What Bad Bunny brings to the Super Bowl
A few days after Christmas 2022, Bad Bunny turned the roof of a Gulf Oil station in San Juan into an impromptu stage, performing with Arcángel and closing with El Apagón, a protest anthem about displacement and the rolling blackouts that have afflicted Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria.
The show on Santurce’s Calle Loíza — a once working-class Black neighborhood now dotted with Airbnbs — captured the raw energy that has carried him from a record-setting US arena tour and two sold-out nights at Yankee Stadium to Coachella and a Grammy for Debí Tirar Más Fotos.
On Sunday he will step onto the biggest stage yet: the Super Bowl half-time show. A Spanish-language performer on that platform feels both inevitable and improbable. Bad Bunny has been the most-streamed artist in the world for four of the past five years and the US has about 55 million Spanish speakers.
Puerto Rico, San Juan