Opinion: The Bad Bunny Super Bowl show will be more than music, it’s medicine

It's 2017, I’m a student at UCLA hungry for Latino community and attending a reggaetón party hosted by Hermanos Unidos at a nightclub in Hollywood. It was here where I heard the song “Krippy Kush” by an artist my friends told me was named Bad Bunny. 

The song was very energetic, psychedelic and overall just different. 

For me, Bad Bunny reminds me of college. A time for many Latina and Latino immigrants like me, first or second generation Latinos that underscores a time for internal to external transformation. For many of us, it means to change but also for many of us, it’s also time to ground our feet deeper in our roots.

Bad Bunny has done that from the beginning of his career, so now that he has been announced as the 2026 Super Bowl Halftime show performer, it is affirming to know you don’t have to change who you are as you reach your goals. 

The truth about growing up

So many of us have grown up with Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, known professionally as Bad Bunny, since those 2017 hits. For others, the biggest ambassador to El Conejo Malo was Cardi B with “I Like It” in 2018. There truly is no quinceañera or Latino party where that song is not played and it’s Bad Bunny’s verse is the one who stands out. 

To say the song was a slingshot is beyond an understatement. Every album he’s released since then has been a knock out, with “Un Verano Sin Ti” in 2022 making history as the first Spanish-language album nominated for a Grammy for Album of the Year.

A lot has been written about the album so I will be brief,e but it is important to note that we had hints of how Bad Bunny was also moving beyond a certain threshold in 2022. He broke records, he began to grow louder on his support for Puerto Rico and overall had cemented himself as the leader of Latin music and culture.

In the next album, “Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana,” we got hints of Bad Bunny taking a full step back and looking at how his life has blown up, the pressures of it, the criticisms he got for dating Kendall Jenner and overall what he sees as his responsibilities as a huge artist. 

He showed up when we needed him most 

In 2024, he proudly endorsed Kamala Harris, went into production for two films, “Happy Gilmore 2” and “Caught Stealing” and made several SNL appearances. 

For many, the 2024 election results were heartbreaking. The number of Latinos who supported Trump became a talking point for how some Latinos were shifting to the right and rejecting ideas of collective cultural and political solidarity. It is truly an understatement to call it a rift in our community but it has definitely left a scar in our collective history. 

As the year closed, there was an insurmountable dread that overcame those of us who feared immigration raids, civil rights crackdowns and overall direct violence from government leaders towards the Latino community. 

So when “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” dropped at the beginning of this year, right before the inauguration, it felt like a probiotic, a medicine to process what was to come. 

And then came the announcement that he would only perform in Puerto Rico, a direct defiance to American pop stardom and an act of self-determination for a huge artist who was expected to announce a large arena world tour. 

With the ICE raids affecting the Latino community all summer, Bad Bunny has also spoken up for immigrants, recently noting this as a key reason why he also decided to stay on the island. 

Bay Area Bad Bunny

Now, he’s accepted the opportunity to perform at the Super Bowl next year, which will be hosted at Levi’s Stadium, home of the 49ers. 

Mere miles from Oakland and north of San Jose, the Bay Area is a very important and special place for Latinos. Could this be a time for Bad Bunny to connect even more to the West Coast? 

I think the questions I want to really raise is what does this mean if he rejected American tour dates to then accept the biggest American slot in the world. Is it a contradiction? Is it strategic? Many criticized Kendrick Lamar for the exact same move just this past year. And months after the performance, people still don’t understand his statements or the nuances of it. 

I digress. I think the bigger question is this: What does it say about power and leverage and how we enter spaces we’ve critiqued?

We have no idea where we will be as a Latino community come February 2026, or even as a society. 

Gaza is still under fire, Puerto Rico is still annexed and a U.S. territory and ICE raids still haunt the lives of undocumented and documented Latinos across the United States. 

Like I said, however, Bad Bunny offers a medicine, a reflective and celebratory one at that. I saw many friends of mine who are undocumented who risked it all to attend his residency, crying along to his songs about home, about memory and about loving ourselves. I’m excited to celebrate that on Super Bowl Sunday.