How to Explain Bad Bunny to Your Children & Open Thread

Muy buenas noches, damas y cabrones. I may have mentioned years ago that I am from Puerto Rico, my country: where I work, live, and will die proudly—most likely as a patient after my third stroke, but I morbidly digress.

OBVIAMENTE I was thrilled when boricua Bad Bunny was announced as the Superb Owl’s halftime extravagance. It’s been a controversial choice. So I’m gonna share my first-hand knowledge and experiences for you, flummoxed and non-Spanish speaking parent, to make acceptable explanations to your wee ones. The first alternative is elemental:

Change the channel BECAUSE I SAID SO

You are a parent, the adult and provider. Never surrender your authority over your uppity kids, no matter how ably they outsmart you. Also: the arbitrary exercise of power is in vogue.

Never heard of Bed [sic] Bunny

Bad Bunny is the biggest attraction in the world right now. So it stands to reason that, if you reproduced and have brood with language skills, for several years you’ve been out of touch with popular music, what with work and bills and most adult soul killers.

It’s all in [Non English] so I can’t explain

Try that one.

Incidentally, [Non English] is my favorite close-captioning text, barely beating [Ominous music]. Fly your Anglo-centrism proudly, if you’re into that sort of thing. Personally, I see no disadvantages whatsoever to knowing another language, and it’s very cool to retort to snickers about my ingliish accent with ¿Jau meni lan güeyes du yu nou, lambeculo? They always understand culo 😆

Maybe if I knew Spanish…

Well, I am here to help, gladly! Yo AMO el idioma español. First, hand to the fire: Spanish is the only language whose words are pronounced EXACTLY as they are written—none of that colonel or beaucoup shenanigans. Spanish’s musicality in tone and rich origins in Latin and bygone tongues produced an elegant language with very characteristic words. Desangelado means “without an angel”, vetusto means “ancient”, encancaranublado means “cloudy”. And then there are the regional variants.

Per Bad Bunny’s catalogue, it’s useful to know in advance that, in Puerto Rico, bicho means cock, chocha pussy, crica pussy, chingar fuck, chichar fuck, panocha pussy, culo culo… And then there are more endearing terms like yal (equivalent to “t.h.o.t.”, derived from a Yale padlock, ostensibly opened with bichos) perrear (friction-heavy doggystyle dancing), gata (fancier yal), puñeta (boricua-specific expression of extreme elation or introducing an angry dressing down), lamber (lick), prende (light up), pasa (pass), fili (joint wrapped in Phillies “tobacco” leaf, or fancier), mis anormales (literally “my retards”, in song “my BFFs”), cabrón / cabrones (in PR, can mean The Best or The Worst, never anything in between)… Truly an overflowing bouquet of refinement.

It’s basically filth

Bad Bunny gets graphic, which is rare for any rap, hip hop, reggaetón, or trap artist. Quite.

Bad Bo may get a pass though, on account of Non English filth.

FOREIGN filth even

Je je. I was waiting for this one.

First of all, the Superb Owl is an international event. The Owl will be transmitted to every country. In some, perhaps by force (looking towards Persia and La Gran Colombia). The Who weren’t ‘Murikan, nor the Stones, nor The Weeknd—so there.

Second, technicaleeeee, eee: Bad Bunny (or any boricua born in PR) is a U.S. citizen. This halftime is between bros, ya’ll!

Incidentally, saying to a dickish cracka Mi hermano americano, ¿dónde está la oficina de wel fehr? is one of a few thrills afforded to the colonized.

Nobody cares about Puerto Rico

Yeah, yeah, fair point. And I say that earnestly. I’m no stranger to getting irrationally angry about overhyped stuff I don’t know about, and the media saturation just feeds my repulsion. So I’m just gonna list some facts, which you can use for informed derision.

Puerto Rico is the smallest of the Major Antilles, with a population of about 3.3 million here, and about 5-7 million boricuas in the 50 U.S. states and the rest of the world. However, in all my life, the music that’s made in PR and heard on its streets is what’s blasted on the streets of the rest of the world—or, at the very very least, definitely in every country in this hemisphere that is south of the Río Grande, including behemoth Brazil.

