Bad Bunny’s Caribbean Super Bowl Halftime Show 
Part Three: Why Bad Bunny Matters

It has been a month since Bad Bunny’s (Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) Super Bowl LX Half Time Show. The artist who just turned 32 (March 10, 2026) has broken so many records with his Debí Tirar Más Fotos World Tour that it is worth sharing some numbers: tickets sold for the tour, over 2.6 million (a record), fastest (under 24 hours) sellout for concert series in Mexico (6 concerts), Colombia (3), and Costa Rica (2). In Spain, twelve sold-out stadium shows (600,000 tickets) sold faster than Taylor Swift's Eras Tour. Bad Bunny is the first Latino artists to sell out stadium concerts in Italy, France, Poland, Portugal (2), Sweden, Australia and the UK. Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, more records shattered.

Singing in Puerto Rican Spanish at the Super Bowl LX and being the biggest musical artist on the planet for 4 of the last 6 years are important landmark achievements. I covered those subjects in part 1 and 2 of this series. But perhaps the most fascinating part of Bad Bunny’s stardom is the way in which he has achieved it. 

Benito matters to many people, as the numbers above prove, but strangely he also matters to people that do not care for his music.

There are reasons for that, as I will explain. With “Debí Tirar Más Fotos”, his latest album, the artist galvanized something that perhaps was inside of him from the beginning of his career, how to make the music he wanted and enjoys (Latin trap, reggaeton, dem bow, etc.) with the music he grew up with, the music of his parents. But that is not just a rhythmic issue. There is a thematic side to the equation that is also interesting. As his music became more popular he felt more at ease with looking backwards in order to go forward and also speaking about subjects important to him.

Like many other reggaetoneros and hip-hop artists, Bad Bunny has songs filled with adolescent fantasies (or perhaps rich reggaetonero realities) bragging about money and obsessed with luxury cars, parties, drinking, and girls. But in every studio album Bad Bunny also took detours away from the VIP lounge, the mansions, and the yachts. 

He tackled face-first the persistent, almost universal, machismo and misogyny in our societies which are often, but by no means always, proudly displayed in the lyrics and videos of the musical genres that Bad Bunny is mostly identified with. 
In "Yo Perreo Sola" (I Twerk Alone), from his 2020 album “YHLQMDLG”, an acronym for I Do Whatever I Want, Bad Bunny sings dressed in full drag about the rights of women to dance alone if they want to, without being harassed, even if the dancing is “perreo” (twirking). And he did it by dressing like one of them. The song, which he included in the Super Bowl LX halftime show, was danced by women alone, while the rest of the dance sequences had couples.

Laura Chimaras in Solo de Mi
RIMAS Entertainment

Even earlier in "Solo De Mi" (Only of Me), a song from his 2018 debut studio album “X100pre,” a woman (Venezuelan actress and singer Laura Chimaras) sings looking straight at the camera in Bad Bunny’s dubbed voice. She says, “Don’t call me baby again, I am not yours, I’m not anyone’s, I am mine.” As the song progresses, the woman faces away from the camera to return her glance, but this time with a bruised cheek, next time also a black eye, next a bloody nose. Finally the woman stretches her arms blocking her face, and when we see her again, she is fine, without bruises. We assume it means that she left the abusive relationship behind. Bad Bunny confirms our assumption when the video unexpectedly cuts to dance music and a party in full swing. Bad Bunny is dancing with the same woman. A happy ending.

In 2020 in an article in Rolling Stone magazine by Suzy Exposito, Bad Bunny explained that he dressed in drag to “show support to those who need it.” In the article he explained that he used to prepare music tracks for one of his cousins who performed in drag. In that same interview the artist said, “As a human being, violence against women affects me. So I am going to do what is within my reach to [work] against that.”

His disassembling of the hip-hop/trap/reggaeton male artist stereotype, his plight against gender and domestic violence, and non-defined public sexual orientation (he says he is straight while cross dressing in “Yo perreo sola” and wearing skirts for magazine covers or galas) has only made Benito more popular, more admired, more respected.

Those musical statements are not a gimmick or a commercial decision, they are truly Benito. He has proven it by putting his money where his mouth is for all the causes that he believes in, including his political stance during the last gubernatorial election in Puerto Rico.

