Bad Bunny told America on “Saturday Night Live” final week that folks nonetheless have a couple of months to be taught Spanish to get able to greatest get pleasure from his Super Bowl halftime show efficiency.
Some Black folks aren’t enjoying about it, as seen on social media.
There’s a groundswell of assist effervescent up for the worldwide celebrity, with loads of posts and feedback amongst Black folks celebrating Bad Bunny’s choice for the distinguished gig.
It’s a nationwide dialog about who will get represented on one of many greatest phases in American sports activities and leisure – and the way language and id play into that.
Actor and influencer O’Neil Thomas has shared massively profitable posts about learning Spanish within the time since Bad Bunny and the NFL made the consequential announcement.
Puerto Rican singing sensation and actor Ricky Martin appreciated Thomas’ first post; language schooling app Duolingo commented, “I see a 4 month Spanish streak in your future.” The put up amassed greater than 9 million views.
Thomas informed NCS in a latest interview that he’s been Facetiming along with his Dominican buddy to be taught Bad Bunny music lyrics and learn how to correctly pronounce crucial phrases. His household is getting in on the Spanish classes, since they all the time watch the halftime show collectively. This 12 months, they are going to be joined by a few of his Latino associates.
“I think right now we can all agree that there is a large amount of divisiveness and dividing in a country that is meant to be a pool of multiple walks of life and different cultures and communities,” Thomas stated. “So I think Bad Buddy is the perfect person to be at the forefront of reminding this country what is so great.”
It’s a special dialog than what was being had quickly after the presidential election in November 2024.
At that point, there was discontent amongst some within the Black neighborhood with the elevated assist for Donald Trump amongst Latino voters.
NCS’s national exit poll discovered Trump received 54 % of Latino males in comparison with Harris’ 44 % — an 18-point enhance in Latino Republican turnout from 2020.
But Latinos are not a monolith. And Bad Bunny, who was born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio in Puerto Rico, has been an outspoken critic of the present administration.
His criticism has led supporters of the president to label him a “Trump hater,” and so they’ve referred to as for him to get replaced because the halftime performer.
Even President Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson have weighed in.
“I don’t know who he is. I don’t know why they’re doing it — it’s, like, crazy,” Trump said in a recent interview with Newsmax. “Then they blame it on some promoter they hired to pick up entertainment. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous.”
“I didn’t even know who Bad Bunny was, but it sounds like a terrible decision in my view,” Johnson said, suggesting 82-year-old nation musician Lee Greenwood, whose tune “God Bless the USA” is one in all President Trump’s favorites, carry out as a substitute.
It’s exhausting to make the argument that Bad Bunny isn’t a large enough star to have earned the accolade, given that he’s a three-time Grammy winner who not too long ago accomplished a bought out two-month residency on the Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot in San Juan – a collection that wrapped with a concert that broke streaming records on Amazon and introduced in tens of millions of {dollars} for the native financial system in his beloved Puerto Rico.
But within the US, his critics have tried to color him as anti-American even though he’s an American (Puerto Rico is a territory of the US). Bad Bunny declined to bring his tour to mainland USA for worry that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement would pose a hazard to his followers in attendance.
Emil Medina labored with Bad Bunny for 4 years because the founder and chief working officer of Buena Vibra Group, a Puerto Rican artistic agency. Medina stated the artist is a “creative genius” who’s “like a sponge” and really a lot tapped into all of the dialog being had about and round him.
Bad Bunny can also be somebody who stands agency in his assist of marginalized folks.
“We’re the agency that helped Bad Bunny promote his first years and we started sharing info (with Bad Bunny) about the social injustice in United States because he wants to do the crossover (into the US market),” Medina defined. “And in 2020, when the George Floyd incident happened, we created a local statement (in Puerto Rico) with Black Lives Matter. People were not aware about Black Lives Matter, and we created a big footprint and some murals on the streets and Bad Bunny was a strong advocate.”
Puerto Rico is the house of “African Caribbeans and we have a strong connection with the African American community,” Medina stated.
He added that “here in Puerto Rico, we support all the African American issues,” and identified that younger Puerto Ricans specifically are politically engaged.
“They’re very active, they are very well outspoken about those issues,” Medina stated. “And that’s the biggest fandom of Bad Bunny.”
Albert Laguna, an affiliate professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Race, & Migration at Yale University, famous that on the subject of Bad Bunny, “he’s the number one streamed artist across the world. There’s something about his music that’s really sticking with people.”
“In the context of Black communities, it’s an opportunity to talk about the Black roots, right? The Afro-Puerto Rican, Afro-Caribbean roots of so much of his music that is ringing bells for folks right across the global Black diaspora,” Laguna stated. “You can’t talk about reggaeton without talking about hip-hop. Hip-hop is born in the South Bronx with West Indians, African-Americans, and Puerto Ricans creating this music that travels to Puerto Rico, mixes with Jamaican dance hall, mixes with Panamanian reggae en Español to form this reggaeton.”
And there isn’t a greater star within the reggaeton style than Bad Bunny, who began out as an Latin lure music artist and is now recognized for mixing the genres of pop, hip-hop, lure, reggae, rock, soul and world music.
He has clearly additionally expanded his attain in popular culture, having not too long ago hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the second time and likewise, in fact, having been selected to headline next year’s Super Bowl halftime show.
Laguna stated the following backlash to his choice for the massive sporting occasion was “predictable,” however he appreciated how the star dealt with it.
“He didn’t kind of get in the mud with people criticizing him from the right. He just said ‘learn some Spanish, they could listen to the show,’ which I thought was quite funny,” Laguna stated of Bad Bunny’s buzzy “SNL” monologue over the weekend.
“I also think on some level what’s bothering folks is like, he’s gonna come on his US passport. You can’t revoke a visa, there are no games you can play with (his) immigration, right?” he added. “He can come and play the Super Bowl and sing in Spanish, and there’s not much that could be done to stop him.”
Historian and content material creator Anthony Modesto Milian informed NCS that as an Afro-Latino, he feels “very prideful” and “super ecstatic” about Bad Bunny’s choice by the NFL.
“I was telling my friend the other day, what a time to be Puerto Rican,” he stated. “Bad Bunny is shining light on all of us. He’s shining light on the whole diaspora.”
He stated it must be no shock “that African American people are locked in with Puerto Ricans in their appreciation and love for Bad Bunny,” including that each African Americans and Latinos have felt focused by the present administration.
“If you look at the history of Puerto Ricans when they left the island, a lot of them moved to places where they lived alongside African American people,” Milian stated. “The Bronx, Brooklyn, Connecticut, Massachusetts, places like that. And so it’s really more of like a familial thing.”
The influencer stated there may be one member of the family he needs was nonetheless right here to witness how far Bad Bunny has come.
Milian stated his father, who handed away two years in the past, was “old school” and never as a lot a fan of Bad Bunny’s earlier reggaeton model.
“But when I listened to this album, he did a lot of salsa, he did a lot of traditional music,” he stated of the artist’s most up-to-date document. “And the thing about the name of the album, ‘I Should’ve Taken More Photos’ (‘DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS’) is I wish that my dad was still here to hear the music that he put out now, because I know he would’ve loved it.”