You can’t fully understand Bad Bunny without understanding Puerto Rico.
I know that might sound obvious. Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, has spent his career making Puerto Rico impossible to separate from his music. But as someone who doesn’t speak Spanish, I realized there was a gap in the way I experienced his work. I knew the songs. I knew the melodies. I knew the cultural impact. But I didn’t always understand the language behind them.
So I decided to start somewhere else: the place that created him. I traveled to Puerto Rico with Discover Puerto Rico to experience the island through the music, food, art and traditions that helped shape one of the biggest artists in the world. Rather than trying to understand Bad Bunny solely through his lyrics, I wanted to understand the world those lyrics came from.
Because Bad Bunny is more than an artist from Puerto Rico. He has become one of the island’s most visible cultural ambassadors, using music, fashion and visual storytelling to bring pieces of Puerto Rican life to audiences around the world. If you want to understand him, Puerto Rico is one of the best places to begin.
And my education started with reggaetón. Through a Reggaetón Tour with CL Tours, I began tracing the music’s history through the streets of Old San Juan, learning about the African, Caribbean, Indigenous and Spanish influences that helped shape Puerto Rico’s musical identity. I walked past the former site of Noise, the legendary club associated with DJ Negro and a pivotal era in Puerto Rican urban music, and learned about artists like Vico C — often regarded as the godfather of Puerto Rican hip-hop, and an artist who helped lay the groundwork for the generation that would eventually produce Bad Bunny.
Then I encountered another musical language: bomba. With Isla Caribe, I learned how Afro-Puerto Rican rhythms can become a conversation between dancer and drummer, with the dancer’s movements guiding the percussion in real time. I even got to sit behind the drums myself. I didn’t need to understand every word to recognize that I was witnessing a form of communication, one built through rhythm, movement and history.
That journey continued into the mountains of Cayey, where I explored another piece of Puerto Rico’s musical soul. At the Casa Histórica de la Música en Cayey, I saw firsthand how deeply music is woven into the island’s communities. It was also a place with a direct connection to Bad Bunny: he chose the historic site for an intimate listening party and release celebration for 2025’s Grammy-winning blockbuster Debí Tirar Más Fotos, performing new music from its balcony. The outfit he wore that night now sits on display there, turning a piece of his recent history into part of the island’s living musical heritage.
Little by little, Bad Bunny started making more sense to me. Not because I suddenly understood Spanish, but because I was beginning to understand the environment behind the music, the rhythms, neighborhoods, history, food, artists and traditions that helped shape him.
And then I got to experience Benito with that new perspective. Bad Bunny brought Fotos home for his final two shows at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, closing out more than a year of taking his record-breaking tour supporting the album around the world. The Pueto Rican residency No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí, “I Don’t Want to Leave This Place,” had already become a landmark moment for the island, and these final shows, dubbed “Cerramos en Casa,” turned the concert into something even more personal: a homecoming.
By the time I walked into Hiram Bithorn Stadium, I still didn’t understand every lyric. But I understood a lot more about what I was hearing.
Here are the moments that stood out to me from Bad Bunny’s final night in Puerto Rico, from the perspective of someone experiencing the music without speaking the language, but finally beginning to understand where it came from.