Ramtin Arablui

His parents kind of struggling to make ends meet, but always providing for them in a really responsible and loving way.

He was part of his church choir as a kid.

and would perform at talent shows, you know, ballads, salsas, stuff like that.

And he doesn't come from a family of Puerto Rican revolutionaries or anything like that.

His nuclear family was PNP, and that's the pro-statehood party.

In Puerto Rico, there are three main political parties.

There's the New Progressive Party, or PNP, which wants to make Puerto Rico the 51st U.S.

state.

There's the Popular Democratic Party that wants to keep Puerto Rico as a commonwealth, basically status quo.

And then there's the Independence Party that wants Puerto Rico to be its own sovereign nation.

Not a lot of Puerto Ricans are necessarily growing up in massively radical, you know, revolutionary-type households.

This is Vanessa Diaz.

She's professor of Chicano, Chicana, and Latino Studies at Loyola Marymount and author of the book PFKNR, How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance.

There's a lot more people who probably grew up in a Commonwealth Party household or a statehood party household or a mixed household, like a lot of mixed kind of political vibes in Puerto Rican families.

And Bad Bunny kind of speaks to that.

Because it wasn't his parents' political views that shaped him.

It was just what he experienced growing up in Puerto Rico, the water he was swimming in.

Bad Bunny being born in 1994, I mean, it's a really important time.

In 1996, when Benito was just two years old, his world would be reshaped by a decision made 1,500 miles away in the White House by then-President Bill Clinton.

Clinton ends the Section 936 U.S.