Bad Bunny fever has taken over Australia. Here’s everything you need to know

Bad Bunny, one of the streaming era’s biggest musical stars, will perform in Australia for the first time this weekend amid unprecedented attention from pop fans, culture warriors and Donald Trump.

But how did we get here?

Who is Bad Bunny?

Only the most-streamed male artist in Spotify’s history. Real name Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, the 31-year-old was born and raised just outside San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, the son of a truck driver father and a schoolteacher mother.

He dropped out of uni, where he was studying a communications degree, to pursue music and began uploading songs to SoundCloud while working as a supermarket cashier. In 2016 he struck online gold with Latin trap hits Diles (“Tell Them”) and Soy Peor (“I’m Worse”), which showcased his drowsy baritone and emotional melodies.

By his debut album, 2018’s X 100pre – which mixed Latin trap, reggaeton, house and pop-punk, and peaked at #11 on the US’s Billboard 200 chart – he’d earned a reputation across Latin America and its diaspora for his boundary-pushing sound and persona.

On Twitter, onstage and in videos, he’d appear with his nails painted and wearing skirts, making a mockery of the genre’s toxic machismo. After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in late 2017, he became increasingly politically outspoken, especially against the Trump administration’s woeful response to the tragedy.

Why is Bad Bunny so famous?

Bad Bunny’s rise coincided with the arrival of Spotify and streaming, which demolished music’s international borders. Suddenly, a K-pop group or a Latin star could become the biggest thing in pop.

Spanish-language pop was already primed for the moment, following the “Latin explosion” of Ricky Martin and Shakira in the late ’90s. Luis Fonsi and Justin Bieber’s 2017 chart-topping smash, Despacito, paved the way for Bad Bunny’s immediate global breakthrough.

His earliest crossover success was featuring on Cardi B’s I Like It, released in April 2018, just months ahead of his debut album, which included Mia (“Mine”), a collaboration with Drake that multiplied Bad Bunny’s star power. By 2020, he was named Spotify’s top streaming artist in the world, a title he also claimed in 2021, 2022 and 2025, when he became the first artist to do it four times.

In Australia, where according to the 2021 census only 0.7 per cent of the population speaks Spanish, Bad Bunny’s global impact hadn’t translated … until now.

I don’t listen to music. Where else have I seen him?

If you’re a WWE wrestling fan, you might’ve seen him pile-driving John Morrison and The Miz at WrestleMania 37. He’s also acted in films, making his Hollywood debut in 2022’s Bullet Train opposite Brad Pitt (resulting in an infamous red carpet video from the film’s premiere).

He’s since starred in Happy Gilmore 2 and Caught Stealing, and will have his first lead role playing a 19th-century revolutionary in Porto Rico, an upcoming “Caribbean Western” directed by Latin trap icon Residente.

As a gringo, I don’t think I know one Bad Bunny song. Where should I start?

Here’s 30 of the best, led by his majestic banger Titi Me Pregunto (“Auntie Asked Me”), in which Bad Bunny spiritually battles with the spoils of his success (namely, having a girl in every Latin American port).

Why am I hearing about Bad Bunny every day all of a sudden?

His first ever Australian tour coincides with a remarkable cultural flashpoint. Earlier this month his acclaimed Debi Tirar Mas Fotos (“I Should’ve Taken More Photos”) became the first Spanish-language album to ever win the Grammys’ album of the year. A week later, his halftime show at the Super Bowl was watched by a record 135.4 million viewers worldwide.

The political circus around both events – Bad Bunny used his Grammys speech to criticise Donald Trump’s ICE raids in the US, while Trump and his MAGA supporters objected to the Spanish-language artist’s Super Bowl selection – has sent his songs soaring up the Australian charts for the first time.

I don’t understand the words. Is Bad Bunny that political?

The personal is always political for Bad Bunny, whether he’s rapping about the clothes he wears (Yo Visto Asi) or admiring culo on a reggaeton track with the genre’s pioneers (Safaera).

He’s long used his platform to advocate for Puerto Rico, which has been an unincorporated territory of the United States since 1898. He used his first US TV appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show in September 2018 to call out Donald Trump’s miserable response to Puerto Rico’s Hurricane Maria tragedy.

On El Apagon (“The Blackout”) – a furious reggaeton-meets-techno anthem named for the recurring blackouts that plagued Puerto Rico’s privatised power grids – he protested government mismanagement, gentrification and overtourism, themes he revisited on last year’s Lo Que Le Paso a Hawaii (“What Happened to Hawaii”).

On Debi Tirar Mas Fotos, he further celebrated his culture by incorporating traditional Puerto Rican genres such as plena and bomba on the songs Dtmf and Cafe Con Ron, and wearing the traditional guayabera shirts and pava hats of the jibaro, the island’s rural farmers, during performances.

Other classic Bad Bunny songs such as Yo Perreo Sola (“I Twerk Alone”) and Solo De Mi (“Only of Me”) challenged misogyny and gender violence, and on Baticano (“Vatican”) he criticised the Catholic Church’s attacks on his provocative lyrics and support of the LGBTQ community.

Why was Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show so controversial?

After the NFL announced Bad Bunny as its Super Bowl headliner, Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem promised ICE agents would be “all over” the game, legitimising concerns Bad Bunny voiced when he announced he wouldn’t be touring Debi Tirar Mas Fotos in the US to protect his fans. (He instead held a 31-show residency in San Juan that brought a reported $US200 million in tourism to Puerto Rico.)

Turning Point USA, the right-wing organisation founded by Charlie Kirk and now led by his widow Erika, organised an “all-American” alternative halftime show featuring Kid Rock, which Vanity Fair described as “predictably xenophobic” and “poorly attended”.

Why do Donald Trump and Bad Bunny have beef?

Although Trump claimed he’d “never heard” of Bad Bunny ahead of his Super Bowl selection last October, their cultural paths have crossed ever since the singer’s criticism of Trump after Hurricane Maria.

When comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, raving for Trump at a rally at Madison Square Garden ahead of the 2024 US presidential elections, described Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage”, Bad Bunny responded on Instagram with an eight-minute video highlighting Puerto Rico’s rich cultural history and immediately endorsed Kamala Harris for the US presidency.

While Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance waved its politics subtly – he ended by saying “God bless America” and, in a rebuke of US arrogance, shouted out every country across the American continent from Argentina to Canada – Trump raged on Truth Social, calling it a “slap in the face to our country”.

Enough politics, when’s the show?

Bad Bunny performs at Sydney’s ENGIE Stadium this weekend. After weeks of headline-grabbing polemics in the US, the shows should be a celebratory respite for the musician. (We might also expect a tribute to Nuyorican salsa great Willie Colon, who died on Sunday, aged 75.)

Local Bad Bunny fans have been waiting almost a decade for these shows. There are numerous festivities scheduled around Sydney over the weekend, including the concert’s official after-party at Home and a Bad Bunny appreciation night at Liberty Hall. Let the fiesta begin.

Bad Bunny performs at Sydney’s ENGIE Stadium on Saturday and Sunday.

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