Bad Bunny is in a good place. Fresh off a long-delayed 25-city tour for his third solo album, the most streamed artist of 2021 on Spotify is comfortably ensconced in a waterfront house in North Miami, just across Biscayne Bay from flashier Miami Beach, finishing his latest record. Built out of shipping containers arranged around a patio that looks onto a pool and a dock, this temporary residence is teeming with friends who are also collaborators—his creative director, his photographer, his producer, his jack-of-all-trades. The sliding glass doors are open, but the breeze barely cuts through the humidity and the heat. A chef is at work in the open kitchen, filling the room with the aroma of pork and onions, and a spring break vibe hangs in the air. Someone has set a beautiful table for a crowd.
The mood is so mellow that you could almost forget that the person who shows up a few minutes after everyone else, fresh from the gym, is a global phenomenon whose genre-bending songs, convention-flouting lyrics, and gender-fluid looks have, over the past six years, changed the face of pop music. An urbano Latin trap singer who has defied every expectation about what a rapper and trap artist should look like, and what a reggaeton singer should sing about—upsetting some people but inspiring many more.
“I think he’s the biggest star in the whole world right now,” Diplo, who appeared on Bad Bunny’s 2018 debut album and will join him on his stadium tour this summer, tells me over the phone. “Bigger than any English-speaking star, bigger than, of course, the biggest Latin star. He’s the most massive, most progressive, most important pop star in the world.” Bad Bunny’s frequent collaborator J Balvin concurs. “He’s a creative genius,” he says, someone who “takes us out of the stereotypes and shows the real, new way that we see the world as Latinos.”
Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, is here with his girlfriend, 28-year-old jewelry designer Gabriela Berlingeri, and their three-month-old Beagle puppy, Sansa. Dressed in a pair of royal blue Bravest Studios L.A. shorts, neon green slides, a black Balenciaga T-shirt with bébé bedazzled across the chest in rhinestones, and a tan bucket hat with the string hanging loose around his chin, Benito, also 28, is carrying a stack of coffee table books on interior design, which he neatly arranges on a side table next to the sofa. There’s a gold ring in his septum, a necklace of small diamond hearts around his neck, small gold hoops with diamond charms in both of his ears. His nails, a modest length, are painted ballerina pink.
As Benito talks, his demeanor shifts from shy and introverted to playful and goofy to voluble and defiant. Sometimes, he gets sentimental. He turns to Berlingeri at one point and murmurs, “You look so pretty right now.” And she laughs and says, “Oh, yeah, I look really pretty.”
Berlingeri, who has come from the gym too, is wearing an oversized “Puerto Rico” T-shirt and denim shorts, her hair wet and no makeup. She sits close to him on the couch, keeping a watchful eye on the puppy, who is being showered with gifts, including a stuffed bunny. Meeting Sansa was a highlight of the tour, Benito tells me. Berlingeri brought her to meet him during his show at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. He was about to go back onstage after a five-minute break when he found out they had arrived, and he made a dash for the dressing rooms. “I ran because of her,” he tells me in Spanish, pointing to Sansa. “It wasn’t because of Gabriela.” Then he laughs. “That’s a lie, it was for both,” he says with a grin.
“I gave Gabriela a kiss, and a kiss to Sansa.”
The chef brings over some sushi for Benito to sample. His boldly colored outfit feels tropical and refreshing, transmitting a summer energy—but he explains that his approach to style is always shifting. “It depends on my state of mind,” he says. “Everybody has to feel comfortable with what they are, and how they feel. Like, what defines a man, what defines being masculine, what defines being feminine? I really can’t give clothes gender. To me, a dress is a dress. If I wear a dress, would it stop being a woman’s dress? Or vice versa? Like, no. It’s a dress, and that’s it. It’s not a man’s, it’s not a woman’s. It’s a dress.”
I ask what he’s going to wear to the upcoming Met Gala. “If I knew, I would tell you,” he says with a smile. Then he remembers something: “Cabrón, I saw a post that they announced the theme.”
“It’s not ‘American’?” Janthony Olivares, his creative director, asks.
Benito explains that the dress code is “gilded glamour, white-tie,” and that the theme, In America: An Anthology of Fashion, is inspired by an exhibit from the Met’s Costume Institute. He says that when he heard the theme, he thought he’d wear something inspired by Latin America. “Because it’s America too.”
