🐍You Can't Always Get What You Want🐇
There's a boy named Benito—which means blessed in Spanish, good in its Italian roots—who grew up to call himself Bad Bunny. Consider that for a moment: Good Tony became Bad Rabbit. The blessed one became the mischievous creature. In English, his name whispers benediction; in his chosen alias, it growls rebellion. This isn't just clever branding. It's survival poetry.
Because here's the alchemy: when you're born blessed but treated like a threat, when your tongue carries centuries of salsa rhythms but gets labeled as other, when your very existence becomes political simply because you refuse to translate yourself—you might as well lean into the mischief. You might as well be bad. Not because you are, but because they've already decided you are.
Bad Bunny didn't just own 2025—he painted it in neon pink and reggaeton basslines, he dressed it in a bunny costume worn with the scowl of a child who knows he's being reduced to a costume. His album Debí Tirar Más Fotos spent over 20 weeks in the Billboard 200's Top 10, weaving Puerto Rican bomba and plena into pop architecture, proving that música urbana doesn't need permission to be universal. His 31-date Puerto Rico residency pumped at least $400 million into the island's economy, a love letter written in concert tickets and filled hotels.
The backlash came swiftly, predictably, like a choreographed dance we've all seen before. Some questioned why he performs primarily in Spanish, as if language were a betrayal rather than a birthright. During his Saturday Night Live appearance, Bad Bunny addressed critics with characteristic wit, telling them they had, "four months to learn," Spanish.
Watch the irony pirouette: a man named Good in his mother tongue becomes Bad in the language of empire. It's not a stage name—it's a mirror held up to society that demands assimilation while commodifying culture, that wants the flavor but not the language, the rhythm but not the resistance. When you make blessing sound like curse, when you treat Benito with suspicion but consume his beats at your Super Bowl parties, you've created the conditions for good to become bad.
Bad Bunny scored three main Grammy category nominations in 2025—album, record, and song of the year—making him the only Spanish-language artist to achieve this distinction. He hosted SNL twice, starred in Happy Gilmore 2, and never once apologized for being precisely who he is: blessed, mischievous, Puerto Rican, global, good, bad, and unapologetically both.
February 8, 2026, approaches like a drum line. The Super Bowl stage awaits. And somewhere, a boy in a bunny costume with an angry face is smiling, because good became bad became legendary, and the whole world is dancing.