His songs on the subject of Puerto Rico’s politics reflect the same level of advocacy. Benito has sang implicitly and very much explicitly as well against gentrification, against losing land and beaches to speculators and wealthy outsiders, against tax-breaks for individuals and corporations that contribute little and take much, as well as sadness at the displacement of Puerto Ricans who migrate to the U.S. mainland because they cannot afford to live in their own island anymore. In his 2022 album “Un Verano Sin Ti”, he sang against his homeland’s chronic blackouts ("El Apagón") and addressed the large death toll of Puerto Ricans during Hurricane Maria in 2017. He continued on the subject in the single "Una Velita" (A Little Candle).  Both songs place direct responsibility on the disastrous response to the natural disaster on poor political decisions and corruption. 

In the more recent "Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii" (What Happened to Hawaii) sung by Ricky Martin during the halftime show, he articulates his fear for the future of the island. Click on the link to listen to the song with English translation.

In that song he uses Hawaii as a cautionary tale warning Puerto Rico to avoid becoming the 51st state. He foresees the status change as the end of the island identity, its music, its culture, perhaps its language. He sings, “They want to take your river, and also your beach, they want to take my neighborhood and for our grandparents to leave, No! Don’t let go of your flag, don’t forget your le lo lai (your traditional music, your culture) I don’t want them to do to you what happened (what they did) to Hawaii.”

The song has been adopted and adapted by people in U.S. overseas territories and by native and Indigenous citizens of many other regions, islands in many instances, where the population feels the same loss of rights, of land, community and traditional ways of living due to external financial interests, non-sustainable tourism included. 

Benito’s social and political concerns are paired with his close-to-agony obsession with missing moments that will never return, not seeing loved ones again, not sharing special occasions with family and friends or losing the Puerto Rico that he feels is worth fighting for.

Cover for Album of the Year 2025, Grammy Awards

"Debí Tirar Más Fotos" (Grammy, Album of the Year 2025), the recording that finally brought his music and that of his parents together, is all about paying attention. What you will miss once it is gone is the main and recurring theme. The song that gives title to the album is literally about not letting moments pass you by. "I should have taken more photos when I had you, should have given you more kisses and hugs the times when I could, may my people never move away, and if I get drunk may they be there to help me.”

In "Baile Inolvidable" (Unforgettable Dance - here with English translation) from the same record and sang during the wedding scene at the halftime show, he is again singing about lost moments that will never return and people we will never see again if we don’t do our best to keep them around. The phrase he said during the wedding scene at the halftime show, “As long as we live we should love as much as we can,” is heard towards the beginning of the song (in the voice of Puerto Rican living treasure Jacobo Morales).

The subject returns in “Pitorro De Coco” (Coconut Cane Rum), and on and on. The whole album is unexpectedly and profoundly concerned with living life at its fullest, but not anymore with the gold chains, fast cars and luxury, but instead with, as he says, the things what matter; family, friends, home, the motherland. 

Even the aforementioned “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii” at its core is about not losing what we have and cherish. And about the sadness of leaving your homeland when you don’t want to, dreaming of returning . . . No wonder then, that he returned to his roots and created an album with the music that he grew up with. Or that Benito decided to present his series of 36 concerts last year not in Las Vegas or Los Angeles, but in San Juan. He named the show series “No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí.” (I Don’t Want to Leave - or Move - from Here).

As per the artist, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” is his mother’s, Lysaurie Ocasio, a retired school teacher, favorite record of his. In an interview he revealed that he was very excited and nervous to hear his mother’s reaction to the album. After Lysaurie heard it, she told him how proud and happy she was that he had gone from trap to Jíbaro music (meaning Puerto Rican traditional). According to Bad Bunny, that praise and her feeling of pride meant more to him than any award he has received.

I am not the only follower of Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio’s music that wonders what is next.

After the huge success of his previous albums, no fan could have imagined that the artist at the peak of his career would follow those blockbusters with the very traditional and completely different “Debí Tirar Más Fotos.” It might have been unimaginable even for Bad Bunny that the album farthest from his most identifiable sound, and closer, to the music of his parents would become his most acclaimed, and the one that took him to be the feature artist at Super Bowl LX’s halftime show.

As I wrote in part one, by being genuine, by caring for his community and his island, by describing his “village” and expressing those feelings in his music, Bad Bunny’s has become universal.  May that be a lesson for all young artists, and a lesson for all of us.