The idea that America is about more than just the United States is something he’s been thinking a lot about—something, in fact, that governs his entire approach to global stardom. Specifically, it reminds him of “This Is Not America,” a recent song by his friend René Pérez Joglar, the Puerto Rican rapper better known as Residente, who helped awaken Benito’s political consciousness when in January 2019 they paid an early morning visit to then governor of Puerto Rico Ricardo Rosselló to discuss the island’s violent crime, and later joined protests that ultimately resulted in his resignation. Inspired by Childish Gambino’s “This Is America,” Residente offers a searing critique of U.S. imperialism and violence in Latin America. “Ever since I heard that song, I’ve loved it,” Benito says. “It gave me the chills. We were drinking, and suddenly René played that song. Cabrón, my eyes welled up. My hair stood on end. I don’t know if it was because I was a little drunk, or what. But the song is very good.”
Released on May 6, Benito’s latest record, Un Verano Sin Ti (A Summer Without You), is less political, but his sensibility remains as proudly Latin as ever; a large portion of the album was recorded at a house in the Dominican Republic. “I go to a specific place with my people, and we stay, we have a good time, and we work,” he says. “I rent a house like this one, put the equipment in, and record the songs there.” He avoids recording studios whenever he can. “From the moment I get in the car, I lose the desire to go,” he adds. At the house, though, everything flows. “Here, you get up, you eat something, and we get on it.”
In January, Benito deleted all of his social media posts and put up a reel of himself and Berlingeri eating dinner under a palm tree, in which he announced his upcoming World’s Hottest Tour. The shows sold out in minutes, crashing the system. “It was madness,” he says.
Today, in mid-April, it’s been only a week since his last show and he hasn’t fully come down. Usually, he goes to bed at 1 or 2 a.m. and wakes up around 10, but lately he’s been having trouble sleeping. “I don’t know if it’s just me or everyone, but the higher I go, the more pressure I feel,” he says.
And he’s certainly continuing to soar ever higher. Later in April he was tapped to star as El Muerto, the Spider-Man antagonist and superpowered wrestler who is the first Latin Marvel character to get a standalone live-action film—the latest chapter in a burgeoning acting career. “Maybe, for some people, it’s different in that the higher they go, the less pressure they feel, because maybe they’re confident that everything they do will be a success,” he continues. “But I’m the opposite—the more I acquire an audience, the more I go up, the more pressure I feel to keep going. Sometimes, I can’t sleep thinking about that. I go days without sleeping.”
Everyone jumps in to speculate as to why. Maybe it’s because he’s coming off the tour—he’s overstimulated, pumped up on adrenaline. There has to be a certain amount of vertigo involved in an ascent as dizzying as his. People screaming and dancing at his shows—“You never get used to that,” he says.“It never becomes normal. It will always cause emotions to see people get so excited and receive you that way. It changes you.”
Benito hasn’t changed, though—not according to the people who know him. “He was the same when I met him as he is today,” his manager, Noah Assad, says. “He’s definitely an introvert in many ways. Most people would think he’s the other way around—but very humble to this day.” Olivares says, “He’s sort of shy. He’s a person who likes to demonstrate love.” Benito says he’s made a conscious effort to remain the same. “Some things change because it’s impossible for them not to when you get a lot of success and a bunch of money you didn’t have before,” he says. “But my inner self, my person is intact.” His Boricua pride, for one, remains as strong as ever. So does his commitment to singing in Spanish. Back in the day, for a Spanish-speaking recording artist to break into the mainstream American market, they had to sing in English—Enrique Iglesias, Shakira, Ricky Martin. That idea has crumbled thanks in part to people like Benito. “It’s like that curtain fell,” he says. “Everyone is in the same league, on the same court. I’ve said that from the beginning.”
Social media has allowed him to present himself on his own terms—defiantly Puerto Rican, playfully gender--neutral, and politically outspoken. “I was never on a mission to be like, Oh, this is what I’m going to do,” he says about conquering the global pop market. “It happened organically. Like, I’ve never made a song saying, ‘This is going to go worldwide.’ I never made a song thinking, Man, this is for the world. This is to capture the gringo audience. Never. On the contrary, I make songs as if only Puerto Ricans were going to listen to them. I still think I’m there making music, and it’s for Puerto Ricans. I forget the entire world listens to me.”
Now that we’re living in the era of the reggaetonero, he wants to celebrate the genre’s dominance. “The Latino audience would always undervalue their artist,” he says. “Sometimes, Latinos would want to record with an American, and because they’re American, they’d think, I have to do it. No, man. He’s not at the level I am, you know? Just because they’re American. But that perspective has changed. You can see it now. People have become aware. They suddenly see, Wow, Bad Bunny has been the most listened to on Spotify for 70 days. It wasn’t the American. It’s this guy, who’s Latino.”
