Donald Trump certainly knows about Bad Bunny now. In October last year, the president claimed he’d “never heard” of the trailblazing 31-year-old, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio. As recently as 2016, Ocasio was working as a grocery store bagger in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, uploading tracks to SoundCloud between shifts. Today, the Puerto Rican star has made himself simply inescapable.
His sixth album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, became the first Spanish-language record ever to win the Grammy for Album of the Year last weekend. This Sunday, he will become the first solo male Latin artist to headline the Super Bowl Halftime Show. He is also likely to be the first person to perform on the NFL’s most high-profile stage entirely in a language other than English. Needless to say, Trump still isn’t impressed. “I’m anti-them,” the president grumbled about Ocasio and fellow Super Bowl act Green Day last month. “I think it’s a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred. Terrible.”
Ocasio may have had that comment in mind at the Grammys. After collecting the award for Best Música Urbana Album, he spoke out powerfully about the injustice of ICE raids before taking a few moments to clarify that hatred is the last thing he’s interested in spreading. “Hate gets more powerful with more hate,” he said. “The only thing that’s more powerful than hate is love. So please we need to be different. If we fight, we have to do it with love. We don’t hate them. We love our people. We love our family and there’s a way to do it, with love, and don’t forget that.”
Kevin EG Perry: Collected Works 