First, some facts about Bad Bunny, in case you think he’s a rowdy pet. He’s Billboard’s artist of the year and Spotify’s most-streamed artist for two years running—an amazing feat for someone who sings in Spanish. His reach is global, but his songs are local, rich with Puerto Rican slang. (I’ve heard him introduced as “Ba-Boney” on Spanish-language TV.) He looks like he was born in a baseball cap, but he sometimes performs in a dress. He chose his stage name because, as he told the late-night host James Cordon, “even when he’s bad, he’s cute.”
You can’t separate Bad Bunny from reggaeton, a high-energy amalgam of Caribbean and hiphop beats. The word means “big reggae,” and this music is expansive, veering from clave to dancehall and trap—in fact, it’s sometimes called Latin trap. What do I know about that genre? Not a lot. Even after consulting a chat-bot, I still can’t say what’s Latin in Latin trap. One thing I do know: reggaeton makes me want to move. I hear it on the street, and I ask who the performers are. That’s how I learned about the slyly sexy Rauw Alejandro (I want a boyfriend named Rauw), and how I lost myself in Luis Fonsi’s mega-hit “Despacito” with its happy reference to exploring “the walls of your labyrinth.” I’m shamelessly fond of the remix with Daddy Yankee and, yikes!, Justin Bieber. “I want to breathe your neck slowly.” “Despacito” is like a rumination on good sex.
But what gob-smacks me in my latent rock-critic self is the way reggaeton, so intensely Caribbean, can drift from bomba-based beats to electronica and…wait, is that bossa nova? It’s a migratory music, in which Jamaican dancehall coexists with Dominican dembow. How is that possible? Don’t ask me. But I love the way reggaeton glides from trad to rad without making me feel like I don’t belong in the song. The music invites me in.
I’ve long felt that way about salsa, with its pastiche of Carib and Nuyorican mambo. Back in the day, I toured Japan with a salsa band called the Fania All-Stars. On the 14-hour flight, I sat next to the master conguero Mongo Santamaría, who kept his hands wrapped in bandages when he wasn’t drumming. (I named my beloved dog Mongo after him.) I hung out with Yomo Toro, titan of the quatro guitar, and Larry Harlow, known by his bandmates as “el Judio maravilloso” (the miraculous Jew). I loved hearing this music live every night, but I was aware that the boundaries of language and pulse kept salsa apart from the Anglo mainstream. It thrived anyway, achieving its own international following, which is why I could interview Japanese fans with coiffed afros. But the core audience barely extended west of the Mississippi and south of Colombia. There was always a promise of crossover that could only be kept by bleaching out or rocking up what made the music distinct. Santana’s classic version of “Oye Como Va” doesn’t sound much like the original cha-cha by Tito Puente. It’s walled off by the rhythm of rock. Reggaeton tears down that wall.
This demolition anticipates a moment when the mainstream is open to music from all across the African diaspora. That’s why a Caribbean genre can include the gifted Spanish performer Rosalía, whose mix makes flamenco sound like it’s always been part of hiphop. Puerto Rico, with its syncretic culture, fits well within this fusive spirit. That island has long been an entrepôt of musical styles, and now it’s the source of an internet-savvy genre nurtured by a generation for whom a song is all about the blend. Latin rhythms have always been part of the pop landscape—I’m old enough to remember boogaloo—but streaming has created a vast cosmopolitan marketplace. Reggaeton is what happens when Latin music meets a more welcoming worldwide market.
What distinguishes Bad Bunny from the rest of this style? Maybe it’s the way his songs don’t settle into any groove. They’re migratory, wandering from beat to beat, breaking the rules of rhythm even as they dig deeply deeply into the traditions that made those rules. I’ve heard this called “retro-futurism”—and I’m glad there’s a term for it. But how can that be pop? Even more puzzling: How can someone who sings in a language I barely understand push my pleasure buttons? I think it’s because his music imagines a culture in which language is less important than ambience. Every pop icon presents a metaphor for the moment. As Plato put it, “when the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake.” Bad Bunny is not a revolutionary, but he’s shaking something up, and the significance of his rise is greater than many critics realize. He may be the first genius of the new Latin wave.
