Are you practicing the lyrics for Bad Bunny's concert, Reader?

Language application Duolingo launched a short course helping you to sing along with Debí Tirar Más Fotos, one of his biggest hits, during the Super Bowl's halftime show, a typical US event, but it's the symbolism that matters. (I wrote about Kendrick Lamar's memorable halftime show last year.)

In case you’ve never heard of Bad Bunny: he is a Puerto Rican artist who won three Grammys last week, one for best album, and held a touching anti-ICE speech - mostly in Spanish - dedicating his awards to migrants who "leave their home, land, their country, to follow their dreams." And adding:

Since then, information about his life and career floods the internet, and so much of what I read and hear about him touches on the topic I’m focusing on in this newsletter: decolonization, leading in complex times, and a different narrative approach. It was a no-brainer to dedicate this newsletter to him.

Sanne

Bad Bunny supports independent journalism

Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio was born in Puerto Rico on March 10, 1994. His father was a truck driver, and his mother is a retired schoolteacher. His stage name, Bad Bunny, apparently originates from when he was forced to wear a bunny costume and was angry about it (source: NPR).

The articles about his career highlight the same facts:

• Bad Bunny's rise to stardom is (mostly) his own doing. He's been performing in Spanish from the beginning, even though he was advised to rap in English.
• His music is just one part of his success. As NPR's Jasmine Garsd writes: "In a world of macho rapper caricatures, he boasts about stealing your girl while rocking a gender bending style: Polished nails, flamboyant, colorful jackets, and get-ups that would make David Bowie tip his fedora in admiration."
• He always promotes "his people" / community in his success. When he became the first Latin urban music artist on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in 2020, the photo was made by his then-girlfriend, who was a jewelry designer and became the first Latina to shoot a cover photo for Rolling Stone.

You might think, well, nice, but what does this have to do with journalism? In a world where dominant, overly simplified narratives spread faster than facts, people like Bad Bunny make you pause and realize there is another story to tell.

He doesn't shy away from explicitly mentioning Puerto Rico's colonization; the country remains an unincorporated U.S. territory today.

In an interview with Time about his "culturally authentic, musically ambitious, and emotionally vulnerable" album Debí Tirar Más Fotos, he said about his home country:

Together with the release of his album, he put out this short film, which further explores the themes of economic and cultural alienation: a Puerto Rican grandfather visiting a gentrified coffeeshop:

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He mentions the electricity blackouts Puerto Rico is facing in his lyrics - “Maldita sea, otro apagón” (“Damn it, another blackout”) - and has incorporated commentary on social and political issues in Puerto Rico, including gender inequality, transphobia, gentrification, and colonialism, into his music since the beginning. (source: Smithsonian magazine).

The music video for his song “El Apagón” is a short-form documentary, in which independent journalist Bianca Graulau plays a role reporting on the blackouts. Graulau shared her gratitude on Instagram:

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Bad Bunny as promoter of anti-colonial consciousness

Bad Bunny is packaging a colonial analysis into a mass-cultural format:

• He makes colonialism legible through pop formats (music video becomes a documentary, his stadium tours become political messaging).
• He targets “soft” colonialism: tourism, tax-haven migration, lifestyle gentrification, beach privatization, stuff many audiences don’t even label as colonial. Trends like these are visible around the world.
• He refuses the typical outsider assimilation pressure by Spanish-first cultural dominance in US mainstream spaces. He literally told people ahead of his Super Bowl performance: "You've got four weeks to learn Spanish."
• He links his Puerto Rican identity to political status: it's central to his art and the public persona he represents.

It's easy to frame someone like Bad Bunny as an exception, as a charismatic outlier who uses his platform to speak out when he has an album to sell. But his rejection of rapping in English is showing other cultures that it's possible to succeed outside of the Western dominant narrative.
HThe NPR Tiny Desk concert shows that Bad Bunny is actually a collective of people, of Puerto Rican musicians with a shared cultural memory who all shine on a stage.

Journalism often misses this because the industry defaults to individual hero narratives.

What you can learn from Bad Bunny

The Latin rapper's impact comes from continuously sticking to what he believes in. For (newsroom) leaders, this translates into uncomfortable questions around using familiar, safe frames that skip the cultural importance and don't pick up the soft political messaging.

And, very poignant for now: if leadership isn’t regulating its own fear of backlash, of losing relevance, of being “too political," it might disappear into market logic. The same logic that is now justifying mass layoffs at The Washington Post, where being careful is described as a necessary way to survive, and where decisions are increasingly shaped by what seems least risky.

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Coaching and mentoring

I'll keep it here for now, hope to see you next week!

Sanne