Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio’s career, who burst into the urban music scene as Bad Bunny in 2016, has been marked by success. But this was without a doubt his dream year.
In just four years, the Puerto Rican reggaeton artist went from working at a grocery store in his hometown to dominating the music scene, putting himself at the top of the Spotify and Billboard charts.
VEGA BAJA, WHERE IT ALL BEGAN.
Bad Bunny was born in Vega Baja, a town about 45 minutes from San Juan, into a lower-middle-class family with parents who worked to support him and his younger siblings, Bernie and Bysael. His father drove trucks and his mother learned English.
He wanted to be a singer from an early age, but did not listen to urban music. According to New Yorker magazine, he couldn’t afford to shop in the music stores and at the time, Tego was the only reggaeton artist his mother let him listen to on the Top 40 station while on his way to school, because according to her, “if they sound it there, it’s because it was good.”
Only then did Benito start to listen to the reggaeton of the masses, when he had access to the records sold at the stops of the popular urbanizations and exchanged in the parking lots of the San Juan high schools.
When he was a teenager working in a supermarket, he started knocking and improvising in his room, along with his friends, some of whom are still his closest associates.
He dropped out of college to devote himself fully to the music world, and Latin trap was the genre that covered him. Music journalists assure that it was Bad Bunny who shaped the genre to make it an innovative experience and show.
“That was my daily life since I was little, I imagined and let the mind manifest and, if I have an idea of something, at least try it,” Bad Bunny himself recalls in a documentary of just over ten minutes in which he tells his first steps. in music.
“My dream has always been this: that people know my music, that people can enjoy my creations, my inventions and ideas,” adds the 26-year-old artist.
Small shows in his home country, videos on Instagram or self-productions on Soundcloud were the means by which Bad Bunny entered the trap music scene. Thanks to his talent and innovative proposals, the artist gained more and more followers, until his song “Diles” caught the attention of a producer who hired him for his record label.
ICON OF LATIN URBAN MUSIC.
In a short time he became a rising star of the sub-genre that has expanded the scope of reggaeton with a more digital sound and closer to hip-hop. In 2017 his song “Soy Worse” was in the top Hot Latin Songs of Billboard, the thermometer of Latin music in the United States.
In 2018 Bad Bunny was already an icon in the Latin urban music scene with the success of the song “I like it” by Cardi B, in which he collaborated with his friend J Balvin. The following year he released “Oasis”, an 8 song album in collaboration with the Colombian.
That same year, the protest song “Sharpening the knives”, written by Bad Bunny himself together with Residente, was launched during the protests against Puerto Rico’s governor Ricardo Rosselló. The song was viewed 2.5 million times on YouTube the same day it was released.
And after two years of bombardment with mass cyber-consumption singles and collaborations with figures like Jlo, Drake or Pharrel Williams, he released his first album, “X100pre”, without warning and on Christmas Eve 2018.
The album was very well received by its fans and the US media who posted flattering headlines upon release.
“Bad Bunny lost its limits in 2018. His debut is even more true,” wrote Jon Camarica in The New York Times. Elias Leight wrote in Rolling Stone magazine, “Bad Bunny was a teacher on the hit single. With “X100pre” he arrives as the artist of the album ”. But it was Chris Richards in the Washington Post who was most excited: “Bad Bunny has released the best album of 2019 before the year begins.”
But undoubtedly, 2020 was the year of Bad Bunny’s ordination, starting with the release of his second album “YHLQMDLG” (Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana), the most listened year on Spotify with 3,300 million reproductions. .
He sang halfway through the Super Bowl, a show that airs during the world’s most televised sporting event. On stage, the Puerto Rican, alongside Shakira, Jennifer López and J Balvin, made it clear that he is in charge of the new generation of Spanish-speaking urban music artists he calls the “Latino gang”.
Then, in the midst of the pandemic, he pulled out the leftover songs from “YHLQMDLG” and just released his fourth album, “The Last World Tour,” sparking speculation about his retirement from music after a year of glory and accolades.
Not only that, he also sang live on his social networks, from which he disappeared for three months to reappear with a mustache, a very different ‘look’ from his usual shaved ones, and with his election card in hand to appeal to young people. encourage them to go out to vote.
In the fall, and when the concerts were canceled due to the corona virus, he saw him climb and sing in a truck shaped like a train carriage that crisscrossed the streets of New York. He received the Composer of the Year Award 2020 from the American music association ASCAP and Netflix announced that the reggae player will be venturing into the series “Narcos: México”.
This Latin trap singer moves the masses. His videos have millions of views on YouTube, millions of followers on Spotify, and millions of young people who seek and imitate him. He is a controversial character who knew how to capitalize on the rise of reggaeton and Latin trap in the United States and now positions him as the most listened to artist worldwide.