I know I shouldn’t admit this, but I’d never actually heard of the Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny until today, the morning after he became the first Latin performer to win the Best Album award at the Grammys. It’s not that he is in any way obscure – in fact, he’s the world’s most-streamed artist on Spotify, with 82 million monthly listeners – but his oeuvre, including such massive hits as “Dákiti”, “Me Porto Bonito”, and “Titi Me Preguntó”, had not previously permeated my musical consciousness.
This is undoubtedly my loss, not his, as Bad Bunny stands on the cusp of genuine global iconoclasm as a musician, a cultural phenomenon and a political force. At the Grammys, he used his platform to decry the immigration policies of the Trump administration – “Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say ICE out,” he said on stage, denouncing the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, who killed a US citizen in Minnesota. This coming Sunday, he has an even bigger opportunity to try and shape political debate in America.
Bad Bunny is headlining the half-time show in the Super Bowl, often considered the world’s most-watched single sporting event, and the game that means more to Americans than any other. It is an occasion with a TV audience of 100 million, and already much of the focus is not on the match itself, but on how Bad Bunny will use his moment of global pre-eminence to promulgate a message that is a direct challenge to the US President’s hardline stance on immigration.
“We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens,” Bad Bunny said at the Grammys. “We are humans, and we are Americans.” He was joined by other performers at the event. Olivia Dean, a British artist, said that immigrants “deserve to be celebrated”, while Justin and Hailey Bieber were among those who sported badges labelled “ICE OUT”.
So what’s new? Musicians, artists and celebrities since time began have used their positions of prominence to make political statements. From Bob Dylan through Marlon Brando to Bono, from Ban the Bomb to Feed the World, from wearing flowers in your hair to sporting an anti-ICE badge, cultural figures have sought to change the world, a gesture at a time, to a greater or lesser effect.
It may be wishful thinking, but it feels different, more visceral, this time round. Fewer people are telling Bad Bunny to stick to his lane. And the target of his anger, Donald Trump, has both a hair-trigger and a notoriously thin skin. He has already given his verdict on the line-up for the half-time show. “I think it’s a terrible choice,” he said. “All it does is sow hatred. Terrible.”
The fact that Trump feels the need to engage with an overwhelmingly critical artistic community is not new. He has attacked Hollywood – “doing a tremendous disservice to this country” – and, after the 2018 Oscars, he said the “problem is, we don’t have any stars anymore”. He has often been successful in bullying the major TV networks and media organisations into submission, but it clearly rankles with him that he cannot subdue individual performers.
Trump has also threatened to sue the Grammys host Trevor Noah, who said his attempt to annex Greenland made “sense because Epstein’s island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with [former president] Bill Clinton”. And, in calling himself “anti-them” in referring to Bad Bunny and fellow Super Bowl performers Green Day, the President has merely ensured the half-time show is watched even more avidly.
It may have worked for him in the past to ridicule and belittle and even sue those who oppose him, but, in Bad Bunny, he’s taking on a performer who has a bigger, more devoted constituency, with very little to lose by taking on Trump, and who now has access to the biggest forum in the world.
Bad Bunny represents a growing popular revolt, and the fact that the governing body of American football, a famously Republican-leaning organisation, has chosen him for the half-time show is highly significant. Even Trump’s natural supporters are not, in this instance, giving the space for a narrative that is inconvenient to the President.
This is not just a solipsistic attempt to get under Trump’s thin skin. It could be a very real agent for change. There is a palpable sense among Americans that the Trump administration has gone too far in Minnesota. We must hope that, in front of the world on Sunday, Bad Bunny will say exactly that.
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