The Simple Enjoyable of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Present

In the times and weeks main as much as Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime present, a nervous sort of hype swept America. The 31-year-old artist is, by some measures, the most well-liked working musician on the planet. But as a result of he virtually solely performs in Spanish and has spoken up in opposition to ICE, right-wing commentators urged he was too political for the time slot, whereas branding him with varied scary synonyms like “provocative” and “divisive.” Just a couple of hours earlier than the present, the influencer Jake Paul referred to as him “a fake American citizen performing who publicly hates America.”

During his efficiency on Sunday night time, Bad Bunny had a solution for that final one: “God bless America,” he introduced. But his whole efficiency rebuked the notion that he’s some culture-war proxy being foisted upon an American public that desires its stars to close up and sing. Yes, he stuffed this present with slogans and symbols signaling Puerto Rican and Latino satisfaction at a time when federal brokers are menacing Spanish audio system and President Trump has declared English to be the nationwide language. But basically, the halftime was a blast: an instant-classic, exactly detailed, relentlessly stimulating medley rooted within the good old school pleasure precept.

Bad Bunny opened in what seemed like sugarcane fields labored by dancers dressed within the straw hats of jíbaros (Puerto Rico’s rural farmers). Against this pastoral backdrop, Bad Bunny stood wanting trendy and fly, in a boxy white shirt patterned like an NFL jersey. He was rapping in Spanish to his smash “Tití Me Preguntó,” however the pigskin he held in his hand and the tie round his neck conveyed a transparent message to any viewer. He was right here for enterprise. He was right here to play ball.

Read: How Bad Bunny did it

Play he did. As he walked by the tropical hedge maze, he handed by whimsical set items together with a coconut vendor, a dominoes match, and a building website manned by—methods to put this respectfully—sizzling ladies. This was the primary of many awooga visuals to return—mass twerking, a fleeting shot of guy-on-guy grinding, and Bad Bunny executing his trademark crotch thrust. If any of this evokes scandal, it’ll be the wholesome variety, giving America a break from fascism discourse to rehash now-quaint-seeming dustups brought on by the likes of Elvis, Janet Jackson, and Prince (the originator of what’s turning into a hallowed custom of Super Bowl halftime crotch-troversies).

Really, what does it say in regards to the state of the nation that the sight of handsome individuals doing slinky choreography feels … refreshing? It’s not just like the much-publicized conservative cultural wave of the 2020s has rolled again popular culture’s reliance on raunch. But this efficiency’s wealth of gyration appeared subtly throwback-y and weirdly healthful. Maybe that was as a result of the grins on everybody’s faces conveyed sexiness with out porniness. The dancing and costumes took me again to being a younger teen watching the airbrushed sultriness of early-2000s MTV and being intrigued by the world that allegedly existed someplace outdoors my dwelling.

Bad Bunny was certainly making an attempt to take viewers out of their dwelling, and into his. The sheer quantity of references to Puerto Rico defied any notion that the island is a minor participant in American tradition; quite, we had been reminded that it’s a powerhouse home and international exporter. Puerto Rico gave us the archetypal reggaeton hit, Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina,” which popped up for a couple of moments tonight. Its musicians helped invent salsa music—which offered much-needed syncopation when Lady Gaga appeared to sing her usually plodding hit “Die With a Smile.” It gave us the sq. jaw and honeyed voice of Ricky Martin, who sang as nicely. And it gave us the night time’s headliner, who nodded on the significance of his personal success when he handed a Grammy to a boy who seemed like he may develop as much as at some point be, nicely, Bad Bunny.

Eventually, the power of the efficiency shifted from social gathering to assertion piece—but sensible stagecraft made that shift really feel climactic quite than deflating. Exploding energy strains evoked {the electrical} outages which have plagued Puerto Rico in recent times. For many of the present, Bad Bunny had been mugging merrily to the digicam, flaring his eyes and making hammy gestures as an example his phrases. But now anger appeared to twitch in his face as he rapped his track “El Apagón” (“The Power Outage”). Through have an effect on alone, he acquired throughout a way of betrayal that many Puerto Ricans of his age—generally referred to as the “crisis generation”—have spoken of feeling after a string of political scandals and pure disasters amid ongoing gentrification by mainlanders.

That message was, certainly, political. So was his culminating assertion of “God bless America,” which he adopted by itemizing nations in North and South America, thereby asserting the transnational nature of the tradition that he represents. Pushing towards the digicam with throngs of drummers, he closed by holding up a soccer with a message on it: Together, We Are America. It was a pointed message but in addition a conciliatory one, a unity slogan. Some individuals had been going to search for a combat anyway. “Nobody understands a phrase this man is saying,” complained Trump on Truth Social, minutes after the efficiency, “and the dancing is disgusting.”