If you Google Bad Bunny – AKA 28-year-old Puerto Rican Benito Ocasio – one of the suggestions the search engine throws up is the question: “Why is Bad Bunny so big?” It’s a pertinent query, particularly on this side of the Atlantic, where he remains a marginal figure with a solitary hit single, 2018’s Drake-assisted Mia. Yet he could call himself the biggest pop star in the world: he was the most streamed artist on Spotify in both 2020 and 2021, racking up 17.4bn streams in two years. In the US, he is huge on a historic scale: the first artist to top the Billboard charts with an entirely Spanish-language album, El Último Tour Del Mundo. It was recently announced he would play the lead role in a forthcoming Marvel film, about a wrestler called El Muerto whose mask gives him superhuman powers; before that, he will star opposite Brad Pitt in an action movie called Bullet Train.
It’s the kind of success that lends itself to big statements. El Último Tour Del Mundo was the third album he released in 2020 (the first, YHLQMDLG was the highest charting all-Spanish language album in US history until he beat his own record). Un Verano Sin Ti contains 23 tracks and goes on for the best part of an hour and a half. According to its author, it’s intended to work like a mixtape, to be played in the background while people enjoy themselves on the beach or by a pool (its title translates as A Summer Without You).
