Bad Bunny Turned His Super Bowl Halftime Show Into a Love Letter to Latin Memory

There’s never been a more Latino Super Bowl halftime show than this Sunday’s performance by Puerto Rican musician (and recent Grammy winner) Bad Bunny. At a time when Latino visibility feels both heightened and precarious, it made history as the most-viewed halftime show the Big Game has ever hosted—but for a mass spectacle staged in front of a global audience, the show was full of gestures that read as deeply personal and specific, mini-odes to a shared cultural memory that spoke directly to families tuning in from home with arroz congri and lechon on deck.

A gentleman sporting a pava hat opened the set with a simple yet tone-setting benediction: “Qué rico es ser Latino.” (Loosely translated: How wonderful to be Latino.) It’s a phrase some of us are privileged enough to have heard throughout our lives, but in context, it was a proclamation of a cultural pride that, in today’s political climate, is more often policed than celebrated. The ensuing performance proved exactly how delicious it is to be Latino.

As Bad Bunny (née Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) wove through a maze of sugar cane, he passed quotidian scenes one might find on the streets of a Latin town: stands selling liquid reprieves from the blistering island sun in the form of coco frio and piraguas; older men in fedoras and unbuttoned cabana shirts playing dominoes over a bottle of rum; a colorful family home filled with Catholic tchotchkes; and women with flawless ‘dos getting their nails done and gossipping, or chismeando. Rendered on the most sanitized stage in American sports, these vignettes celebrated a Latin life unfettered by translation. (Even the evening’s sign language interpreter used Puerto Rican Sign Language as opposed to the usual ASL.)

The movement on display was especially on-theme in its sensual, unabashed Latin hotness. Puerto Rican culture in particular is no stranger to perreo—a dance style or type of party, depending on the context, that involves reggaeton, booty-shaking, and lots of sweating. At Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium, the perreo reproduced felt rather typical in its comfort with tightness, casual bisexuality, and incredible style—gold chains swinging and sweat-slicked midriffs pumping. (Hair, for one, ran the gamut from fresh fades and afros to pristine braids and edgework, mirroring the diasporic milieu of the average San Juan street.) Daddy Yankee’s hit song “Gasolina”—a sample of which played during this set—was a seminal contribution to the form.

It’s not unusual for a perreo to spawn at a wedding, on the street, or at a backyard party. And, to paraphrase Marcello Hernandez’s latest comedy special, no dancing partners are off limits. Kids pick up rhythm by gyrating with their abuelos and tias, that’s always been the case—though they’re likely learning bachata or salsa from them, not twerking. This rite of passage was channeled at the live wedding ceremony that took place in the middle of Bad Bunny’s set, during which dancers spanning generations from grade-schoolers to grandparents took turns spinning one another around. A little boy asleep on a bed of pushed-together banquet hall chairs conjured a cultural core memory so widely shared it feels almost too obvious to mention.

The only non-Latin performer of the night was Lady Gaga, who donned a vibrant, ruffled dress by the Dominican designer Raúl Lopez—an addition that felt right, given that Benito is a documented Little Monster. The Puerto Rican otherwise leaned into community by involving beloved Latin superstars in the lineup. Getting down on the porch of his casita were Chilean heartthrob Pedro Pascal, Mexican-American actor Jessica Alba, Dominican-Trinidadian rapper Cardi B, Colombian songstress Karol G, and reggaetonera Young Miko.