Not even five minutes after landing at the airport in San Juan, the fact that Puerto Rico is the land that gave Bad Bunny to the world becomes increasingly obvious: at the souvenir shop in the terminal they are selling graphic tees printed with verses from his songs. As you leave, the feeling intensifies: on the road, songs from Debí Tirar Más Fotos are blasting out of the open windows of cars as they drive by, and in Old San Juan it’s just as easy to come across freshly painted murals bearing the artist’s image as it is to buy bootleg album merch. To be in Puerto Rico, is to feel, at all times, that Bad Bunny is nearby.
But on a random Sunday in March, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, son of Benito and Lysi, born in Bayamón and raised in Vega Baga in the northern part of Puerto Rico, is actually very close. We are on set for this photo shoot, which takes place in a spacious house, with tile floors done in the criolla style, Miami-style windows, and decorated in typical Puerto Rican fashion: with a small collection of pilones on display in the kitchen, and framed silkscreen prints of classic island images in the living room walls. In the courtyard, an iguana walks slowly under a mango tree, and in the distance, you can see the blue-green of the Atlantic Ocean.
Benito arrives, punctual, at exactly ten o’clock in the morning, wearing a camouflage print T-shirt, Sky High Farm jeans with an orange bandana in one of the back pockets, and yellow ballerina-style sneakers from his own collaboration with Adidas. Soon he can be heard singing “Amor, Amor, Amor.” A large, portable speaker playing Luis Miguel’s greatest hits accompanies the artist from room to room, which prompts an accidental karaoke as the entire crew begins to sing along. “I don’t know why, I woke up wanting to listen to Luis Miguel. On the way here I started singing just like that out of nowhere, but nobody wants to hear those songs in my voice, so I said let’s put them on,” he tells me in Spanish.
Photographed by Sebastián Faena, Vogue Mexico and Latin America, May 2025.
The next day we met up at Café con Ron, a cafe that Benito and his team opened in January on San Sebastian street. The place has a clubhouse vibe, with several members of his group sipping cafecitos before the interview begins. When I meet Benito, he’s uploading a story to his Instagram of some girls singing “BOKeTE” in his car. “Did you know I do my own social media?,” he asks me (Yes, of course I knew!). We’re in a lounge area in the back, sitting across from each other at a small domino table—I still regret that we did not play at least one round. He is casual, in a slightly cropped white T-shirt, baggy jeans, his Adidas sneakers, and a baseball cap with the New York Yankees insignia on it. We are three months out from the release of Debí Tirar Más Fotos, a concept album that is a love letter to Puerto Rico and its culture.
#Bad #Bunny #Music #Hollywood #Family #Home
