Powered though he may be by the sounds and strategies of hip-hop ( Drake and Future in particular), there’s also no one quite like Bad Bunny on the charts right now: a genre-blending, gender-norm-defying, stylistically adventurous rapper and accomplished singer whose lyrics veer from raw vulnerability to street braggadocio. Holding off on releasing an album as he fired off single after single, he charted 34 tracks on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart, twice as many as Ozuna before his Odisea dropped in 2017.
Like his contemporaries Ozuna and Maluma, he grew up influenced by both reggaetón and American hip-hop and rose to global fame as hip-hop became a kind of open-source code, supplying fresh sounds and attitudes for artists all over the literal and figurative map. arenas in two years - certifies Latin music’s now-central role in American pop, beyond novelty singles and Justin Bieber features. His ascent - from a small town on the northern coast of Puerto Rico to the biggest U.S. radio waves, Bad Bunny ranks as one of music’s most exciting new stars, no “crossover” qualification necessary. Twenty years after Ricky Martin led the so-called Latin explosion onto U.S. After Farruko exits, Bad Bunny’s totem - an image of a “third eye” he recently said allows him to “see everything,” including a female red-carpet reporter’s underwear - unfurls to the roars of the crowd. He then storms down a long hallway toward the stage and jubilantly dances in the wings as Farruko, his fellow Puerto Rican and sometime collaborator, performs a rendition of the merengue smash “Mi Forma de Ser,” an anthem about owning one’s individuality and not giving a fuck about the haters - which might as well be Bad Bunny’s ethos. When the call comes for him, the singer, decked out in a fluorescent orange windbreaker and shorts, snatches an unopened Coke can, yells something that roughly translates to “Let’s do this! Fuck!” and throws it on the floor. “I feel great,” he says in Spanish - he speaks minimal English - as he offers a hug and a handshake.
Bad Bunny is performing for the first time since the surprise late-December release of X100PRE (pronounced Por Siempre, or Forever), his critically acclaimed debut album, which peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard 200 in early January and has yet to fall out of the top 20.īad Bunny, born Benito Martinez Ocasio, may be pacing like a prizefighter before a match, but he’s not nervous. The bill features the biggest names in música urbana - the umbrella term encompassing genres like reggaetón, Latin trap and dembow - including Ozuna, Anuel AA, Farruko, even Enrique Iglesias. The 24-year-old Latin trap star is the final performer at Calibash, SBS Entertainment’s Latin mega-concert at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena. Minutes before Bad Bunny steps into an arena filled with 19,000 fans, he jogs back and forth in the green room, his face stoic.
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