Noah Assad, a music lover who had been booking acts since he was a teenager, stopped in his tracks when he first heard “Diles,” on which Bad Bunny sings about sex in a deep, slurry baritone over a hard Atlanta beat. He was one of a handful of musicians on the island experimenting with trap rhythms. In 2016, he was working at an Econo grocery store and paying his way through college when he started uploading songs to SoundCloud. Growing up, Benito soaked up the sounds of iconic reggaeton rappers such as Daddy Yankee and Vico C as well as the Juan Gabriel and Héctor Lavoe that his mom blasted while they did housework. “My dad would say, ‘You’re really going out like that?’” he recalls. He always tried to stand out, wearing above-the-knee shorts favored by skaters and flashy patterned shirts, a kind of preppy swag look distinct from the baggier hip-hop garb popular at the time.
“You’re not crossing over to them they’re crossing over to you.”īenito Antonio Martínez Ocasio grew up in Vega Baja, a town about an hour from San Juan, the oldest son of a truck driver (his father) and a teacher (his mother). “Remember, Benito,” she says, using his given name. His publicist tells him not to worry, that the media will meet him on his own terms, just as everybody else has in his career so far. “I’m nerrrvous,” he says, looking up from scrolling on Instagram to emit a comical groan. His assignment this afternoon: Flex his new language skills. In the past he would have answered them in Spanish, but he has lately been cramming with an English tutor up to eight hours a day. He knows he’ll soon be facing questions - in English - from a pack of journalists. Yet on this afternoon, as we cruise down Lake Shore Drive, Bad Bunny is feeling uncharacteristically anxious. “He’s just very different,” said Fernando Lugo, who has directed nearly 30 music videos for the star.
Translation: I do what I want.īefore an awards show in 2017, he decided on a whim to paint his fingernails, a small act that set off shock waves in reggaeton’s machista culture even as young men around the globe began copying his style. That stands for “Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana” - the title of his new record, out Friday, and a phrase that is his mantra in life. On the front of his shirt is a skull made of crystals. It is 9 degrees out and much of Lake Michigan is frozen solid, yet he is dressed in a sweatshirt with no coat. “I have never been this cold,” he declares in Spanish as he dodges from his hotel into the back of an SUV that will whisk him to the game.