In 2016, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio was putting away groceries for customers at a supermarket in Vega Baja, half an hour from Puerto Rico’s capital, San Juan. Then he became Bad Bunny, and everything happened very quickly. After a meteoric rise, he has just been crowned artist of the year at the MTV Video Music Awards in August.
His music has also already earned him four awards at the Latin Grammy Awards since 2019, and counting: he has been nominated ten times by the Academia Latina de la Grabación in anticipation of the next ceremony, on November 17, in Las Vegas.
But the success is not total. Reggaeton, this genre that appeared in Puerto Rico, of which he is today the best ambassador, continues to be mocked. “The rejection of reggaeton will never go away, it’s like racism and homophobia”, predicted Bad Bunny in January 2021, in the columns ofThe country.
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The Spanish daily tries today to explain the springs of this antipathy