It’s important that he sings in Spanish, and that it’s a distinction, not a liability. It’s important that he’s political about Puerto Rico and affirmative about gender fluidity, which can be dicey in Latin cultures (the flaming TV soothsayer Walter notwithstanding). Bad Bunny breaks with the rigidities of machismo in many ways, so it’s no surprise that he dabbles in nail polish. But this isn’t glam, which was static and easily stylized. His style is unstable, pivoting from femme to jíbaro to jeans and ink. (At last count, he had two tattoos.) His gender is transitory, even when it isn’t trans. But there’s a coherent identity in all his poses, just as there is in his music. He’s the same homie in a hoodie as he is in a mama chula dress.
Okay, he did kiss a male dancer at one of his shows. So, nu?
There’s nothing novel about gender bending in pop—even I know that. But Bad Bunny is different from boa-bearing throbs like Harry Styles. Fuckable as Styles’s may be in a tinseled onesie, there’s no connection between his look and his music. Bad Bunny’s persona is a visual corollate of his music, and it’s all about relatability. You’ll find that quality in his interviews, on his album jackets, even in his acceptance speech for one of three Grammies he won this year. “When you do things with love and passion, everything is easier,” he said (in English). “Life is easier.” Naive? Sure. But how great to be reminded that, in music, if not in the rest of life, passion is enough.
His album YHLQMDLG (an anagrammatic way of saying “I do whatever I please.”) made me feel like I could party without thinking of some maldito virus. His latest release, Un Verano Sin Ti, was the record of last summer. It may be the summer record of the decade, and that’s more important than it seems. Summer music isn’t just about feeling relaxed—it’s about ripe fruit and hanging out, long naps and fleshy joys. Even though I’m old enough to prefer Netflix to cruising, I can still respond to that.
But how is it possible to shift syncopations without sounding like a tropical Bjork? The answer lies in the relationship among those migrant beats. Bad Bunny reveals that the forces which keep rhythms apart are tribal, not musical. Each pulse belongs to a society, and they’re usually closely held, but once those sonic borders are crossed, it turns out that all grooves are related. That’s the magic of fusion, and it’s why Bad Bunny enchants me even though I don’t understand most of what he’s saying.
Once in a while, a song of his intrigues me so much that I can’t resist consulting a translation app. Take “La Noche de Anoche” (Last Night), a duet with Rosalía that I first saw on SNL. Their connection was so palpable that I had to know what the lyric meant, and this is what I found: “We did it non-stop. You on top of me, me on top of you….We did positions I never imagined. You got wet so that I get baptized.” This lovely image speaks to the temperament of Bad Bunny’s relationship songs. They’re tangible and tender, as befits a style that’s less martial than most rap. There’s no bitch bashing. The theme is passionate mutuality.
Say you don’t know the difference between mio and mijo. At some point you’ll realize that your ignorance offers another way of listening to Bad Bunny. To hear his songs without any sense of what they mean is to hear them over and over for the first time. You can focus on his voice, which ranges from boombox staccato to boy-band crooning, or the way he softens up Spanish with gentle grunts. (Borrowed from mumble rap? Why not?) As you slide along the play of beats, the swoops and blips seem even more resonant because you don’t know what to expect. The fluctuating tempos may remind you of the Beatles’ promise to create a sonic landscape of changeability and flow. Those are Bad Bunny’s signatures.
It’s tempting to conclude that he materialized from under a palm frond. But he’s been writing songs since he was 14, and he studied audiovisual communication at the University of Puerto Rico. He’s a serious artist, who clearly understands that a new style is the signifier of a new sensibility. Just as Beatlemania was a precursor of modern feminism. my hunch is that Bunnymania marks the emergence of a generation that challenges boundaries, be they racial, linguistic, or gendered. The utopian mood of this music is part of what makes it youthful. There’s a sense of immanent change, if hate and war don’t throttle it.
Scrolling through the massive assortment of Bad Bunny caps and t-shirts for sale online, I came across a perfect motto for this brave new world. “Menos violencia, más perreo” (less violence, more twerking). That’s not such a stretch from my favorite slogan of the ‘60s: “Make love, not war.” This above all is why I’m a Bad Bunny fan. He makes me feel young, even as he puts me in touch with my long-gone hippy days. Saluting the past and pointing to the future: What else is great pop music for?