Bad Bunny’s bad bunny

He is not just an artist but a successful businessman, a business unit with sunglasses, a house, painted nails and an admirable ability to turn perreo into GDP.

In Madrid these days we have the concerts of Bad Bunny who has not only come to Spain to sing but also to bill, fill hotels, skyrocket consumption, move trains, restaurants, taxis, merchandising and entire nights of a city converted into a perreo theme park with hundreds of thousands of people willing to pay a lot of money to be part of a collective liturgy with a reggaeton flavor.

According to what they say, 600,000 tickets have already been sold out at their concerts in Spain with average prices of 150 euros and in Madrid alone an economic impact of more than 200 million euros is estimated, meaning that the bad rabbit is not only a musical phenomenon but an entire traveling industry with a Puerto Rican accent, carefully designed aesthetics and an extraordinary ability to turn collective euphoria into a cash register.

Now, perhaps the most interesting thing is not in the sales figure but in the contradiction, because we live in a time where every advertisement, every public speech, every institutional campaign and every phrase uttered in a company is reviewed with a magnifying glass in case it hides a sexist bias, a patriarchal view or an offense to the sensibilities of others. However, songs with much more explicit lyrics can become an anthem of empowerment if they have enough rhythm, filling stadiums while everyone twerks and others fight to be in a showcase house.

It is not about prohibiting anything or censoring songs or dictating musical tastes from a moral pulpit because everyone can do what they want, but about asking why there are machismos that provoke statements of condemnation and cancel professional careers while others chant with VIP bracelets to the rhythm of reggaeton and sell out tickets, discovering something fascinating in the economy of spectacle, that coherence does not always sell, but well-produced contradiction sells millions since our moral indignation depends on the packaging.

The bad bunny is not only an artist but a successful businessman, a business unit with sunglasses, a house, painted nails and an admirable ability to convert twerking into GDP, demonstrating that double standards are also practiced and, furthermore, pay.