Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, is a Puerto Rican musician and artist with a wide fan base in North, Central, and South America. According to Billboard estimates, Bad Bunny’s last tour “ El Último Tour Del Mundo’’ sold for an estimated $64 to $85 million in revenue (“Bad Bunny”).
His fanbase are mostly Latin Americans who speak English, Spanish, or a mixture of both; this said mixture is often a code-switching between the languages, a skill we define as Spanglish.
Bad Bunny has reached an audience of specific heritage; hence, it is via entertainment that Spanglish speakers identify not only by language but also culture and sociopolitics.
Bad Bunny has promoted Spanglish to the new generation of Spanglish-speakers across continents, meshing pop culture with identity and heritage.
The Mexican American War of 1846 led to part of the southwest territory being ceded to the United States of America. The Mexican Spanish-speaking territory was now being occupied by English speakers, which led to the Chicanx group we know today. Chicanx, however, are not the only Latinx group that speaks Spanglish as a result of Spanish-speaking settlers coming to the United States.
Nuyoricans are a result of Puerto Ricans migrating to the East Coast, specifically New York, where with time they developed their own lexicon, grammar, phonetics, and even slang.
Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rican nationality and Nuyorican influence makes him an outstanding promoter to his target audience: Spanglish-speakers. He recognizes the identity of his audience, coaxes it and guides it as well.
Bad Bunny is also a famous Latin trap artist that pushes against the traditional American and Latinx norms and pushes for wider acceptance, open-mindedness, and inclusion. He has been known to directly challenge gender norms specifically over Twitter and in the way he expresses himself. This is key because in many Latin American countries, sticking to the gender norm is of utmost importance.
Therefore, Bad Bunny has allowed the younger generation to be more accepting of others, and encouraging others to be themselves, regardless of birth sex or native language.
Bad Bunny’s tagline is “Bad Bunny baby”, which plays at the end of each song and feature he is in. This is an example of how cemented the English language is in the Spanish language of his young audience.
Music has been a method of communication for Spanglish speakers via artists like Bad Bunny himself, who incorporates lyrics his young audience will relate to or understand.
Music is a medium of communication; for centuries prior to technology, stories were passed through performers that wandered from Lord to Lord, manor to manor.
Now we have music that is much more accessible, which leads to communication despite where we might find ourselves on the globe. Bad Bunny does a strikingly impressive job at communicating with his Spanish and English speaking audience. He is rather proud of his heritage and culture, despite integrating English into his songs and having features with English-speaking artists.
Many linguists may disagree that one can be proud of speaking Spanish while speaking Spanglish, but Bad Bunny is an example that such is not the case.
Bad Bunny has absolutely become a factor of liberal economy in Latin America and the United States. In a sponsoring partnership with Crocs, Bad Bunny raised Crocs’ revenues by 15% and all merchandise sold out in 16 minutes from the time of release.
The inclusion of Latinx in the entertainment industry results in Bad Bunny becoming a glue to those of similar culture, sociopolitics, and heritage. It is in his work where we see pop culture and Spanglish rise parallel to one another, as his audience comes to identify themselves more with the language.
For Spanglish speakers, there is a tendency to speak English in everyday life, and Spanish for their intimate, home and traditional lives. As a Spanglish speaker there is a time and place for either language and what each language is for.
This is key because Bad Bunny’s music penetrates the everyday life; relationships, goals, dreams, drama, and friendships. He transmits music that to Spanglish speakers can be best communicated via this language and this language only, simply because it does the passion behind the words justice.
Spanglish is, as it can be concluded, a result of a union between two cultures that manifest in the form of language; for many, it is about celebrating the union between our roots and our new home in North America.
At last, it is the success of artists like Bad Bunny that promotes the Spanglish language so that some day, it will be accepted as the structured form of communication that it is. It is via acceptance and acknowledgement of its rules that we can recognize Spanglish as a proper method of communication.
