Bad Bunny’s Influence in Latin America
In 2020 Bad Bunny became Spotify’s most-streamed artist, surpassing iconic musical influences such as Drake and The Weeknd with an astounding 8.3 billion streams. While many of his fans across the Latin American stage received this news ecstatically due to his influence over the past five years, other people on the global stage, such as those in the U.K., have yet to understand his increasing popularity due to the fact that he has never U.K.’s Top 100 through any of his albums or solo singles (Beaumont). A simple answer to this could be that Bad Bunny is an artist who has a great musical flow and a unique baritone voice, which allows him to make hit singles after another, and the only thing preventing his music from translating on to other non-Spanish speaking countries is its linguistic barrier. After some careful lyric and cultural research, however, one can see the influence of Latin American sociocultural issues reflected in Bad Bunny’s songs on his audience. More specifically, the mistreatment of women commonly known and associated within the Latin community has been a recurrent theme in Bad Bunny’s musical career; and, consequently, sheds more light on this topic. However, to understand the power of Bad Bunny’s musical grip, we must first know where it comes from.
Born Benito Martinez Ocasio in Puerto Rico in 1994, Bad Bunny made his first debut in the world with his feature in Soy Peor by late 2016. In a matter of weeks, this communications student by day and a supermarket bagger by night 22-year-old began his rise to superstardom in the Latin trap industry as the success his music had in Puerto Rico emanated itself onto other Spanish-speaking countries across Latin America. With common themes such as love and transactional relationships being covered upon by this then young 22-year-old, sex was bound to be a topic of discussion for many of his songs. Bad Bunny did not shy away from this. In fact, sex became a recurrent translator for Bad Bunny to express his feelings through music.
Consequently, it is through some of his most explicit songs that we get his most iconic catchphrases. Admittedly, Bad Bunny has said to interviewers like El Pais that he could abstain from being so explicit and stick to a more conventional approach to his ballads. Still, because of the value he places on honesty, he shares his love stories with his listeners the same way he would with a friend. He also added that all balladers have the same goal in mind: to woo the girl; it’s just a matter of how one does it that differentiates Bad Bunny from the rest. As a result, Bad Bunny has claimed that he wouldn’t be surprised if his music, wrongly interpreted, has been related to “machismo” (a Spanish keyword for strong or aggressive masculine pride), and that is why he is so careful about the music he puts out.
“Machismo,” as seen through a Latin American perspective, has a long-running history embedded within the culture and has been the cause of over 4,000 deaths of innocent women across Latin America just in 2019. Cultural norms of gender violence that have led to the naming and classification of “feminicides,” or “the assassination of women by men rooted in hatred, contempt, pleasure, or the assumption of ownership over a woman have led this atrocious act to become commonplace amongst Latin American countries,” (Saccomano, 52). Feminicide is the most extreme action there is in gender violence, and it is currently the reason 12 women are murdered every day in Latin America for the simple fact that they are female; that is two women every hour (Arroyo). And as painful as it is to see cases such as that of Yuliana Samboní, a seven-year-old girl found buried underneath Rafael Urbie’s, 38, jacuzzi after being kidnapped, tortured, and murdered, there are millions of women suffering from abuse across Latin America and decide not to act upon it because, in comparison, they are led to believe that they are “not that bad off,” or, “it could be worse.” However, to understand feminicides, one must trace its root down to violence against women.
Violence against women can be classified into several main categories (physical, sexual, phycological, and violence regarding deprivation.) Moreover, this violence source is classified into three categories: family, partner, or community violence. With family and partner violence being the most frequent out of the three, it is most commonplace in domestic situations, and it has been found that feminicide is, in most cases, its lethal outcome (Saccomano). With Latin America being of the most affected areas of violence against women, the naming and classification of the crime have been created, so have new systems on how to proceed when dealing with these issues regarding the law, but the problem remains, women have almost no representation in the political scene, and whenever a decline on feminicide occurs, it is followed by a spike. Bad Bunny is aware of the problem, and this is why he speaks out.
As mentioned before, Bad Bunny is not one to shy away from sensitive subjects; this is the same case for his feministic approach when sharing his music. His 2018 hit single “Solo de Mi” does a great job at exemplifying this. A superficial approach to this song might be able to point out and describe the results of self-love lashing out against toxic relationships. However, when one dives deeper into the subject, along with Bad Bunny, a roller coaster of emotions is confronted as he addresses the subject of violence against women, a common underlying cultural theme in many Latin American countries. The most noticeable agent of this was having a woman singing over his voice in the music video; as the song progresses, she starts to develop bruises and blood spots beneath her skin; by the second chorus, the bruises are gone, signifying the action taken by speaking up against abuse, and lastly by the second verse’s appearance following that, the audience listens to an upbeat trap-reggaeton number while they see Bad Bunny and the woman partying, reflecting the freedom one is able to get by leaving a situation where domestic abuse takes place. The lyrics do a great job in reinforcing the message against domestic abuse as they read, “Tonight I wake up. You’re saying that you loved me? I thank you for that, but I don’t belong to you.” Although “Solo de Mi” might seem like a very specific theme being addressed, Bad Bunny has expressed himself similarly in a myriad of other ways and songs.
