of where he lives and where he sits.

12:21And so I think given the opportunity to have a global stage, that is what he will talk about. We'll definitely see probably some homages to the great salseros, the great Puerto Rican artists in general. That's something he's taken, you know, stages like Coachella to do. Again, it's back to that question of what is politics? Will it be political of him to resurface a lot of the themes that he talked about in his residency and in his album? talking about anti-tourist opinions or opinions, you know, in Lo Que Le Paso Hawaii, a song on his album, he talks about don't let what happened to us happen to Hawaii, which is pretty simply don't let us become, you know, a state or don't let us lose our culture or don't let us lose our land or let us resist U.S.

13:04imperialism. Read the text, which is the music. That's what he's saying. And so will he include that? I mean, yeah, it's his music. So I'm sure. Will people perceive that as political, especially those that aren't familiar with the work and are hearing that for the first time? I'm sure.

13:18Anamaria Sayre:Am I right, though, when I say that Bad Bunny actually avoided certain tour dates in the United States because he didn't want audience members potentially getting deported as a result? He did explicitly say that in an interview with the LA Times. My read on it before he actually came out and spoke about it, to me, based on what he's done and what I know him to talk about, I read it as he's trying to decentralize the United States. Anna-Marie, have you ever met him? Yes. What's he actually like? He's an incredible performer. He didn't strike me as perfect. He was overtly not in a way that I think that's why we all connect.

13:57He is one of those extremely pedestal artists. I think, especially in Latin America, there is almost like a godlike quality placed upon him, especially he's on that stage and he's really big and his shows are really big. No, I was just struck by how human he was. Still seeking in many ways, seeking his face, seeking his comfort, seeking his groove.

14:18Anamaria Sayre:And how high do you think he can soar? I mean, are we potentially talking, you know, Taylor Swift levels of success? I think he's already there. I think he's already there. I mean, he's, he, like I said, most streams artists on Spotify, he beat out Taylor Swift every year. I don't think it's a question. I don't think it's where he'll get. I think he is there. And if, Anna Maria, you were asked by, I don't know, say a middle-aged Scotsman to recommend one song to go off and listen to, to introduce yourself to Bad Bunny's music, what would it be? Oh, Debi Tira Ma Fotos. That's the, off the most recent album.

14:52It's the title track. It's beautiful. You should hear it.

14:55Anamaria Sayre:Anna Maria, it's been a pleasure talking to you. I'm off to download that right away. Amazing. You take care. Thank you. Thanks very much for listening. It has been a busy old week on The Daily. We've covered the flu outbreak, the impact of tariffs on the US economy, the scandalous state of maternity services, and much more. Just scroll back for those. And for more from my chat with Anna Maria, just head over to the Sky News YouTube channel where you can watch a fuller version of this podcast. That's your lot for this week. We are back again Monday. Till then, do take care. As the day wraps up, get the scoop on what's been happening with Here's the Scoop, a new podcast from NBC News with me, your host, Yasmin Vasugian.

15:36We'll take a deep dive into the day's top stories with NBC News' trusted journalists. It's a fresh take that's sharp, thoughtful, and it's informative, bringing you closer to the headlines and conversations that are shaping our world. From the front page to the zeitgeist, Here's the Scoop from NBC News. Listen daily wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.