In a recent interview, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, also known by his stage name Bad Bunny, said he doesn’t owe his fans any details about his personal life. He also disclosed what he really thought about the Grammys captioning his performance as “Non-English.”
It was “so f— up,” Martínez said in a Sept. 12 cover story for Vanity Fair about the Grammys handling. He noted he didn’t initially realize it had happened.
“It’s ugly to say that I saw it as normal. Then it was like, wow, wait a minute, what the hell? Why don’t they have someone? Knowing that I was going to be there …” Martínez told Vanity Fair.
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In the Vanity Fair story, writer Michelle Ruiz noted that Martínez was releasing a new album in the fall. When asked about the Spider-Man spinoff “El Muerto” being removed from Sony’s release calendar, Martínez said the issue was “delicate.” Martínez had been cast in the title role of the movie.
During the interview with Ruiz, Martínez didn’t confirm nor deny whether Kendall Jenner was his girlfriend. As Ruiz noted, fans have framed the rumored relationship with Jenner as a “form of cultural betrayal.”
As a Refinery 29 article recently highlighted, Latinas have been among Bad Bunny’s most staunch supporters, lauding him for amplifying political and social issues in Puerto Rico as well as for “uplifting decolonial gender equality” in an arena that “has historically perpetuated machismo.”
“For Latina fans, it is about the erotics of the collective sense of belonging. In other words, it’s about how the star, in this case Bad Bunny, creates a space for fans to envision and create different futures for themselves and each other,” Yessica Garcia Hernandez, a gender and ethnic studies scholar told Refinery 29 Somos.
Ruiz wrote that she was warned not to probe about the supposed relationship with Jenner. Martínez made it clear he did not want to speak about his private life.
“I’m not really interested in clarifying anything because I have no commitment to clarify anything to anyone,” he said, adding that his mother is among the ones “to whom I have to clarify anything.”
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“As for Juliana Dominguez from Mississippi” (which appears to be a random fan’s name), “I have nothing I need to clarify to her. Never. About anything,” Martínez said in the article.
Across social media, Latina fans have had mixed reactions to these comments from Martínez.
“I understand he wants his privacy. But it’s the way he comes off, very arrogant. Like your fan base is what made you famous and rich,” one fan commented on TikTok.
“I completely agree with him. He doesn’t us owe anything Keep giving us good music and keep on being a good guy, that what’s important,” another said.
Some likened the fans who are mad over him dating a white woman as being “no different than Latino parents not liking you dating a darker skinned person.” Others, however, took aim at the Kardashian and Jenner family as being “culture vultures.”
Martínez has been criticized before for comments he made in a Time cover story about cultural gatekeeping when discussing lyrics of “El Apagón,” particularly the part, “Ahora todos quieren ser latino ... pero les falta sazón.”
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Martínez, in the Time piece, said he wrote the song after feeling upset over artists suddenly singing in Spanish or wanting to collaborate with other Latin artists because it became “cool” to be Latino.
But, he noted, that feeling had passed.
”... our culture and music runs far and wide. It impacts people in other places. They want to try it and feel it. So why am I going to be bothered by that, if they do it with respect?” he said.
During his Coachella performance, Martínez said he was bewildered by stuff he read online and reassured his fans of his purpose: “Sé cual es mi propósito en la tierra y se los juro que lo voy a cumplir.”
In the Vanity Fair article, Martínez also spoke of his activism “as a choice, not an artistic responsibility.”
“What I do, I do from my heart,” he said. “I do it as my duty, but my duty as a Puerto Rican, as a human being … not as an artist. I believe that every human being has the duty to have empathy for others, to help others, to respect them, to always try to contribute something to society, to bring a positive change.”