In his following album, YLQMDLG, Bad Bunny released “Yo Perreo Sola.” A song that acknowledges and praises the sovereignty of women over their bodies on the dance floor. Oddly enough, a voice-over is once again used as a female voice sings the song’s chorus, and it is Bad Bunny, in full drag, that lip-sings the song. Acknowledging the fact that women do not depend on men to have a good time on any social occasion, Bad Bunny describes them as trendsetters by stating they were ahead of the ideas he sings about (“no cree en el amor desde Amorfoda,”) and comparing them to feminine power figures of pop culture such as Nairobi from “La Casa de Papel.” Ending the song, a message that projected the words, “if she does not want to dance with you, respect her, she dances alone,” was displayed. Opposing the major record companies and publicist’s advice, Bad Bunny went on to follow his vision for “Yo Perreo Sola.”
After his song’s release, he was walking by a Puerto Rican neighborhood when a couple of boys stopped to talk to him. After a while, one of them appraised him for what he had done in Yo Perreo Sola and said that what he was doing was cool. Bad Bunny shared this story with the interviewers for El Pais to show how the streets were, in fact, changing. “Anyone could have told me this was a terrible idea. This was not going to be playing on the streets. But there they were, listening to my album.” To this day, Bad Bunny has continued the theme of empowering women through his music; his latest album, El Ultimo Tour del Mundo, is another example. There, he includes the song Sorry Papi, a song containing a dialogue between Bad and ABRA, a female Puerto Rican singer. In their exchanges, Bad Bunny makes it clear that she is his object of desire and tries to seduce her with his luxurious lifestyle. On the other hand, ABRA takes control of the situation and sings the chorus of the song, which loosely translates to, “I do what I want, and I also have money on my purse.”
Coming out in support of marginalized groups, whether it be women or the LBGT community, regardless of public opinion, has been the result. Consequently, he has received support and disapproval o his audience. However, he compares this to his own musical roots, urban music, which has been frowned upon by many in an elitist way who look at its underground and humble beginning. “It sounds horrible,” he says, “but it’s a problem that will remain… and it does not bother me what others think because there will be a whole world dancing to my songs, enjoying life without prejudices.” Bad Bunny is aware that he has fans on both ends of the spectrum, both belonging to the LBGT community and others who oppose and might favor cultural norms such as “machismo” and the view of women as their inferior. As a result, he decided to use his voice for those who are not loud. “This is why I do get involved in these movements; I am aware of the reach I have in Latin America,” he told El Pais, “I can engage their attention with reggaeton and my vocabulary. I talk to them like I would a friend, and I give them a message without them feeling like it is a sermon.” Bad Bunny’s music transcends its borders for several appealing reasons, but the support he gives women, a major issue in Latin America, adds the meaning behind the beat his followers lip-sing in bathrooms, cars, get-togethers, and clubs across the southern part of the globe.
Works Cited
Arroyo, Lorena. “Feminicidios: la guerra invisible que mata a 12 mujeres por día en América Latina” Connectas: Plataforma Periodistica Para Las Americanas, https://www.connectas.org/feminicidios-la-guerra-invisible-que-mata-a-12-mujeres-por-dia-en-america-latina/. Accessed 15 February, 2020.
“Bad Bunny — Yo Perreo Sola.” Genius, 29 Feb. 2020, genius.com/Bad-bunny-yo-perreo-sola-lyrics.
“Bad Bunny — Solo De Mí.” Genius, 14 Dec. 2018, genius.com/Bad-bunny-solo-de-mi-lyrics.
Beaumont-Thomas, Ben. “How did Bad Bunny become the world’s biggest pop star?” The Guardian, 4 Dec. 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/dec/04/how-did-bad-bunny-become-the-worlds-biggest-pop-star. Accessed 15 February, 2020.
Mars, Amanda. El Pais Semanal. El Pais, 3 Jan. 2021, https://elpais.com/elpais/2020/12/30/eps/1609327975_051296.html. Accessed 15 February, 2020.
Saccomano, Celeste. “El feminicidio en America Latina: vacio legal o deficit del Estado de derecho?” Violencia de Genero y Relaciones Internacionales, no. 117, p. 51–78, 2017, https://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26388133. Accessed 15 February, 2020.
