Benito Antonio Martรญnez Ocasio was born on March 10, 1994, in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, the second of three sons of Tito Martรญnez, a truck driver, and Lysaurie Ocasio, an elementary school teacher. He grew up in a middle-class family in small-town Puerto Rico, raised in the Catholic church, playing sports, and developing an early interest in music. He began uploading music to SoundCloud in 2016 while working as a supermarket bagger and studying communications at the University of Puerto Rico. The name Bad Bunny came from a childhood photo of him dressed as a bunny, looking unhappy about the costume.
Bad Bunny's breakthrough came through the Latin trap and reggaeton scenes that were reshaping Latin music in the mid-2010s. His SoundCloud tracks attracted the attention of DJ Luian, who signed him to Hear This Music; collaborations with Puerto Rican artists Arcangel, J Balvin, and others expanded his audience rapidly. His 2017 collaboration with J Balvin and Justin Bieber, 'MIA,' gave him his first international exposure. The release of his debut album X 100pre (2018) established him as the defining voice of the new generation of Latin urban music, producing tracks that blended trap, reggaeton, and emotional vulnerability in a combination that distinguished him from his peers.
Bad Bunny became the world's most-streamed artist on Spotify in 2020, 2021, and 2022 โ an achievement without precedent for a non-English-language performer โ with Un Verano Sin Ti (2022) spending weeks at number one on the Billboard 200 despite being entirely in Spanish. His collaboration with Colombian producer Tainy and his appearances on film soundtracks extended his reach beyond music. His refusal to sing in English despite enormous pressure to do so, and his consistent singing in Puerto Rican Spanish rather than a neutral Latin American accent, has been celebrated as a statement of cultural pride and resistance to assimilation.
Bad Bunny's public persona challenges Latin masculinity norms in ways that have been both celebrated and contested: he wears nail polish and skirts, he sings about his own emotional vulnerability, he has been open about relationships in ways that Latin male artists rarely have been. His appearances at Wrestlemania (he has genuine wrestling training and genuine passion for the sport) demonstrate the range of his cultural engagement. His advocacy for Puerto Rican political issues โ he released a protest song during the 2019 Puerto Rican governor crisis that contributed to Governor Ricardo Rossellรณ's resignation โ demonstrates the political seriousness that underlies the entertainment surface.