As if on cue, the chef punctuates the pause that follows by presenting a plate with more sushi. Everyone goes quiet, simultaneously chewing on the fish and Benito’s words. After a while, Benito continues. “I remember one time—I don’t know who the hell that was, if it was Billboard, or if it was Rolling Stone—came out with a list of the best singers in history. Like, cabrón, specify that it’s of the history of the United States. Because, on that list, I didn’t see Juan Gabriel, I didn’t see Vicente Fernández, I didn’t see Tito Rodríguez.” Gone is the shy introvert. He’s been replaced by a guy on a tear. “Don’t refer to those artists like the greatest when we have legends in our Latin American music. And that’s the pure truth. Why are they called a legend and I can’t compare them to this one? Because they’re American? Because they sing in English?”
The more famous he’s become, the more Benito has come to appreciate his language, his country, his culture, his family, and his friends. “Many artists become famous, and they suddenly start to change their circle of people, and then people start to filter through,” he says.
“Like, ‘Now, I’m closer friends with so-and-so. Now, I’m better friends with this one because he also has money.’ I continue to surround myself with the same people. I keep my same circle. I’m always in contact with my family, even when I can’t see them.”
“Benito is the most family-oriented person I know,” Olivares tells me. “He brought his middle brother along on tour as soon as he could, and when the younger one finished school he brought him along too. He loves it. It creates a family bubble for him.”
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Wanting this bubble of protection makes sense for Benito. His ascent was disorienting, and there was a time when he felt lost. “It’s like I was in a coma,” he says. “As if, suddenly, two years of my life went by in a week, because of this sudden boom.” He was doing things he’d never done before and hustling all the time. “I still work every day now, but during that time it was really weird. It was as if they had taken an animal from the jungle to the zoo. I was in the zoo for two years doing the same thing I did in the jungle, only I wasn’t in the jungle.”
Privacy is crucial now that his life is on constant display. “I mean, I’ll post a photo with Gabriela,” he says, “but I’m not making a love story. I post photos because it’s the fucking thing you do during these times—posting pictures. Sometimes, as much as you’re anti–social media, it’s impossible. As much as you say, ‘I’m going to stay out of this,’ you’ll suddenly say, ‘I’m going to post a photo,’ you know?”
Still, he says, you won’t see him out there creating controversies, or doling out details about his relationship to strangers. “People don’t know shit about my relationship,” he says. “They don’t know if I’m married, you know? Maybe we’re already married and people don’t know.” He smiles. “I’m just saying that. I’m not married.”
Growing up in the Almirante Sur barrio of Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, the eldest son of a truck driver father and a schoolteacher mother, Benito was a shy but funny kid with a rich imagination. “I liked being a clown,” he says. “But I was also, like, shy. I was always loving with my parents. I liked drawing. I liked playing a lot with my imagination. I wasn’t ever, like, an athlete.” He spent a lot of time in his room but also outside—not riding a bike or playing ball, but pretending he was a Norwegian Viking. “I have an image in my mind of a little rock that I would stand on, and damn, I’d feel like I was in a kingdom, and lightning would come down,” he says. “I remember there was a neighbor who would always tell my parents that I was talking to myself. And it was just me playing, making voices of the other characters because I was alone. She would say to my dad, ‘That boy is always talking to himself. You should have him checked out.’ And my dad was like, ‘The boy is playing.’ ”
“There’s always a neighbor,” Berlingeri deadpans.
As a kid, Benito sang in the church choir, rapped in his middle-school talent show, and listened to anything his parents would play. “A lot of salsa,” he says. “And my mom would listen to ballads, merengue, and Top 40 radio.” He listened to reggaeton in secret. “The only thing they’d allow me to listen to was Vico C,” he says, referring to the stage name of Luis Armando Lozada Cruz, the rapper widely regarded as one of the founders of reggaeton. “At that time, Vico C was street, but they allowed me to listen to him when he started to make cleaner music. But the first O.G. street artist they’d let me listen to was Tego Calderón. And that was the first one I was really hooked on.”
We’re sitting around the big table, now eating ceviche and pork, drinking red wine, and Benito smiles at the memory of first encountering Calderón, the legendary Puerto Rican hip-hop MC and reggaetonero. “I always tell the story of when
I was in school: If I was feeling lazy and I didn’t want to get up, they’d threaten me with not being allowed to listen to Tego Calderón. Man, I’d get up so fast and get dressed. I’d be ready. ‘You’re not going to listen to Tego’s song!’ And I’d say, ‘Okay, Mami, fine. I’m ready!’ ”
Benito attended the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, intending to major in visual communications. In his first semester, he failed all his classes except the ones in his major. “And I passed math,” he says. He was writing songs but not recording them. “I always made rhythms, tracks, beats. I was clear that I wanted to be an artist, but I wanted it to be serious. Like, I’m working seriously. It’s not like I’m here trying to do crazy things. That’s why
I didn’t upload songs until I felt as prepared as possible, at the flow level, at the rhythm level, at the lyric level.”
