The problem with Bad Bunny is that he’s not talented. There are crowds of people doing this kind of music who are enormously more talented. Bad Bunny is the remodeled Blue Bar at the Algonquin of the Latin musical scene. He’s the Jaguar rebrand. He’s trying and failing to reproduce what the music is actually like. His corporate-style, soulless performance is barren.
The genre itself is actually pretty great. But have you noticed how it’s always the most mediocre, deracinated, and barren look, feel and sound that get promoted these days?
These are products for people who want to face a cement wall and recite passionate ideological speeches at it. They don’t want to see human faces. They don’t want to have conversations. The new Blue Bar is not a place of sociability. It’s where you sit alone, staring at monthly projections on your screen and ingest alcohol in an industrial, joyless manner.
Clarissa's Blog 
Same homogenized spirit-of-the-age that for the last five years possessed house flippers to paint everything gray?
-ethyl
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This tendency towards the uniform, the gray and the barren is an expression of the desire for barrenness that resides inside these people’s minds. They hate life itself because life is unpredictable and messy. They want clean, predictable, and dead.
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“Bad Bunny is that he’s not talented”
I love so much Latin Music and this guy becomes a superstar for…. what?
I feel the same about almost all famous artists now that people are supposed to find endlessly fascinating…. some are…. okay…. but little gnats compared to the past.
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Right? Are people not noticing? I spent my youth listening to Daddy Yankee and Don Omar. They are Puerto Rican, and ok, they are older. But there’s tons of talent in Puerto Rico. If Hispanic people are good at anything, it’s creative fields. But this Bad Bunny dude? Honestly? Like somebody quipped on X, he’s Ludacris without the rizz. Plodding, pedestrian slop.
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“tons of talent in Puerto Rico”
I’m less into Caribbean islands and more into Mexico and Colombia but yeah The hispanic cultures of America (Spanish meaning) have so much great music but what gets promoted in the US? Mid crap….
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Didn’t they choose him because, per the WaPo, his show was filled with “wholesome family values”?
-A
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I saw a few snippets and I wondered how people watch this with their kids in the room. I’m not a fan of this sport but if I were, I can’t begin to imagine watching this in front of my child. I wouldn’t even know how to explain this to her.
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We used to make watching the Super Bowl a fun family event, but haven’t watched it since they started playing a second “national anthem.” Kinda makes you wonder what goes on in WaPo families though, eh?
-A
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Right? These are sick, sick bunnies.
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WaPo families don’t watch football. That’s a prole sport.
-ethyl
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Well, I’d start with joy. I’d say, “See what this Bad Bunny can do for this crowd? And think about all the people enjoying it on TV, even those who don’t know Spanish. Because music doesn’t lie, and music is universal. So is dancing. So is fun.”
Then I might get into a little more of Bad Bunny’s storytelling–history of Puerto Rico, the recent power outages, etc. And his final message about love and hate, and that we are America together–remind your child that we have a leader who needs to hear that message, but probably will never understand it.
After that, if your kid’s into it, guide her toward better representatives of the sound and genre Bad Bunny represents.
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Did you see the performance? There were parts that were clearly pornographic. My daughter is turning 10 on Thursday. I’d be committing child abuse if I engaged her in watching an imitation of a sex act.
Do people really think it’s ok to show this to children? My kid still believes in Santa and the Tooth Fairy. In what universe is it a great idea for her parents to involve her in watching an imitation of a sex act on stage?
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