Bad Bunny goes to the Super Bowl

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:06Today, the Puerto Rican superstar speaking out against ice.

0:17It's a gig like no other. The National Football League welcomes you to the Apple Music Super Bowl 59 halftime show. The Super Bowl is an American cultural institution watched by hundreds of millions around the world. I think this is maybe as big as it gets. For the stars who've played its legendary halftime show, it's cemented their place in entertainment history. It's Beyonce, it's Jennifer Lopez, it's Coldplay, it's Aerosmith. It's a huge range of icons in American music who have had such a massive influence on the culture. In some ways, the choice for this year is straightforward. He's the biggest male artist in the world.

1:04Last weekend, he won three Grammys. And the Grammy goes to... Bad Bunny debut. Making history as the first Latin artist to win Album of the Year. And he used his platform to call for an end to ICE. Before I say thanks to God, I'm going to say ICE out.

1:34Republicans have branded him shameful and un-American. Somebody who has not scheduled shows in the U.S. because he says that he's worried that ICE is going to come and arrest his fans. Most of his songs not being performed in English. We're going to get some clarity.

1:57But for the Latin community in the United States and around the world, Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance couldn't matter more. It is a really, really huge moment. He's transmitting through the screen a piece of Puerto Rico, and that is not something that has ever really been done before. I mean, it feels like he is streaming the island straight into the homes of every American. That feels really historic and special. From The Guardian, I'm Nosheen Iqbal. Today in Focus, Bad Bunny, the Super Bowl's most controversial star.

2:39Jen Ortiz, welcome to Today in Focus. You're the deputy editor of The Cut, and we're here to talk about Bad Bunny ahead of this very highly anticipated Super Bowl show this weekend. Now, he's bizarrely not as known in the UK as he is around the world. And for listeners who aren't as familiar with his music, could you tell us just how big an artist is Bad Bunny right now? I mean, I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say he's one of the biggest artists in the world. He has won Grammys. He has headlined Coachella. He has been at the top of Spotify's streaming numbers for several years, not just this past album, but certainly the two albums before it.

3:23And that is globally, again, not just Spanish-speaking countries. So he's comparable to a Taylor Swift, really. If she had, I think it was a little over 20 billion streams on Spotify last year, he was at just under at a little over 19 billion. And if we define pop star by thinking about someone like Taylor Swift, he's right up there. Do you remember the first time you encountered his music and what you thought of it back then? The moment that stands out to me was when I first saw the music video for his song Yo Perreo Sola.

3:59it's the music video in which he plays both himself or a version of himself dancing and then he plays his drag self you know he plays a woman and the woman is dancing on him so there are two bad bunnies on the screen that he took that risk that in what could be often seen as a very machismo kind of culture he put on a tight dress and a wig and was for lack of a better word grinding on himself and dancing and having fun, just felt like, oh, this is someone who is doing something different, something special, taking risks. That moment stands out in my longstanding Bad Bunny fandom. And you're one of very few journalists who've actually spent a considerable amount of time with Bad Bunny at his home in Puerto Rico, just ahead of the release of his smash hit fifth album, Devi Tiramazfotos, also called I Should Have Taken More Photos.

4:54What was he like? So I sort of got to see the man who was about to release this huge change in his career in terms of an album. You could sense his comfort and his ease in being in Puerto Rico. He was keeping as tight a lip as he could about what the project would be like, but so excited to talk about being in Puerto Rico and the musical influences that the album would have. and the reason for why he was doing it and everything that brought him to that moment. And you could sort of feel from him that this was something that he was holding really close to his heart. Did you find him easy to talk to?

5:36Was he warm? How would you describe his personality? Yes, he was quite warm. He's the sort of guy who I think likes to joke around a lot. Like at some point during the interview, I had sunglasses on the table and I knocked them over once by mistake and he picked them up for me and handed them over. And then it happened again shortly after where I, you know, I'm sure nervously sort of flung my arm to the side and they fell. And he made a joke that was like, you know, enough already. And so there's a little bit of that fun silliness maybe to his personality. One thing that I wanted to make sure that we could do in the piece is really hear from him in his words and have him speak freely.

