Bad Bunny’s rise has never been apolitical, even if mainstream America is only now catching up.
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As the Puerto Rican superstar heads into a Super Bowl performance following a Grammy win for Album of the Year, his visibility has reignited familiar debates about whether pop stars should be political at all.
But for Bad Bunny, and for Puerto Rico, politics is not a phase or a strategy. It is a condition of daily life. And the type of politics he’s showing up – inclusive of all types of Puerto Ricans including Black folks who are consistently erased on the island – is already making history.
On an upcoming episode of Vibe Check, hosts Zach Stafford and Saeed Jones spoke with activist Nelini Stamp, Director of Strategy at the Working Families Party, about Bad Bunny’s trajectory, from bagging groceries in Puerto Rico to becoming the most-streamed artist of last year.
Their conversation traces how reggaeton’s Afro-Caribbean roots, Puerto Rico’s colonial status, and the displacement of Puerto Ricans after Hurricane Maria shape this cultural moment.
Stamp explains why Bad Bunny’s music, aesthetics, and choices cannot be separated from Blackness, diaspora, and power, and why his presence on one of the biggest stages in American entertainment is political whether he says anything explicitly or not.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. The full conversation will be on Apple Podcasts and wherever you get your podcasts following the Super Bowl.
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VIBE CHECK: Bad Bunny has always been political and been getting even more political as of late. Walk us through his origin story. He was bagging groceries 10 years ago in Puerto Rico. Now he’s a Grammy winner, Album of the Year, and about to have a really political performance.
What do you make of that trajectory?
NELINI: I think Bad Bunny has always known what kind of artist he is. When you hear stories about how he chose his name, he said he didn’t want it to be his name or just about him. He wanted it to be about the project — the music, what he was trying to say.
Bad Bunny grew up in the trap version of reggaeton, right?
VIBE CHECK: Mm-hmm.
NELINI: And reggaeton is an Afro — Afro-Latino started — but also Latino. Like, Indigenous Latinos started art form that combines Caribbean, which is just an art form throughout the Caribbean.
So he took reggaeton and was like, “I want to do this.” But then he was kind of the younger version of trap by then taking U.S. trap and putting it into his art form. He always had an appreciation and it was never appropriation.
VIBE CHECK: Exactly. Which is just one of many examples of how he has centered Blackness within Puerto Rico.
NELINI: He always acknowledged Black people started reggaeton and hip-hop in a way that a lot of people don’t, right? You see some reggaeton artists out there without melanin and they never actually talk about the origins of this music, right?
And you see it later in his [summer] residency [last year] when he brought out every single person who originated or had a big to do with Puerto Rican and Latino music in specific genres and cultures. The one that I went to had Tego Calderón, who’s a very famous Afro-Latino reggaeton artist.
VIBE CHECK: When Bad Bunny was announced as the Super Bowl Halftime performer, President Trump tried to downplay it and make him seem like a nobody. But that’s not true. He was the most-streamed artist in the world last year while being very politilcal.
On Sunday, even if he says nothing explicit, this is already political. What does this performance do?
NELINI: I think it’s about Latino mundo. Latinos of the world. We’re not a monolith.
My dad’s from Belize — a Black country formerly called British Honduras — and he’s Latino.
I think we’ll see a celebration of Puerto Rico. People joked about deporting him, even though Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory. Trevor Noah joked, “Can I go to Puerto Rico?” and Bad Bunny said, “Shh, don’t tell anyone.”
That lands because it’s real.
More Puerto Ricans live outside the island than on it, especially after PROMESA and Hurricane Maria. People lived almost a year without power.
This performance is for people who had to leave their homeland to survive.
VIBE CHECK: And so many people – especially Black people from Puerto Rico and not – can relate to this idea of having to leave their homeland to survive. But why is this so special for Puerto Ricans this Super Bowl?
NELINI: Puerto Rico is one of the oldest colonies in the world. Not just in the United States. It has been a colony for a really long time.
If you live in Puerto Rico and are raised in Puerto Rico, you cannot vote for president of the United States. You do not have voting representatives. It is taxation without representation, everyone.
So I think it’s really hard to be Puerto Rican and not be political, especially if you’re a millennial like he is. Each step of the way he was like, “I’m going to be political.” He did it in different ways — highlighting different identities in Puerto Rico: highlighting trans women, highlighting the LGBTQ community.
Then when folks saw Ricky, the old governor, and the leaked text messages about Hurricane Maria — calling people poor, calling people — Bad Bunny was on top of a bus with Ricky Martin and Benicio del Toro. I felt so inspired and also I was like, oh my God, this is so hot.
VIBE CHECK: I think the Puerto Rican body, the culture — everything in this moment is built with politics because of how it exists, especially in the face of Donald Trump.
When Bad Bunny was announced as a Super Bowl performer, Trump immediately said, “I don’t know who that is. That’s a bad decision,” trying to make it small. And then Bad Bunny was named the most streamed artist of last year, showing his global dominance.
So we’re talking before the performance so we don’t know what will happen at the Super Bowl. But even if he says nothing about ICE, which he did do at the Grammy’s, it’s already super political.
What do you think this performance is about to do to the culture at large?
NELINI: Ooh. I think it’s a couple things he wants — and he has said — Latino mundo, right? Latinos of the world. We’re not a monolith. We’re the opposite of a monolith. We’ve got different languages spoken, because remember: Latinos are anybody in Latin America.
I am full Latino. My dad’s from Belize, which is a Black country — it used to be called British Honduras — but my dad is Latino. Latinos are Caribbean, Central America, South America, Mexico — like, from North America. So one thing is: he’s trying to unite Latinos of all colors and say, we got each other’s backs.
Two: we will see a celebration of Puerto Rico on everybody’s faces. The fact that Marco Rubio, Kristi Noem, all of these people said, “Let’s deport him”— and I’m glad they made that joke at the Grammys. Trevor Noah said, “Can I go to Puerto Rico?” and Bad Bunny was like, “Shh, don’t tell anybody.” It was a great bit because people are like, people should be deported even though they love to come to our island.
And I think that in itself will be political by showing our culture to a global stage.
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