Around 2014, before he dropped out of school, Benito took a job bagging groceries at a supermarket chain. That’s when his friend Ormani Pérez, now his official DJ, pushed him to upload some tracks to SoundCloud. “There was a page on Facebook that still exists, and my friends would always tell me to upload it there. I was never very confident. I’d say, ‘No, I won’t do it on there. I want to be a musician and post them when they’re finished.’ But there was a scene of young guys making music, and they uploaded it on SoundCloud. And I said, well, that’s what I’m going to do then.”
People started sharing the songs, then more people. “It was 500,000, then it was a million,” Benito says. “It’s exciting to throw out a song and hit Refresh, and see how many people have played it.” In 2016, Benito came to the attention of Noah Assad, a founder of Rimas Entertainment, which had swiftly become one of the biggest music labels in the Latin world. Cofounded with José “Junior” Carabaño in 2014, it began as a small YouTube network that distributed and marketed music videos. Even as Benito was in the process of deciding whether to sign with the label, he was still handing out résumés to retail establishments and thinking about his studies. He knew he would always make music but didn’t know how long it would take to launch his career. He was trying to be prepared for anything. To not be crazy.
Assad’s approach was unique, leveraging strategic collaborations. Rather than focus on albums, his plan was to release singles in rapid succession. By the time the major labels took notice, Bad Bunny’s YouTube views were in the hundreds of millions. Since his 2016 breakthrough, “Soy Peor,” and his collaborations with Cardi B and J Balvin on “I Like It” and with Drake on “Mia,” Benito has continued to beat records and defy expectations. He’s released three studio albums, a collaborative album, and a compilation album, and has racked up two Grammy Awards, four Latin Grammy Awards, eight Billboard Music Awards, an MTV Video Music Award, and two American Music Awards, among others.
In late 2020, El Último Tour del Mundo became the first all-Spanish album ever to reach the top of the Billboard 200. Benito has been the most streamed artist on Spotify for two years running. His tour earlier this year sold 500,000 tickets in the first week and grossed almost $117 million. And after a recurring role on the Netflix series Narcos: Mexico, he filmed the movie Bullet Train with Brad Pitt.
“Brad Pitt was super fire,” Benito says. Sometimes, during filming, they’d yell ‘Cut!’ and I would think, What the fuck. I’m here with Brad Pitt!”
Even the Lamborghini Urus he bought has another side to it. “Benito isn’t a guy who loves having lots of cars, customizing them, having the latest or the fastest,” Olivares says. “Benito is not that guy.” Yes, he has a $200,000 SUV with over 600 horsepower (along with a Bugatti), “but that was a kind of trophy he bought for himself because in 2012 they came out with a prototype, and even though Benito doesn’t really care about cars, he fell in love with it, but he wasn’t even close to being able to have it. He was in high school. And seven or eight years later, he was able to buy it. He didn’t buy it to have a Lamborghini. He bought it because it had been his dream car when he was a kid.”
“I went through all the processes of an artist,” Benito says over bites of an unlikely main course of beef Wellington, served in a foie gras sauce. “It was superfast. I had my free parties. I had my $100 parties, still independently. I had my mistakes like any rookie. Then I was a new, hot artist. Then, the following month, I was a new level of an artist. And so on. And it kept on happening like that. It keeps happening.”
Between January and April of 2021, when he would have been on tour were it not for the pandemic, Benito began a curious side hustle, making guest appearances on the WWE circuit and winning its 24/7 Championship, a unique title that can be challenged at any time. Weeks after taking home a Grammy, he competed in a tag team match with his Puerto Rican compatriot Damian Priest at WrestleMania 37. That experience in the ring prepared him for his upcoming role as El Muerto. “I grew up watching wrestling,” he says. “This role is perfect, and I know El Muerto is going to be epic. I’m a Marvel fan and the fact that I’m now part of this family still feels like a dream.”
Olivares wasn’t surprised that Benito wanted to dive headlong into the ring. “I know it’s always been his dream,” he says. But he was surprised at how focused he became. “He stopped doing everything else. He’s always making music, but he stopped. He stopped doing everything to dedicate himself to this 100 percent.” Benito trained twice a day, working on his technique, his body. “It was like—since he blew up and started touring—it was the biggest change I’d seen,” Olivares says.
