Op-Ed: Bad Bunny is the Most Honest Reflection of Puerto Ricans Right Now

When Bad Bunny released DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, it felt less like an album and more like a cultural reckoning. After years of bending genres, gender norms, and global expectations, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio did something rare for an artist of his scale: he turned inward. The world may know him as the chart-topping superstar, but for Puerto Ricans, especially those of us in the diaspora, he’s something else entirely. He’s the most honest reflection of who we are right now.

Bad Bunny is not just an artist representing Puerto Rico; he’s reimagining what representation even means. He is loud and quiet, soft and sharp, humble and defiant all at once. For a place like Puerto Rico that has spent centuries being defined by others (colonizers, politicians, even well-meaning allies), Benito’s contradictions feel familiar: they sound like home.

Fame and Activism Can Coexist

Bad Bunny’s fame has always carried a message. When he wore a skirt on The Tonight Show, when he kissed his male dancer at the VMAs, when he called out gender violence on “Yo Perreo Sola,” he wasn’t following trends. He was making statements in a language that transcended politics with art that says what many of us wish we could: that Puerto Rican identity is not one-dimensional, that masculinity does not have to mean silence, and that joy itself can be resistance.

When he brought attention to the murder of Alexa Negrón Luciano, a trans woman killed in Puerto Rico in 2020, it wasn’t performative allyship. It was grief turned into accountability, and in a country where queer and trans people are still fighting for safety, that visibility matters. Bad Bunny didn’t just perform that moment for applause; he did it knowing that speaking out about injustice might make him polarizing at home, but it would also be inclusive and confront very real problems within the culture. That is what makes him such a rare kind of export: he doesn’t sell perfection, he exports truth.

Diaspora and Patria

For many of us who grew up between Puerto Rico and the United States, Bad Bunny’s music feels like a bridge. You can hear the island in his sound: the slang, the cadence, the humor. But you can also hear the ache of distance. In songs like “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii,” he captures something every Puerto Rican, both in and out of the diaspora, understands: loving an island that is constantly exploited yet endlessly beautiful.

When he shouts out “¡Puerto Rico está cabrón!” it is not just pride, it is protest. It’s his way of saying we are still here, even as the lights go out, even as gentrifiers rename our neighborhoods, even as the diaspora gets told we are not “Puerto Rican enough.” Bad Bunny gives us permission to exist in the in-between.

His global reach has made him a cultural diplomat for those used to living in the duality of being bicultural. But unlike others who have tried to sanitize their roots for mainstream success, Benito refuses to translate. He raps in Spanish, uses Puerto Rican slang unapologetically, and centers Boricua artists like Young Miko and RaiNao instead of chasing industry validation. That decision, to sound like home even when the world is listening, is political in itself.

Masculinity and Vulnerability

There is a particular kind of softness that Bad Bunny embodies, one that Latin men rarely get to express. He cries in his lyrics, he talks about heartbreak, he takes his time processing emotions instead of hiding behind bravado. And yet, that same man steps into a wrestling ring, drives Bugattis, and lives his famous life to the fullest.

That duality, vulnerable and powerful, messy and magnetic, mirrors what it means to be Puerto Rican in the 21st century. We are both the wound and the wonder. We are the heartbreak and the hurricane. In Benito’s world, being real is the only flex that matters.

Redefining Representation

In the global imagination, Puerto Rico has often been flattened to stereotypes: beaches, reggaetón, rum, toxicity, and resistance. Bad Bunny has taken that flattening and turned it into a layered story. He doesn’t try to make the island look perfect; he makes it look alive.

In “LA MuDANZA”, there’s a line that feels like a thesis for his entire career: “Millonario sin dejar de ser del barrio.” A millionaire who never stopped being from the neighborhood, specifically a working-class one – a man of the people. It’s the kind of self-awareness that makes him both relatable and unreachable. He knows the chaos of fame, the burden of expectation, and the weight of being everyone’s symbol of PR. But instead of running from it, he folds it into the music, turning every word into a new level of relatability that’s hard for artists as big as him to accomplish otherwise.

The Most Honest Export

Puerto Rico has given the world many things: rhythm, resilience, and resistance. But our most honest export right now isn’t a product, a slogan, or even a sound – it’s a person willing to show the world that we are not a monolith.

Bad Bunny’s honesty is not about confession; it’s about reflection. He reminds us that to be Puerto Rican is to live in tension: colonized yet proud, joyful yet exhausted, rooted yet restless. And somehow, in the middle of all that, we still dance.

Maybe that’s what makes him ours.

Ashley Rivera Mercado was born in Yauco, Puerto Rico and raised in Orlando, Florida. She is the jefa at the non-profit Mujeres in Marketing.