6:19You asked him to speak in Spanish, right? Yes. So I asked him to speak in Spanish. I am what they call passively fluent. My mom is from the Dominican Republic. My dad is from Puerto Rico. I grew up with them speaking Spanish to me. So I can understand quite fluently when I try to speak it myself. It's a little rough. But I told him, like, trust me, I understand. You can just speak in Spanish. And I think he was a little hesitant at first and sort of leaned on English. But once he could tell in my questions or my reactions to what he was saying that I really did understand what he was saying, the Spanish flowed much faster and much more easily.

6:57And that allowed really, I think, for him to say everything that he wanted to say, to answer the questions really fully and to reflect and think through the ideas that he was sharing with me.

7:15Can we go a little bit further back in Bad Bunny's story then? I mean, can you tell me more about his origin story, so to speak? What were his early years like? Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio in Puerto Rico. He grew up in Almirante Sur, which is a barrio about 45 minutes away from San Juan by car. He actually tells a little bit of the sort of origin story of Bad Bunny on this one song called La Mudanza, The Move.

7:52And as he tells it, his parents met when his father had agreed to help a friend do a move as a way of making a little bit of extra money on the side. And that day during the move is when he met Bad Bunny's mother. And she was a schoolteacher. He drove a bus and he grew up in a little barrio and he basically grew up there until he became Bad Bunny.

8:27He's talked about sort of having a sense that he knew he wanted to do something creative. He was drawn to school plays. He was drawn to singing. he went to college in Puerto Rico. He went to one of the state schools and he was working on the side as a grocery bagger at a local supermarket. And he was uploading songs that he was producing to SoundCloud. And, you know, he had one song in particular that took off and one thing after another, then a record deal, more collaborations with people. And then he suddenly doesn't have to Bad Groceries anymore. And he is in an up and coming Puerto Rican rapper and reggaeton star.

9:13And that all happened for him quite early. You know, he's in his early 30s now, very early 30s. So for all of this to have happened, imagine being in college and then suddenly, you know, a few months later, you're a huge star in not just the island where you grew up, but starting to be all over the world. Welcome back. We're hanging out with my co-host, Bad Bunny.

9:38I mean, how would you describe that transition from college into global superstardom? For fans of reggaeton music and Spanish rap, I think his sort of stardom kind of took off quite fast. Part of what I think contributed also to his rise apart from his music were the big protests in Puerto Rico that happened in protests of the Las Rossellas administration. More protests tonight in Puerto Rico as opposition against Governor Ricardo Rosselló shows no sign of slowing down and the unrest on the island leading to more ripple effects elsewhere. CBS 4.0. Rosselló was a scandal-plagued governor, like many scandal-plagued governors of Puerto Rico before him, who, in addition to having members of his administration being accused of corruption and fill-in-the-blank legal acts, there is also a separate scandal in which a group text message thread leaked that included the governor and many members of his administration.

10:40and within those threads there was making fun of victims of Hurricane Maria, there was a lot of homophobic language, there was a lot of misogyny in there, and the people of Puerto Rico took to the streets. They'd had enough. But Bad Bunny joined them. He joined those protests. Yes. He was touring in Europe and he postponed a bunch of his dates and flew immediately back to take to the streets with the people. And there are many videos of him where you can see he's on this sort of truck in the crowd with other artists, including Ricky Martin, and they're calling for the governor to step down, which he did eventually after a few days of this.

11:17Bad Bunny gave a speech to the crowd. Something you see a lot when he is in Puerto Rico is you don't see a lot of the sort of scaffolding that's around a celebrity when they're out in public. He's just sort of in the crowd with everyone. And he's in a sweatsuit. He's waving around a flag, telling the crowd, like, we're not going to take this anymore. We're a different generation. This isn't what's going to happen.

11:42And I think seeing that, seeing someone who is political in action, not just sort of political in an Instagram caption, someone who's willing to be in the street and fight for the thing that they believe in, I think amplified the image or idea that people had of him and the sort of artist that he would continue to be and grow into.

12:13Jen, he's famously refused to, quote, cross over in his music. He doesn't sing or rap in English. What's the significance of that? I think part of the idea is that, you know, he doesn't have to make any compromises or doesn't feel that he should make any compromises in order to convince people to listen to him. But really, I'm very excited to be doing the Super Bowl. And I know that people all around the world who love my music are also happy, especialmente todos los latinos. You don't need necessarily to understand every single word to understand the song or to understand the intention or the fun or the emotion behind his music.