Then again, the contradictions are expected. He made headlines in February 2020 for going on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon wearing a skirt and a shirt that raised awareness about a trans Puerto Rican woman who had recently been killed. And that commitment to seeing the world through a feminist point of view extends to his music, perhaps best evidenced on his anthem “Yo Perreo Sola” (“I Dance Alone”), a rallying cry against sexual harassment and violence against women.
“Latino culture is very machista,” Benito says. “So, that’s why I think everything that I’ve done has been even more shocking.… Urban Latin music, reggaeton, is a genre where you have to be the manliest, the baddest. That’s why it’s the most shocking too.” Sometimes, he says, people think that if you’re a reggaeton artist, you have to act or dress a certain way. “But why? If I dress this way, I can’t sing this way? Or if I dress like this, I can’t listen to this type of music?”
But he’s not trying to be an example. “It’s not like I’m making a sermon. I’m going to a club, or being with friends. It’s natural. So, when somebody listens to it and says, ‘Cabrón, it’s true,’ and it changes their mind a bit, it’s not like they’re going to be a new person, but they acquire something. They might start accepting things that they hadn’t, or they might suddenly say, ‘Damn, it’s true, I’m being a little unfair with this person.’ ”
“Obviously, there are a lot of things that people won’t know about me because I have my private life,” he says at another point. “I might not speak about some things in public. But when I go out there, I’m not acting, you know? I’m not making up a character, or becoming more of an artist, or changing the way I speak or anything. I’m the way I am, and I’m proud of how I am, and I feel fine with who I am.”
“I think that he’s relatable,” Diplo says. “He’s just a normal-ass guy. He has a sick voice. He knows how to dress and be outrageous, which is what you really need too—you need to have that level of balls to pull it off. He seems to be in a league of his own. Nobody is doing these wild mash-ups—a record that has trap and grunge rock together. He’s the one taking the time to make these ballsy records of what he loved growing up, and he’s doing it himself. He’s just taking chances and winning.”
Lunch was late, or dinner was early. Either way, the sun is starting to mellow, casting a golden hue on the pool and the dock. Benito’s engineer and producer Beto Rosado sets up equipment for a listening session, and Benito asks if I want to hear a few songs from the new album. Jomar Dávila, his photographer, and Jesus Pino, his assistant, drink beer at the kitchen island while the chef cleans up. Berlingeri sits on the couch, playing with the dog.
Benito, sitting on a stool in front of the speakers, puts on the first song, a tropical upbeat reggae track about drinking beer on vacation. He stands, a glass of red wine in hand, and bobs his head to the beat. Then he shuffles over to Berlingeri and Sansa and sits on the couch. The music is loud. It riles up the puppy. She wags her tail and jumps up, trying to catch the toy bunny he’s waving above her head. Benito has never recorded so many songs for an album before, he tells me. He’s still not sure which ones he’ll include.
The next song features a Colombian band called Bomba Estéreo, which has described its music as electro tropical. It sounds like a party. Benito turns it up and starts to dance. Everyone perks up, swaying in their seats and singing along. “This song makes me want a beer!” Berlingeri says. The third track, which features Berlingeri singing, has a mambo beat. Benito starts to dance what might be a mambo—little sideways steps at an angle, step-touch-step. Dávila and Pino line up behind him, step-touching in a synchronized mini conga line.
“What’s this step called?” Benito asks. He’s still smiling and wearing his bucket hat. He seems relaxed and content.
“Esta es mi playa,” the song goes. (“This is my beach.”)
“Este es mi sol, esta es mi tierra,” it continues. (“This is my sun, this is my land.”)
“Esta soy yo.” (“This is me.”)
“Is it bachata?” Benito asks about their dance. “Merengue?” They don’t know what it’s called, but they know how to do it. It’s second nature. Shared history.
“It’s Caribbean,” says Dávila.
“It’s Cruise Ship,” offers Pino.
“Electric slide!” replies Dávila.
Benito shuffles across the floor in syncopated little steps. “It’s American!” he exclaims. Everyone laughs and keeps dancing.
Carina Chocano is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine.
A version of this story originally appeared in the June/July issue with the title “Bad Bunny's Giant Leap”.
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PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Photographs by Roe Ethridge
Styled by Mobolaji Dawodu
Grooming by Gianluca with Creative Management
Tailoring by S. Mullin
Set design by Tom Criswell for MHS Artists
Produced by Select Services Production
