How Bad Bunny took Puerto Rican independence mainstream
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How did Bad Bunny become a global voice for Puerto Rican independence?
Hey, it's Rund. In this month's ThruLine Plus episode, our producers take us behind the scenes of making our episode on the first transatlantic cable. To listen to these insider bonus episodes every month, sign up for ThruLine Plus at plus.npr.org slash ThruLine.
The National Football League welcomes you to the Apple Music Super Bowl 60 Halftime Show. Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, who you know as Bad Bunny.
He's a Spanish-speaking artist from a colony, and he's performing at the Super Bowl. at a time when the Spanish language is being criminalized.
The Trump administration can continue indiscriminate immigration stops targeting Latinos and Spanish speakers. We want to be with patriotic Americans, people who have great music, songs you've actually heard. I think it's super political. What he did was show the world what Latinos have and when he called out all of the countries. It was so special and I got super emotional.
Is it revolutionary?
I don't think so, but it's political. You know, the NFL also wants to reach a broader international audience, and Benito's the biggest artist in the world. The biggest artist in the world performed mostly in Spanish at Super Bowl 60 in Santa Clara, which, yes, cost some fanfare. But the Puerto Rican singer and rapper, who's dominated global charts for the past eight years, isn't a stranger to politics. He refused to perform his most recent album in the continental U.S., saying he's worried that ICE will come after his fans. An idea he doubled down on after he won the Grammy for the Album of the Year and Best Musica Urbana Album.
Before I say thanks to God, I'm going to say eyes out.
When he took the stage at the Super Bowl, he made a statement and a compromise. He didn't speak out directly against ICE, but he did use the global stage to do what his music has always done, make the world look at Puerto Rico, a U.S. Commonwealth whose people are U.S. citizens, but who live in what some critics call the world's oldest colony. He's always said that he is producing music primarily for Puerto Rico, but he knows that the world's listening. And in that way, his music is... An archive of the current moment that we're living in, and we can use it to sort of understand this moment. As a musician myself, I love this idea of thinking about music as both an archive and a historical record or soundtrack to history.
And so for today's episode of ThruLine, all about Bad Bunny, we're going to leave the politics surrounding the Super Bowl behind. And instead, we're going to lean into that idea and look at what Bad Bunny's music tells us about Puerto Rico's history and vice versa. And we'll explore both sides of his meteoric success, how Bad Bunny has become a voice of a generation in crisis, and what it means when resistance becomes profitable. Before we get started, let me be the first to pedir disculpas, say sorry, to all the conejos and diehard Bad Bunny fans out there. We've only got an hour here, and there's going to be some stuff we don't get to. Think of this episode as a Bad Bunny mixtape, through line style.
So don't press skip on that next track, and stay with us as we dive into the life and music of El Conejo Malo and the island that made him. Hi, this is Megan from Rhode Island, and you're listening to ThruLine. Parte una. La isla donde nací. The island where I was born. My first impression of him was in the passenger seat of his manager's car when I went to meet up with him in the garage where he kept his Lambo. And he turned around from the front seat wearing a mask and said, what's up? He looked like any Puerto Rican boy I would meet who's, you know, my little sister's age. This is Karina Del Valle-Shorsky. She's a freelance writer, translator, and researcher. My connection to Bad Bunny is that my feature debut at New York Times Magazine was writing a profile about Bad Bunny in 2020.
For that profile, Karina got to spend time with Bad Bunny in Puerto Rico. It was 2020, during the height of the pandemic, hence the mask he was wearing.
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