Black people rallying around Bad Bunny and the Super Bowl stands in stark contrast to their feelings about the election
By Lisa Respers France, Isabel Rosales, CNN
(CNN) — Bad Bunny told America on “Saturday Night Live” last week that people still have a few months to learn Spanish to get ready to best enjoy his Super Bowl halftime show performance.
Some Black people aren’t playing about it, as seen on social media.
There’s a groundswell of support bubbling up for the international superstar, with plenty of posts and comments among Black people celebrating Bad Bunny’s selection for the prestigious gig.
It’s a national conversation about who gets represented on one of the biggest stages in American sports and entertainment – and how language and identity play into that.
Actor and influencer O’Neil Thomas has shared massively successful posts about learning Spanish in the time since Bad Bunny and the NFL made the consequential announcement.
Puerto Rican singing sensation and actor Ricky Martin liked Thomas’ first post; language education app Duolingo commented, “I see a 4 month Spanish streak in your future.” The post amassed more than 9 million views.
Thomas told CNN in a recent interview that he’s been Facetiming with his Dominican friend to learn Bad Bunny music lyrics and how to properly pronounce necessary words. His family is getting in on the Spanish lessons, since they always watch the halftime show together. This year, they will be joined by some of his Latino friends.
“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 said. “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 different conversation than what was being had soon after the presidential election in November 2024.
At that time, there was discontent among some in the Black community with the increased support for Donald Trump among Latino voters.
CNN’s national exit poll found Trump won 54 percent of Latino men compared to Harris’ 44 percent — an 18-point increase 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 current administration.
His criticism has led supporters of the president to label him a “Trump hater,” and they’ve called for him to be replaced as 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 country musician Lee Greenwood, whose song “God Bless the USA” is one of President Trump’s favorites, perform instead.
It’s hard to make the argument that Bad Bunny is not a big enough star to have earned the accolade, given that he is a three-time Grammy winner who recently completed a sold out two-month residency at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot in San Juan – a series that wrapped with a concert that broke streaming records on Amazon and brought in millions of dollars for the local economy in his beloved Puerto Rico.
But in the US, his critics have attempted to paint him as anti-American despite the fact that he is an American (Puerto Rico is a territory of the US). Bad Bunny declined to bring his tour to mainland USA for fear that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement would pose a danger to his fans in attendance.
‘Here in Puerto Rico, we support all the African American issues’
Emil Medina worked with Bad Bunny for four years as the founder and chief operating officer of Buena Vibra Group, a Puerto Rican creative firm. Medina said the artist is a “creative genius” who is “like a sponge” and very much tapped into all the conversation being had about and around him.
Bad Bunny is also someone who stands firm in his support of marginalized people.
“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 explained. “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 home of “African Caribbeans and we have a strong connection with the African American community,” Medina said.
He added that “here in Puerto Rico, we support all the African American issues,” and pointed out that young Puerto Ricans in particular are politically engaged.
“They’re very active, they are very well outspoken about those issues,” Medina said. “And that’s the biggest fandom of Bad Bunny.”
No stopping him
Albert Laguna, an associate professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Race, & Migration at Yale University, noted that when it comes to 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 said. “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 is no bigger star in the reggaeton genre than Bad Bunny, who started out as an Latin trap music artist and is now known for blending the genres of pop, hip-hop, trap, reggae, rock, soul and world music.
He has clearly also expanded his reach in pop culture, having recently hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the second time and also, of course, having been selected to headline next year’s Super Bowl halftime show.
Laguna said the ensuing backlash to his selection for the big sporting event was “predictable,” but he liked how the star handled 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 said 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.”
‘A familial thing’
Historian and content creator Anthony Modesto Milian told CNN that as an Afro-Latino, he feels “very prideful” and “super ecstatic” about Bad Bunny’s selection by the NFL.
“I was telling my friend the other day, what a time to be Puerto Rican,” he said. “Bad Bunny is shining light on all of us. He’s shining light on the whole diaspora.”
He said it should be no surprise “that African American people are locked in with Puerto Ricans in their appreciation and love for Bad Bunny,” adding that both African Americans and Latinos have felt targeted by the current 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 said. “The Bronx, Brooklyn, Connecticut, Massachusetts, places like that. And so it’s really more of like a familial thing.”
The influencer said there is one family member he wishes was still here to witness how far Bad Bunny has come.
Milian said his father, who passed away two years ago, was “old school” and not as much a fan of Bad Bunny’s earlier reggaeton style.
“But when I listened to this album, he did a lot of salsa, he did a lot of traditional music,” he said of the artist’s most recent record. “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.”
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
