What Bad Bunny means to Puerto Ricans
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.1 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
This summer, the island of Puerto Rico has been under the thrall of Bad Bunny.
His 30-concert residency at a stadium in San Juan is a homecoming for the global superstar.
It's also a homecoming for many thousands of people who left home – but are flocking back for the shows.
NPR’s Adrian Florido reports on how the concerts are resonating with Puerto Ricans on and off the island.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | For weeks, the island of Puerto Rico has been under the thrall of Bad Bunny. |
| 0:09.3 | He's performing 30 sold-out concerts in San Juan this summer. |
| 0:13.7 | He wants his residency to galvanize his homeland and let his Puerto Rican fans see him perform, |
| 0:18.9 | whether or not they actually still live in Puerto Rico. |
| 0:22.3 | Yarrimar Bonilla is a political anthropologist at Princeton. |
| 0:25.5 | She's been to more than one concert this summer. |
| 0:27.9 | Oh, I get emotional. |
| 0:30.1 | It's almost like forgiving. |
| 0:31.9 | Like, I think for those in the diaspora, it feels like we've been forgiven. |
| 0:35.4 | You know, it's like a recognition that we left unwillingly and that we've never forgotten this place, that we are still part of it. |
| 0:44.4 | At the beginning of this year, Bad Bunny released a new album that was his most Puerto Rican and most political record yet. |
| 0:50.9 | The instrumentals often reference older styles of folk music from the island, |
| 0:55.2 | and some lyrics criticize gentrification and over tourism. When Bad Bunny came to NPR's |
| 1:01.1 | tiny desk this year, he spoke with NPR Music's Anna Maria Sayer about the importance of preserving |
| 1:06.3 | cultural tradition. |
| 1:15.4 | One always lives in fear of losing something, he told me. |
| 1:20.1 | When you're afraid of losing something, what you do is take care of it, even more. |
| 1:22.1 | Protect it, defend it. |
| 1:24.1 | Consider this. |
| 1:28.5 | Bad Bunny's residency has been a homecoming for a global superstar. |
| 1:37.1 | It's also been a homecoming for many Puerto Ricans who left their island in search of greater opportunities and came back to see him perform. |
| 1:44.4 | From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. |
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