12:57And if you didn't understand what I just said, you have four months to learn. Something he points out a lot, too, is that Puerto Rican Spanish is very different from Mexican Spanish, Spain Spanish, Dominican Spanish, and on and on and on. and he writes music in Puerto Rican slang and Puerto Rican Spanish. And so he'll often point out that, you know, someone who speaks Spanish, who is from a Spanish-speaking country, also won't understand all of his music or all of the lyrics because there are different words for different things or different sayings that don't sort of automatically translate. Today we're breaking down a few lyrics from Bad Bunny's song, Devitir a ma foto.

13:42Devitir a ma foto literally means I should have taken more pictures, But Puerto Ricans, we don't say sacar foto, we say tirar foto. A refrain he often repeats is he writes music for Puerto Ricans. And so I think that that has been a sort of guiding light. And obviously he's aware that he has a global audience and that he's not trying to exclude anyone. But it's more about including people in his Puerto Rican culture as opposed to doing something that maybe feels less authentic to appeal to people. in a way that then the meaning is loss of what he's originally intending to do with his music.

14:29So Jen, as you said, he's had a really impressive career. And then in 2025, he releases the concept album, Debbie Tirar of Mas Fotos, which is all about his home, the island of Puerto Rico. Can you tell me more about the story he's telling on that album? The album really came from a place, as he told me, of missing the island. So he was working on this during a stretch of time where he was filming two movies. He was on tour for his previous album. He was living in L.A. The sort of Hollywood life we'd all love to entertain for some time ourselves. Dating a Kardashian. Yeah, you know, well. All pop star fantasy.

15:12I can neither confirm nor deny, but I think we've seen the photos. But it was a time he says that he has never missed Puerto Rico more. And he started to think about how it must feel if you have no choice but to leave. He had a choice. He wanted to take this time to explore what living somewhere else would be like. But he knows that for a lot of people, the part of the Puerto Rican experience is having no choice but to leave the island and to leave home, whether it's for family opportunities, for work opportunities, whatever it may be. And he started to think about that and how much that must hurt.

15:53And that is part of the story of the album. It's such a love letter to his home and the idea of home for him in Puerto Rico. And on the flip side, there's a little bit of panic or heartbreak and desperation for preserving that idea of home in Puerto Rico and preserving his Puerto Rico and the threats that the island faces and is faced for a long time against gentrification. There's one particular song on the album that I think sort of encapsulates a lot of this. The name translates to what happened to Hawaii. O que pasou a Hawaii?

16:35You don't even need to know Spanish or the lyrics to hear the heartbreak in the song. I got the vibe of that one. He tells a story in the song of a dream he had of imagining sort of the last Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico and what that would mean, what that would look like. and there's a real fear that is underscoring the album that I think a lot of Puerto Ricans share of feeling like at every turn someone is trying to take pieces of their island away from them and then it's also an act of preservation and a call to action to not let Puerto Rico slip from the hands of the people of the island and into the hands of the gentrifiers and colonialists developers, tourists.

17:22Want the island for themselves. There's a striking moment in your interview with Bad Bunny in which he's talking about the history of the island. And from what it sounds like, he has had to teach himself, I guess, the true history of its colonization. I wonder how his self-education has informed both his politics and his music. So I grew up in Spanish Harlem here in New York, which is a Puerto Rican neighborhood. I went to public school in the neighborhood. And just as Bad Bunny was taught in school in Puerto Rico, you sort of learn that we sort of acquired the island at some point. And then that's kind of it.

18:00Like it's maybe a sentence in a textbook, really, when you think about it. There is no real sense of what that means or what that cost. And that history did start with Spanish colonization. But yes, in the 1800s, when the island was, for lack of a better word, stolen by America, and became an American colony, which it remains today, there's a lot of really tough history there that's not very flattering. There's a history of really violent suppression of Puerto Rican culture and of the Puerto Rican independence movement. You know, for a long time, it was illegal to fly the Puerto Rican flag. They tried to make it illegal to speak Spanish or to teach in Spanish.

18:48Wow. Things as little as flying the Puerto Rican flag. If you go to Puerto Rico, you sort of just see it everywhere. Like it's hanging in car windows. It's at the front of every shop. It's just everywhere. and it's really easy to take for granted. And then when you learn the history and you realize that for so long, that was a crime. There's a lot of historical storytelling and politics in salsa music in particular. If you like listen closely, there's more going on than just a fun song to dance to. All of that has had influence in terms of his own political ideology in that it's easy to see what's in front of you.

