In just four years, Bad Bunny went from working in a supermarket in his hometown, Vega Baja, a city that is about 45 minutes from San Juan, to dominating the music scene by placing at the top of the Spotify charts and Billboard.
When he was a teenager, and while working in a supermarket, he began to beats and improvise in his room, along with his friends, some of whom are still his closest associates.
He stopped studying to dedicate himself completely to the world of music, and Latin trap was the genre that covered him. “That was my daily living since I was little, imagining and letting the mind manifest itself and, if I have an idea of something, at least try it,” Bad Bunny himself recalls in a documentary of just over ten minutes where he tells his first steps in the music.
“My dream was always this: for people to know my music, for people to enjoy my creations, my inventions and ideas,” adds the 26-year-old artist.
Small “shows” in his homeland, videos on Instagram or self-productions on Soundcloud were the means that Bad Bunny used to enter the trap music scene. Thanks to his talent and innovative proposals, the artist was getting more and more followers, until with his song “Diles” he caught the attention of a producer who hired him for his record label.
In a short time, he became an emerging star of the subgenre that has expanded the scope of reggaeton with a more digital sound and closer to hip hop. In 2017, his song “Soy Worse” was ranked on the top Hot Latin Songs of Billboard, the thermometer of Latin music in the United States.
By 2018 Bad Bunny was already an icon in the Latin urban music scene with the success of the song “I like it” by Cardi B, in which he collaborated with his friend J Balvin. The following year he released “Oasis”, an eight song album in collaboration with the Colombian.
That same year, the protest song “Sharpening the knives”, written by Bad Bunny himself together with Residente, was launched during the protests against the Governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rosselló. The song garnered 2.5 million views on YouTube on the same day it was released.
And after two years bombarding with singles for mass cyberconsumption and collaborating with figures like Jlo, Drake or Pharrel Williams, he published, without warning, and on Christmas Eve 2018, his first album, “X100pre”.
The album was very well received by its fans and the American media who published flattering headlines after its release.
Without a doubt, Bad Bunny’s year of consecration has been 2020, which started with the release of his second album “YHLQMDLG” (Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana), the most listened to of the year on Spotify with 3,300 million views.
He sang at halftime at the Super Bowl, a show that airs during the world’s most televised sporting event. On stage, next to Shakira, Jennifer López and J Balvin, the Puerto Rican made it clear that he is leading the new generation of Spanish-speaking urban music artists whom he calls the “Latino gang”.
In the midst of the pandemic, he removed the leftover songs from “YHLQMDLG” and has just released his fourth album, “The Last World Tour”, with which he raised speculation about his retirement from music after a year of glory and awards.
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