Bad Bunny rose to worldwide stardom by subverting expectations about gender and ethnicity

In some ways, it’s hard to imagine Bad Bunny having a higher profile than he already does. The Puerto Rican singer has tens of millions of fans all over the world, and he’s fresh off winning a Grammy for Album of the Year.

He’s one of the most successful musicians on the planet — and this weekend, he’ll play the Super Bowl halftime show.

Like other stars of his stature, Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, has become more than a musician. He’s a fashion icon, and increasingly, a political figure.

In the past, he’s publicly criticized the Trump administration for its response to Hurricane Maria. He appeared on late-night television wearing a shirt supporting a trans woman who was murdered, affirming her gender identity when some headlines misidentified her as a “man in a skirt.”

Bad Bunny has also become the subject of intense scrutiny, by the media and academia. Luis Rivera-Figueroa is a post-doctoral fellow at Arizona State University, and he’s written extensively about Bad Bunny. He says it’s important to examine the artist through many lenses: music, ethnicity and gender.

Figueroa wanted it to be clear that his comments about Bad Bunny reflect his own opinions, not those of ASU. Among other things, he says, Bad Bunny likes to play with the trope of machismo.

Full conversation

LUIS RIVERA-FIGUEROA: At the level of the music, you would see that he would embody this macho man, but in his aesthetics, the way he dresses, the way he addresses the cameras, right. He plays into what we would consider feminine poses, feminine clothing. And in the beginning, people would make fun of him because of that or wouldn't be as thrilled with it, but then it kind of became his brand.

And the way that he's covered in the media, at least in the U.S., it's reproducing the idea that Bad Bunny's undoing machismo. He stands against machismo, and in many ways he does. He talks about gender violence, he talks about sexual harassment, right. And not being complicit in it.

SAM DINGMAN: And that's at the musical level.

RIVERA-FIGUEROA: He talks about at the musical level. Yeah, yeah.

But at the same time, at the visual level, you see that he's being embraced by specifically the fashion industry and the fashion cultural circles in a way that makes him a non-threatening masculine figure for U.S. audiences. He overcomes it. He overcomes his "condition," quote, unquote, of being Latin American, of being threatening. And in doing so, he becomes more palatable.

DINGMAN: I mean, this is very interesting in light of the fact that he's gonna be doing the Super Bowl halftime show. Because I know at least some of the outcry against him as the choice to do the halftime show had to do with, I think we can say, ill-informed voices saying that the person doing the halftime show should be, quote, unquote, "American."

Bad Bunny is Puerto Rican. So he is American in one sense, but there is also this other way in which he's subverting gender presentation.

RIVERA-FIGUEROA: Yeah, yeah. And in the case of him being the non-American artist, right, it has to do with how Latinos are racialized because of their language or because where they come from. In the case of Puerto Rico being a colony of the United States, it's not considered a true American territory or being part of the American nation.

And it kind of speaks to how we imagine the American nation, right. There is a certain push towards having country artists, for instance, and they are the true representatives of America. When hip hop, R&B, musicana, reggaeton music, it's part of America. But they are not always seen as representative of the American nation.

DINGMAN: Can you talk a little bit about, because this is a critical part of your research as well is specifically how he uses his status as a Puerto Rican to also disrupt and subvert.

RIVERA-FIGUEROA: Yeah. It's interesting because traditionally Latin American music artists would have to go through a crossover process. And that would mean singing in English, adopting Anglo American pop music into their music, and sometimes embodying or approximating whiteness in many ways.

And with Bad Bunny, what we see is a figure that articulates Puerto Ricanness in all of the spaces that he inhabits. And in this way, I think he kind of subverts who the imagined mainstream audience is.

He's saying, I don't care. I care that people in Puerto Rico or people in the U.S. who are Latinos and people in Latin America see me as the artist that I am. Like, I don't care if I don't conform to what you expect of me. It kind of disrupts who's at the center of this imagined audience.

DINGMAN: Well, that's this interesting thing that you're articulating here, I think, which is that in a way, things like his interactions with the fashion industry, going on SNL, going on Jimmy Fallon, even doing the Super Bowl halftime show, to a certain extent, those things are all downstream of his primary voice, right, which is the music.

RIVERA-FIGUEROA: Yeah. And this is how I think we could bring on the idea of globalization, how international markets also play into this. 'Cause that's why the NFL is having Bad Bunny play the Super Bowl, right. They know that Bad Bunny is bigger than the NFL in terms of reach, right.

DINGMAN: Which is kind of a remarkable thing, that statement. You know, Bad Bunny is bigger than the NFL. I mean, that's remarkable.

RIVERA-FIGUEROA: Yeah, yeah. And it also plays into that tension between globalization and the imagination, right. 'Cause it's like the NFL wants to expand, but at the same time, there is a push from nativists that want to claim American football as distinctively white American.

DINGMAN: In this vein, it's also very interesting to look at the way Bad Bunny expresses his political viewpoints. He's not shy in his music.

RIVERA-FIGUEROA: He has, as of late, being more politically involved in the song "Lo Que Le Pasó Hawaii" or "What Happened to Hawaii." He's trying to say, I don't want Puerto Rico to go through what Hawaii went through, which is having the native populations being displaced and not having any traces of Puerto Rican culture.

DINGMAN: What have you made of the way that he has dealt with the moment that we are in, in terms of the ICE sweeps? Were speaking the morning after in one of his Grammy acceptance speeches last night. He had the opportunity to give a couple of them. He addressed that directly.

BAD BUNNY: Before I say thanks to God, I'm going to say ICE out.

RIVERA-FIGUEROA: Bad Bunny strategically focuses on Puerto Rican politics. Whenever he gets into U.S.-based politics, he does so with a certain precaution and being careful with it. In the case of ICE, right. I think that's the most vocal he has been for a while, right. I think he's being careful with his image. Even though he hasn't been overtly political with this, he has gotten a lot of backlash because of it. Especially like, especially with the Super Bowl.

And I wonder if that's part of the calculations in it where you have to, yes, stand your ground, but at the same time, be careful with how vocal you are with it, because in the music industry and the entertainment industries, these things have consequences, too. Like he could lose sponsorships, he could lose opportunities. And we say that as if he's not a really privileged artist, right.

But at the same time, it is precisely those spaces that give him the legitimacy as a global artist that make him such a powerful voice. So it's like that fight and that dynamic of when he could speak and when he has to go along with being silent.