Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Sparks Debate on Reggaeton’s Black Roots
The Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show ignited reactions across political and cultural lines, but this commentary asks a deeper question: what happens when a Black musical tradition is globalized and reshaped for mass consumption? The piece examines reggaeton’s Afro-Caribbean roots and challenges how audiences interpret representation and success.
Bad Bunny performed at the Super Bowl’s Halftime Show, and the usual suspects are losing their minds. The MAGA Right was apparently excited to watch a halftime show headlined by a washed-up white boy, and the Left is already taking a victory lap. But there is a lazy assumption at play: that Black America will automatically fall in line and celebrate the fact that Mr. Dákiti will perform for all the world to see.
But let’s pump the brakes. Will we? And more importantly: should we? I’ve got thoughts, and some of y’all are gonna be mad.
At his core Bad Bunny (his mama calls him Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) is fundamentally a reggaeton artist. A musical artform that was originally known as “Reggae en Español.”
The O.G.’s of this music, people like Edgardo Franco aka El General or Fernando Mosley aka Nando Boom, were Black West Indians in Panama who took Jamaican dancehall and gave a Spanish soul. By the 90s, that energy hit Puerto Rico and that island’s heavyweights leveled it up. Legends like Tego Calderón and Ivy Queen laced the sound with Hip Hop grit and Afro-Puerto Rican flavor, birthing the global movement that Bad Bunny has perfected. And this is where White supremacy enters the picture.
As reggaeton exploded into a global phenomenon, the Black pioneers who built the sound were pushed to the margins. Despite the genre’s deep Afro-Latino roots, the industry began prioritizing and promoting artists who identified as white.
While the nuances of racial identity in Latin America are complex (just watch this for a deeper discussion of that point), the trend was clear: the architects were sidelined while the industry chased a different aesthetic. Namely, a white one.
This is why Bad Bunny is crushing it in streaming numbers and winning Grammys. He took a Black musical sound and gentrified it.
Gentrification isn’t just about who moves in. It is about sanitizing a space that was formerly Black to make white people feel welcome. What Bad bunny has done to reggaeton is sonically polish the genre’s raw, Afro-diasporic sound and make it more palatable for a global, non-Black audience.
So should Black folks have watched this year’s Super Bowl Halftime show? Sure. Why not? I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum.
Clap, tweet, argue online about representation and tell yourself that this is a win for the culture if it helps you sleep at night. Just know that what you really watched is a Black sound, stripped for parts, remodeled for mass consumption, and handed to white folks for resale.
The ancestors don’t get royalties, the pioneers won’t get to take the stage, and Black America is once again asked to cheer from the cheap seats. But I guess progress looks great in HD.
This commentary appeared first in The Root. It was edited for formatting. For more information, visit www.theroot.com.