Bad Bunny Essentials

Bad Bunny has become a symbol of Latin culture’s migration into the global mainstream, reshaping the look, sound, and feel of modern pop just by following his own idiosyncratic muse. It’s like he says in the title of his 2020 album YHLQMDLG: “Yo hago lo que me da la gana”—“I do whatever I want.” As a kid growing up in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, in the mid-’90s, Bunny (born Benito Martínez Ocasio in 1994) fell in love with a broad spectrum of Latin music—reggaetón, merengue, salsa—before discovering hip-hop. His best tracks don’t just blend tradition and futurism, Latin and global, but stake out new thematic territory for male Latin artists, including personal vulnerability (“Vete”) and women’s empowerment (“Yo Perreo Sola”). His collaborations—the downcast “LA NOCHE DE ANOCHE” with ROSALÍA, the ultimate power pair-up “MÍA” with Drake, the airy and laidback “Lo Siento BB:/” with Julieta Venegas—only further highlight his range. After releasing 2022’s huge Un Verano Sin Ti (named one of Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums), he returned the year after with nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana, an album that added bits of Jersey club to his arsenal (“WHERE SHE GOES”) and reinforced his status as perhaps the world’s most dynamic hitmaker. When the NFL announced him as the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show headliner, they did it with a short clip of him sitting quietly between the goalposts on his childhood beach, Playa Puerto Nuevo. “That’s what I like about me, about my career, about my success,” he told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in 2025. “It’s always been me.”