Bad Bunny

It’s safe to assume that Bad Bunny will forever remember February 2026 as one of the greatest months of his life. First, he made history at the Grammys by becoming the first artist to win Album of the Year for a Spanish-language record—2025’s DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. And exactly one week later, he performed as the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show headliner. With his 2018 full-length debut, X 100PRE, the artist born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio helped bring Latin trap to international prominence. He devoted similar energies to revitalizing reggaetón on follow-up YHLQMDLG, reverently reaching back into the genre’s past while bringing it to a new generation. With later records like 2020’s sonically radical EL ÚLTIMO TOUR DEL MUNDO, 2022’s beachfront-playlist-as-album Un Verano Sin Ti, and his decidedly clubby trapero return to form nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana, he proved creatively consistent yet excitingly unpredictable. In doing so, Ocasio, who in 2022 was awarded Apple Music’s Artist of the Year, effectively demolished the artificial boundaries between Latin American culture and the global mainstream. With each step forward, he reshapes the look, sound, and feel of modern pop just by following his own idiosyncratic, unapologetically Puerto Rican lodestar. As a kid growing up in Vega Baja during the ’90s, Ocasio fell in love with a broad spectrum of Latin music—reggaetón, merengue, salsa—before discovering American hip-hop. His best tracks don’t just blend tradition and futurism, Latin and global; they also stake out new thematic territory for male Latin artists, including personal vulnerability and sexual violence against women, making him both a role model and an ally for LGBTQ+ communities and socially progressive values. But above all, he’s been an advocate for Puerto Rico, defiant against social and political forces that threaten his home and its vibrancy. Nowhere was that more apparent than on DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, a veritable love letter to the island that infuses plena, salsa, and other homegrown and regional sounds into his expansive musical mix.