“The NFL wants to talk to the whole world, and Bad Bunny is already doing that,” said KCRW host Sam Sanders. So should we expect a grand political statement?
Bad Bunny talks about how he’s preparing for the Super Bowl halftime show
Bad Bunny talks about preparing for the Super Bowl, from workouts to mindset to staying true to yourself.
At the Grammy Awards on February 1st, Bad Bunny received a standing ovation when he said “ICE Out” during his first acceptance speech of the night. Later, when he made history by becoming the first Spanish-language album to win Album of the Year, he dedicated the Grammy to “all those who had to leave their homeland, their homeland, to pursue their dreams.”
Two days later, White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt criticized Bad Bunny for “trying to demonize law enforcement.” Later in the week, Levitt said, referring to Turning Point USA’s counter halftime show, that President Donald Trump “would prefer a Kid Rock performance over Bad Bunny.”
With only days left until Sunday’s Super Bowl, the 31-year-old reggaeton artist is in the spotlight, and not just for his music.
“He probably won’t even do the most political halftime show on immigration,” said Sam Sanders, host of KCRW’s “The Sam Sanders Show.” When JLo and Shakira co-headlined in 2020, they “put kids in mock cages to shine a light on Donald Trump’s immigration policies in his first term. Bad Bunny has already said enough to get political.”
“The halftime show is secondary at this point,” he added.
The NFL partnered with Jay-Z and Roc Nation to create the Apple Music Halftime Show in 2019, and since then headliners have included The Weeknd, Usher, Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, and more.
“Since then, there has been a lot of reporting as if a lot of halftime shows were a problem because they were too political,” Sanders said. However, the evaluation remains unchanged. Lamar’s 2025 halftime show performance drew 133.5 million viewers, making it the most-watched performance of all time.
And if viewers knew where to look beyond actor Samuel L. Jackson, who appeared as Uncle Sam, and backup dancers lining up in white, red, and blue to create the illusion of the Stars and Stripes, Lamar’s halftime set spoke to the black experience, racial injustice, and referenced Gil Scott-Heron’s famous 1971 colloquial poem, “The Revolution Won’t Be Televised.”
It was a nod to how art and music have been used to advance culture and spark social movements while being entertaining.
“Historically, music and art have been political,” says Darlene Lopez, founder and managing director of Evoke Creative. “But I feel it’s a little unfair how much black and brown artists are expected to make political statements.”
Does Bad Bunny owe his fans a grand political statement at the Super Bowl?
Bad Bunny’s political stance on issues particularly affecting Puerto Rico and the Latinx community has been strong from the beginning.
During Trump’s first term in 2017, two hurricanes hit the island in quick succession, including Hurricane Maria, and the “Turista” artist criticized the president’s response and lack of aid to Puerto Rico. He has spoken out against transphobia, colonialism and gentrification in Puerto Rico, and returned from a trip to Europe in 2019 to protest when Puerto Ricans were demanding the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló.
“There’s also expectations for Bad Bunny because he’s shown time and time again that it’s important to him and his brand,” Lopez added. On “El Apagón,” from 2022’s Un Verano Sin Ti, “he manages to make music that makes you shake your butt while also dealing with power outages in Puerto Rico,” she says.
Petra Rivera Rideau, a professor at Wellesley College and an academic expert on reggaeton, says Bad Bunny’s approach is “always Puerto Rican.”
“He speaks out about these things because he is a concerned citizen, not because he feels obligated to do so as a public figure,” she said.
“An artist’s job is to show off his art.”
For Vanessa Diaz, a professor at Loyola Marymount University and co-creator of the Bad Bunny Syllabus Project, the answer to whether four-time Spotify Global Top Artists and other celebrities with huge platforms owe the public anything other than their art is two-fold.
“I don’t think artists owe anything to anyone,” Diaz says. “What artists owe them is to be their true selves. And if it’s a grand political statement, then so be it, and if it’s not, then it’s not. An artist’s job is to perform and share their art in a way that feels true to who they are as an artist, and Bad Bunny always does that.”
Bad Bunny’s authenticity meant representing Puerto Rico, Díaz added, and “we focused specifically on performing in Spanish, Puerto Rican Spanish, and not catering to the English market in that way.” “You can’t underestimate how political it is.”
For Sanders, the halftime show is a sign of the NFL’s global ambitions, and it’s almost disrespectful to focus solely on politics.
“If you make the conversation just about American politics and Bad Bunny, you’re missing the point,” he says. “It’s time for America to realize we’re not alone in this room. The NFL wants to talk to the whole world, and Bad Bunny is already doing that.”
