What you must find out about Unhealthy Bunny’s Tremendous Bowl halftime present : NPR

One week after profitable the Grammy for album of the yr, Unhealthy Bunny is about to placed on the efficiency of his already astonishing profession. The halftime present on the Tremendous Bowl is as large an viewers as a musician can hope to play in entrance of, and the choice of the outspoken Puerto Rican famous person has introduced controversy in addition to anticipation. However should you’re aiming for world domination, there’s only one musician to name.

Listed here are the solutions to some questions you may need in regards to the man, his music and the chaos he is been on the middle of main as much as Sunday night time’s present at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., from the attitude of a author who has spent a decade following his profession.

Why did the NFL decide him to play the halftime of the Tremendous Bowl? 

Enterprise. The NFL has expressed curiosity lately in increasing additional into worldwide markets and few artists have as large of a global footprint proper now as Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio. Plus, as Perry Johnson, a music scholar who teaches at USC’s Annenberg faculty of communication, informed me, there’s notably increased rankings in years of larger halftime present controversy.

What was the Trump Administration’s response to his choice?

After Unhealthy Bunny was introduced because the Tremendous Bowl halftime performer, the decide provoked some conservatives. He sings in Spanish and has been a critic of President Trump, going again to his response to Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Turning Level USA, the group based by Charlie Kirk, organized an alternate, “All-American” halftime present that is been promoted by Vice President Vance. Homeland Safety secretary Kristi Noem stated that ICE can be “throughout that place,” although the NFL’s chief safety officer stated final week that Immigrations and Customs officers wouldn’t be current on the stadium. The truth that this efficiency is occurring whereas Trump’s administration is concentrating on People and immigrants who converse Spanish has added to the emotions of rigidity.

How large a star is he, globally?

“Each technology has a unicorn,” AJ Ramos, the top of artist partnerships for Latin music and tradition at Youtube, informed me. “There was Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Celia Cruz, the Beatles, after which there’s Unhealthy Bunny.”

He was the most well-liked artist globally on Spotify in 2025 (his fourth time hitting the milestone since 2020). Final weekend he received album of the yr on the Grammys, the primary time that award has ever been given to an album sung primarily in Spanish. He mounted a 31-concert residency in Puerto Rico and has had a number of bought out world excursions. Final week he was the No. 1 artist on Apple Music in China — the primary time a Spanish language artist has held that spot.

What does he imply to Puerto Ricans?

Final summer season I met a person on the island who informed me that each Sunday his whole household would go all the way down to the seaside and arrange with big pots of beans and rice and meats and swim and discuss and dance till darkish. He stated he by no means observed how little he grew up with as a result of, solid in opposition to the pure, free great thing about the island and surrounded by unconditional love, his life felt wealthy.

Life in Puerto Rico will not be straightforward. However I’ve observed folks appear to prepare themselves by the order of the island. Regardless of how scorching the solar will get, the ocean is at all times there. Cool, inviting, everlasting. One other apagón (blackout), otro huracán? Love is at all times there. Considerable, unconditional, simply shared amongst neighbors and desconocidos alike. Worth for household, love, mutual help: From what I have been in a position to observe, these are the constructing blocks of what it means to be Puerto Rican.

These constructing blocks are electrical, lovely and throughout Benito’s music. He informed me after I interviewed him final yr that there isn’t any larger satisfaction in any accomplishment than with the ability to say you are from Puerto Rico. The love feels notably mutual. He loves and represents them precisely, truthfully and so they give it proper again. He is the primo you are at all times happy with, I have been repeatedly informed. When he wins, so does Puerto Rico.

Inform us about his residency final summer season. How lots of the 31 reveals did you see?

I used to be fortunate sufficient to make it to 5. “Live performance” appears like an entirely insufficient descriptor for the reveals. It was the very best social gathering you have ever been to blended with one of many deepest expressions of affection for tradition and satisfaction for house I have been part of. It was a household gathering meets an evening on the membership. And tying it collectively in a neat bow was Benito, rapero, salsero, man who stands on the entrance of the stage each night time and cries — pleading for us all to like extra and always remember the ability of who we’re and the place we’re from.

Has he stated why he is not enjoying every other concert events within the U.S.?

Suzy Exposito requested him level clean in an interview late final yr if he was skipping touring the U.S. due to the mass deportations of Latinos. He answered merely, sure.

“There was the problem of — like f****** ICE may very well be exterior [my concert],” he informed her.

