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Though he’s never compromised his native Spanish, Bad Bunny framed the halftime language barrier that so triggered MAGA (“in America, we speak English!”) not as an exclusion, but an invitation (body language is universal, babes). “They don’t even have to learn Spanish,” he said of viewers in his preshow press conference. “Better they learn to dance.” In his rich baritone, Bad Bunny rapped and sang entirely in his native tongue—the only English-singing came from Gaga—but what he chose to say in which language mattered, especially as President Trump predictably blasted Martínez’s performance on Truth Social, claiming, “nobody understands a word this guy is saying.” Bad Bunny chose English for his stirring closing salvo, “God bless America,” a stunning rebuke to anyone (Kid Rock) suggesting he doesn’t love the U.S., before launching into a roll call of Latino countries, plus the U.S. and Canada. They’re lands linked through language, culture and diaspora, the places from which immigrants under attack in America might hail. Bad Bunny named them all, their flags whipping behind him, with a sense of collective pride.
When I interviewed him in Puerto Rico for a Vanity Fair cover story in 2023, Martínez was working on his English, and understood me perfectly when I spoke it. For years, he seldom spoke English in public, but Bad Bunny is notably speaking a bit more English now—maybe he’s sharpened his skills and maybe because, in responding to the current ICE crisis, it’s important to address the Trump administration in words they can understand.
At last week’s Grammys, he chose solemn English to assert the humanity of the Latino community: “We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens and we are Americans,” he Bunny said in a powerful acceptance speech for best música urbana album. He slipped into Spanish later, however, with a direct appeal to hype his homeland: “Believe me when I tell you that we are much bigger than just 100 by 35,” he said, referencing the area of Puerto Rico, “and there is nothing that we cannot achieve.”
Bad Bunny is an artist born of a perilous political moment that he’s never shied away from responding to, both as an artist and a young, proud Puerto Rican. His rise has coincided, almost exactly, with that of Donald Trump and his hostility and aggression toward the Latino community, set against the backdrop of Hurricanes Maria and Irma and, now, the brutality of ICE. Bad Bunny’s political statements are evolving with his stardom, but he couldn’t bring his full self to the Super Bowl and not include “El Apagón,” a searing protest anthem from his smash 2022 album, Un Verano Sin Tí, which took aim at repeated power outages after the privatization of the Puerto Rican power grid was sold to LUMA Energy, a Canadian-and-Texan conglomerate, in 2021. “Fuck LUMA,” Bad Bunny declared in no uncertain terms at a San Juan concert in 2023. His sentiment manifested with a new streak of positivity on Sunday night, as he scaled a set of power lines, asserted Puerto Rico’s greatness, then cut through the darkness and restored the lights.
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Michelle Ruiz
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