Welcome to the New York Times podcast, your sunroom hero hits of music, news, and criticism.

I'm your host, John K. Aramonaka, all year, all year, people said where is the bad

bunny episode? Where's the bad bunny episode? Phenomenal question. There was a moment where we were

going to do it. It didn't quite come together. Got distracted. Bad Bunny never went away. We're back.

Bad bunny episode year end. We are going to get into not simply on Verano Sinti, which is

the biggest album of 2022 by just about any metric that any person has ever devised and not simply

the kind of capstone on the career thus far of bad bunny on his path to becoming the, I guess,

it's safe to say the biggest star in global pop, but we're also going to talk about the history

of Spanish language music in American pop. We are going to talk about the political climate in

Puerto Rico and how that sets the tone for what bad bunny has been doing musically. We have two

guests today. First, Leyla Kobo from Billboard is going to come by, talk about the unprecedented

nature of what bad bunny has achieved this year, and also all of the shoulders upon which he

stands from the last 30, 40, 50 years for this moment to actually happen. And then later,

Karina Delvae Shorski, who profiled bad bunny for the magazine a couple of years ago, is going to

come by and talk about that phase in his career, the burdens or non burdens of representation and

growing into a political or politically savvy entertainer. So first, let's kick it off. Leyla Kobo's

here, calling in from Miami. If you are not familiar with Leyla's work, Leyla is the chief

content officer for Latin music at Billboard has been covering all your favorites for years and

years and years is the author of a book. It's called Decoding Despacito in oral history of Latin

music that tackles a lot of what we are going to touch on today. And frankly, has been

the main observer documenting what's been happening for the last couple of decades arriving

at a moment like this. But let's do this. Let's start in this moment and then we'll work our

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