He said that there have been loads of the explanation why he was skipping the U.S., none out of hate. Regardless of the significance of the U.S. market in his success and profitability, he has repeatedly said that he’s involved with chatting with his folks: Puerto Ricans and, lately, Latin People at giant. Which means spending time on the land of the communities he is chatting with and notably not in the US which, whereas house to many Latinos, is adversarial as an imperialistic energy to a few of his messaging.

Unhealthy Bunny was the most-streamed artist globally on Spotify in 2025. His Tremendous Bowl halftime present would be the first carried out primarily in Spanish.

Chris Graythen/Getty Photos

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Chris Graythen/Getty Photos

Do you suppose he’ll deliver out any friends on the Tremendous Bowl? Different Puerto Rican legends?

Nearly each time he is been on a large stage he is taken time to pay tribute to Puerto Rican historical past, music and icons of the previous. I might think about him seeking to residing island legends — Tego Calderón, Marc Anthony, possibly El Gran Combo — for help.

At his residency and on his present world tour he is made house for a great deal of his contemporaries, from Rauw Alejandro to J Balvin and plenty of others with whom he is collaborated.

The third chance is that he aligns with probably the most recognizable artists within the American pop mainstream. He has had hits with Cardi B, Drake, even Beyoncé. This one is beginning to really feel probably the most believable to me. He is by no means forgetting Puerto Rico, in fact, however it appears he is eager to have one thing for everybody.

No matter else occurs, his core band — Los Sobrinos, Los Pleneros de la Cresta — is sort of assured to be on stage.

In the event you had been going to select three songs I ought to hearken to if I wish to get to know his music, which of them can be on the high of your playlist?

1. “Neverita”

A private favourite of mine. It is summer season kisses and pet love and ice cream that you simply’d higher lick up fast earlier than it melts.

“Yo estoy puesto pa ti y tu te me quitas.” “I am prepared for you and also you push me away,” he sings in opposition to the sort of infectious beat that prompts hips.

“El DM explotao’, to’s le escriben ‘hola’
Una fila cabrona y yo quiero la cola”

(The DMs exploding, everybody writing you ‘hey’
There is a loopy line and I need the tail)

Quippy and just a little silly. He is aware of his odds aren’t nice, however he is gonna strive anyway. Struggling, particularly from love unrequited, is one in all Benito’s favourite pastimes.

There’s an incontrovertible excessive that comes from reveling within the issues which might be supposed to harm us and he’ll dance by need til endlessly. If heartbreak wants a advertising and marketing group, look no additional than Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio. He sells the drug en masse.

Pero ni modo. “Amores vienen y van como las olas.” (“Loves come and go just like the waves.”) His sun-kissed calling card is a sprinkling of denial that he ever cared.

2. “El Apagon”

Even though the tune is called after and speaking about one other blackout — a nod to deep infrastructure failures on the island, the vitality of the observe from starting to finish and the nods to all the struggles Puerto Ricans face, make it fairly clear that he thinks his island is extraordinary. His absolute tremendous energy is difficult us to consider that what some may understand as weak spot is definitely what makes us invincible.

It is value noting that it is one in all his most thoughtfully political songs and maybe units his private file of most cuss phrases packed into one observe. Very Benito.

3. “DtMF”

For an artist whose artwork type is manipulating nostalgia, this may very well be his magnum opus.

“Ojala que los mios nunca se muden.” Generations of ache, loss, and uncertainty wrapped up within the easy hope that “mine won’t ever transfer.” As a result of nearly as good as Benito is at nostalgia, he is higher at hope — that love will overcome hate, that Puerto Rico will be capable to construct itself up, that he’ll get yet one more night time at house to see the sundown.

If I’d simply taken a number of extra photographs. If I’d simply gotten a number of extra hugs and some extra kisses whereas I nonetheless had you. Distilled in these strains are Unhealthy Bunny’s finest qualities as a author, an artist, a human who deeply, simply connects with the feelings of the world. In its capability to be political, private and every thing in between, he proves himself to be extra vessel than man. Somebody who can assume the feelings of a nation, of a complete area of the world — and easily, sweetly repeat them again. Much less rallying cry and extra lullaby he holds the hope of many in a number of plena-backed bars.

“If [abuelo] asks if I nonetheless miss you, I am going to say no,” he sings, although each phrase suggests in any other case. Whereas he may tackle the world’s feelings, he nonetheless cannot confront his personal. Not all that totally different from the remainder of us in spite of everything.