One week after winning the Grammy for album of the year, Bad Bunny is about to put on the performance of his already astonishing career. The halftime show at the Super Bowl is as big an audience as a musician can hope to play in front of, and the selection of the outspoken Puerto Rican superstar has brought controversy as well as anticipation. But if you’re aiming for world domination, there’s just one musician to call.
Here are the answers to some questions you might have about the man, his music and the chaos he’s been at the center of leading up to Sunday night’s show at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., from the perspective of a writer who has spent a decade following his career.
Why did the NFL pick him to play the halftime of the Super Bowl?
Business. The NFL has expressed interest in recent years in expanding further into international markets and few artists have as big of an international footprint right now as Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio. Plus, as Perry Johnson, a music scholar who teaches at USC’s Annenberg school of communication, told me, there’s notably higher ratings in years of greater halftime show controversy.
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