Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio’s career, which entered the urban music scene as Bad Bunny in 2016, was marked by success. But no doubt this was the year of his dream.
In just four years, the Puerto Rican reggaeton artist has gone from working in a supermarket in his hometown to dominating the music scene, placing at the top of the Spotify and Billboard charts.
VEGA BAJA, WHERE IT ALL BEGUN.
Bad Bunny was born in Vega Baja, a town about 45 minutes from San Juan, into a lower-middle-class family with parents who worked to support him and his younger brothers, Bernie and Bysael. His father drove trucks and his mother taught English.
He wanted to be a singer from an early age, but he didn’t grow up listening to urban music. According to the New Yorker magazine, he couldn’t afford to shop at music stores, and at the time, Tego was the only reggaeton artist his mother let him listen to in the Top 40 station on his way to school. that, according to her, “if he calls there, it’s because he was fine.”
It was only after that that Benito began listening to the reggaeton of the masses, when he had access to records sold at popular urbanization stations and changed in the parking lots of high schools in San Juan.
When he was a teenager and working in a supermarket, he started beating and improvising in his room with his friends, some of whom are still his closest associates.
He stopped studying to devote himself completely to the world of music, and the Latin trap was the kind that covered him. Music journalists say that Bad Bunny modeled the genre to turn it into an innovative experience and show.
“That was my daily life since I was little, imagining and letting my mind manifest, and if I have an idea for something, at least try,” Bad Bunny himself recalls in a short documentary. in ten minutes in which he takes his first steps in music.
“My dream has always been this: for people to know my music, for people to enjoy my creations, my inventions and ideas,” adds the 26-year-old artist.
Small shows in his homeland, videos on Instagram or self-productions on Soundcloud were the means used by Bad Bunny to enter the trap music scene. Due to his talent and his innovative proposals, the artist became more and more followers, until with his song “Diles” he attracted the attention of a producer who hired him for the record company.
LATIN URBAN MUSIC ICON.
In a short time, he became an emerging star of the subgenre that expanded the realm of reggaeton with a more digital sound and closer to hip hop. In 2017, his song “Soy Worse” was ranked in the top Hot Latin Songs of Billboard, the thermometer of Latin music in the United States.
By 2018, Bad Bunny was already an icon on the Latin urban music scene, with the success of Cardi B’s “I like it”, in which he collaborated with his friend J Balvin. The following year he released “Oasis”, an album with 8 songs in collaboration with the Colombian.
In the same year, the protest song “Knife Sharp”, written by Bad Bunny himself with Residente, was released during protests against Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rosselló. The song received 2.5 million views on YouTube the same day it was released.
And after two years bombarding with singles for mass cyber consumption and collaborating with figures such as Jlo, Drake or Pharrel Williams, he released, without warning, on Christmas Eve 2018, his first album, “X100pre”.
The album was very well received by his fans and the American press who published flattering titles after the release.
“Bad Bunny broke boundaries in 2018. His debut beats more,” Jon Camarica wrote in The New York Times. Elias Leight wrote in Rolling Stone magazine: “Bad Bunny was a master of the hit single. With “X100pre” he comes as an album artist. But Chris Richards of the Washington Post was most excited: “Bad Bunny released the best album of 2019 just before the start of the year.”
But, without a doubt, the year of Bad Bunny’s consecration was 2020, which began with the release of the second album “YHLQMDLG” (Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana), the most listened to of the year on Spotify with 3,300 millions of reproductions.
He sang at the break at the Super Bowl, a show that airs during the most televised sporting event in the world. On stage, along with Shakira, Jennifer López and J Balvin, the Puerto Rican made it clear that he leads the new generation of Spanish-speaking urban music artists he calls the “Latin band”.
Then, in the middle of the pandemic, he took out the remaining songs from “YHLQMDLG” and just released his fourth album, “The Last World Tour”, with which he raised speculations about his retirement from music after a year of glory and awards.
Not only that, he sang live on his social networks, from which he disappeared for three months to reappear with a mustache, with a “look” completely different from the usual with a shave and the electoral card in hand, encouraging young people to come out. the vote.
In the fall and with the concerts canceled due to the coronavirus, he was seen getting on and singing in a truck in the shape of a train car crossing the streets of New York. He received the Composer of the Year 2020 award from the American music association ASCAP and Netflix announced that the reggaetonist will venture to play a role in the series “Narcos: México”.
This Latin trap singer moves the masses. His videos have millions of views on YouTube, millions of followers on Spotify and millions of young people looking for and imitating him. He is a controversial figure who knew how to take advantage of the growth of reggaeton and the Latin trap in the United States and who now positions him as the most listened to artist globally.