Everyone knows salsa music, and Cortijo y su Combo and El Gran Combo were salsa’s Beatles and Rolling Stones, respectively. Then in the 70s, salsa and Latin Jazz exploded in NYC, notably under Fania Records. Then in other genres, Marc Anthony, Ricky Martin, Calle 13 / Residente, Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, Luis Fonsi… Plus half of Mars Volta, to cover the hipster milieu.

At worst, historically Puerto Rico has been a worldwide influence in popular music, and right now Bad Bunny is the biggest act in the globe.

The Halftime Show will be insular af

Pft. Definitivamente. 

Bad Bunny’s last album, released on January 2025 and supporting his current world tour, is DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS or “I should’ve taken more pictures” with screwy caps. (UPDATE: it won the Album of the Year Grammy, the first record in Spanish to do so.) About half the album is trap and old-school reggaetón, but the other half are songs of other genres of Puerto Rican popular music: bolero (the legit beautiful TURiSTA), salsa (top spotify track BAILE INoLVIDABLE), plena, the all-percussion music made by African slaves (CAFé CON RON my favorite song of 2025), música jíbara, or our country music (the melancholic PIToRRO DE COCO), and the sweet tropical music mashup DtMF, the album’s eponymous track, about past memories and all the love that could have—but wasn’t—given way back when and OK I’ll stop.

At least four of those songs will be in the Owl, seguro. And when DtMF comes on, I’ll do my best to keep my throat area from getting lumpy.

It will be a total DEI Woke Show

DEI fo sho. Bad Bunny only sings in Spanish.

[Owl halftime announcement]

I will be shocked (perhaps disgusted, just keepin’ it real), if Bad Bo chose the Owl to sing in inglés for the first time. I expect some guest stars to sing in English, rendering the Halftime hella inclusive.

As to wokeness, Bad Bunny is no stranger to gender politics and politics politics. As to the latter, during July, 2019, he interrupted his world tour to come to Puerto Rico to join the protests against our governor, who resigned later that month. (Ricky Martin and Residente also joined the protests.) Since then, Bad Bunny has been consistently denouncing colonialism in song and interviews.

For the 2024 PR elections, Bad Bunny got actively involved in the campaign against the local pro-statehood ruling party. The melodic and güiro-forward LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii foretells the cultural erasure brought by social displacement and gentrification. That might make the Halftime playlist because it’s a cultural soccer ball volleyed about, smack in the middle of the Owl. I would deffo love it, even though I know most non-boricuas will feel like Viggo Mortensen in the breakfast chair of “Crimes of the Future”

Can’t we get a fucking break from politics ffs? IT’S THE OWL!1!1!1

I get the politics exhaustion, absolutely. For several months, I did all I could to avoid news on Whiskey Pete Hegseth filling PR with military airships, troops, and all sorts of ordnance to pull off the US murders at sea and take out Nicolás Maduro—of whom I’m not a fan by a long shot, but Jesus Christ… Remember that we here in PR are under the U.S. President, for whom we can’t vote.

And it’s equally difficult to set aside, all the time, that there’s staggering evidence of 47 raping minors, he’s an adjudged sexual aggressor, convicted crook, serial bankruptcier, racist, transactional pardoner, flouter of laws and court orders, and only interested in his notoriety and influence and getting as rich as possible from the presidential office. Plus the ICE stuff, which is truly evil shit.

In the face of all that cruelty, I think keeping quiet amounts to complicity. It’s likely that the Bad Bunny show will get political. If your adult sensibility might be offended by a halftime show by a Puerto Rican singing in Spanish, graphically and denouncing injustice, I respect that. There’s plenty of other entertainment, but it’s unlikely you will ever see something like this.

In any event, criticize away. Most of us boricuas don’t need external validation. We’re awesome, we’re loud, we take no shit, and will likely misbehave just because it’s fun to make angry the right types.

PS – Up to now, the most awesome halftime show I’ve seen, with apologies to Shakira and JLo, is Prince. I don’t know if my heart would agree after next Sunday, but Prince deserves all the props.