19:30And when you learn the tale that's behind today and what has come before it that has allowed for this to happen today, it sort of lights a different fire under you. It's interesting, isn't it? Because from everything you describe, he's highly politicized. He's arguably as artistically as innovative as he's ever going to be. He's uncompromising. And yet this album, it's a huge hit. Massive. It goes straight to number one in 20 different countries. clocks up 100 million album sales in just four weeks. What do you think it is that it has resonated so much? The title song for the album is about thinking about past memories that you shared and cherish, but that maybe you didn't realize in the moment.

20:14Remember this, remember this, this is going to be really important or you won't want to forget this or take a photo now.

20:28And that prompted a lot of people on TikTok to make these very, very sweet photo slideshows or video compilations of moments from their own family and personal histories that they don't want to forget, that they want to hold on to, that are part of their own personal histories. You know, he clearly saw the trend going around and made his own TikTok in which he's crying watching it. People really, really connected with that sort of messaging on the album and that idea of missing home, wanting to preserve home. And I think the story of Puerto Rico's colonization is something that many people from other countries can relate to.

21:09I think that the story of fighting to hold on to something, of fighting against waves of gentrification, of fighting against having inherited a political system that does not value or advocate for you. Those are all things that a lot of people innately understand because of their own experiences, whether they're Puerto Rican or not. Coming up, is the Super Bowl ready for Bad Bunny's politics?

21:51Jen, unlike other major artists of his standing, Bad Bunny is also not afraid to wade into politics in a bigger sense, particularly in this second Trump term. Can you tell me more about what that's looked like and why it's been significant. You're right. He is not afraid of wading into politics in the sense of making clear what's important to him and what he endorses and doesn't. Something that most Americans, I think, don't realize or assume wrongly is that Puerto Ricans cannot vote in the presidential election. They do not have that right to vote, even though they are American citizens, and even though they are represented by the president.

22:36So he was very involved in the Puerto Rican governorship election in that he spoke at a rally for the progressive third party, La Alianza. He took out billboards across the island, expressing his feelings, let's say, against the leading conservative party, which did ultimately end up winning. But he had real impact in registering new voters. He is a political artist. When it comes to what that means for him, I think he's very conscious of not wanting to allow himself to be made into a tool for the opposing party. Right. Like he is not. He's no one's puppet. Yes, he is no one's puppet. Has he been particularly critical of the Trump administration?

23:24He has said previously that the presence of ICE at his shows was something that gave him pause when considering doing more shows in America. So again, that's a way of him making clear what he thinks, where he stands. And, you know, he has sometime last year filmed and posted on his Instagram what he suspected or were pretty clear were vehicles carrying ICE officers as they were doing a raid in a neighborhood in Puerto Rico. So, yes, it's clearly something he's thought about and obviously is not in favor of. Why do you think it is that he has then agreed to play the Super Bowl? And what do you think in these quite heightened times, it means Latin communities?

24:12When he was announced as the halftime performer, there are plenty of talking heads that are part of the administration who took the opportunity to say, well, oh, well, then we're going to have ice there. We know the sort of fans he attracts, implying that they're going to just snatch people out of the stands or walking into the stadium. So yeah, we'll be all over that place. People should not be coming to the Super Bowl unless there are law-abiding Americans who love this country. Did the NFL respond to that? They were in support of having him perform at the halftime show. You know, at the same time that people were droning on about threatening to have ice there, there were also plenty of voices from the same camp complaining, oh, but he doesn't sing in English and this is an American pastime.

24:58This is an American tradition. How could you have him there? forgetting about the fact that many, many, many, many Americans speak Spanish. So I think that all of that is sort of part of the reason, in a way, of why he is performing. It's crazy that it's controversial, but for Americans right now, it does seem quite controversial. Right. It's ridiculous. He is a global superstar. But I think that that's part of it, right? Part of the idea behind the album is to bring Puerto Rican culture on a global stage and to do so with open arms and saying, like, come to Puerto Rico, experience the real Puerto Rico, not the one in travel advertisements, but like experience the culture and the people of Puerto Rico.