podcast
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Every Thursday on The Assignment, host Audie Cornish explores the animating forces of this extraordinary American political moment. It’s not about the horse race, it’s about the larger cultural ideas driving the conversation: the role of online influencers on the electorate, the intersection of pop culture and politics, and discussions with primary voices and thinkers who are shaping the political conversation.
Did Bad Bunny Win the Culture War?
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Feb 12, 2026
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime show is still resonating as fans celebrate his history-making rise from Puerto Rico to global dominance. Audie is joined by journalist Suzy Exposito to talk about the power of Benito's unique brand of authenticity--and how he's wielding it in the culture war. Exposito has covered Bad Bunny from the beginning. She is an editor at De Los, the Latin culture wing of the LA Times.
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This episode was produced by Sofía Sanchez.
Senior Producer: Matt Martinez
Technical Director: Dan Dzula
Episode Transcript
Audie Cornish
00:00:00
Hey, it's Audie, and this is The Assignment. And think about this. The only thing more powerful than hate is love. That was the takeaway message from Bad Bunny's Super Bowl 60 halftime show and the most viewed clip on NFL socials ever, with 179 million people hitting click. And it's been the only thing people can talk about this week, as Republicans pull a footloose, complaining about the dancing, and frankly, the Spanish. And Benito fans celebrating his uncompromising rise to the top. Coming off of this massively successful residency in Puerto Rico, he just took home the Grammy for Album of the Year and now this big time record breaking Super Bowl halftime show. So today we are going to talk about Bad Bunny. Yes, a bit about the halftime show, but we're going to go a bit deeper with somebody who has been covering him since the beginning. Writer and journalist Suzy Exposito. How does she see this moment? Not just for the superstar, but for the culture. And why is the Benito Bowl still resonating with so many people? Stay with me.
Audie Cornish
00:01:14
Suzy Exposito, introduce yourself.
Suzy Exposito
00:01:16
Hey, my name is Suzy exposito and I am a music journalist and editor at Delos, the Latin culture wing at the LA Times.
Audie Cornish
00:01:25
Now you are not just any journalist, any music journalist. You are the music journalist who has profiled Bad Bunny multiple times and each time. So you've spent time with him.
Suzy Exposito
00:01:38
Yes, yes. I mean, a lot of it was over Zoom in 2020. My most famous profile of him was in 2020 for Rolling Stone, for the cover of Rolling Stone for which I became the first Latina to write a Rolling Stone cover story. And that came out in May of 2020 and we spent hours together on Zoom because I was on my way to the island and then everything shut down because of COVID, so.
Audie Cornish
00:02:07
Yeah, and on the cover, he has a mask. He's like pulling down, you know, what we now I see as that COVID era mask. But I think what's interesting about that, I don't know what it's like for you, but I remember when I was coming up, if I tried to pitch an up and coming musician, it was always this super involved pitch. I was like, no, so it's interesting is so then no. I promise you, they're really interesting to like.
Suzy Exposito
00:02:31
What you've had to do? Oh absolutely for like almost two years it took a lot of campaigning because I you know I kept showing up to meetings and I was like I was like J balvin, Bad bunny they're blowing up they're gonna be a huge deal and like you may not understand them literally it's something that we would hate to miss like as Rolling Stone, like I was like, these are not artists that you should be missing out on right now. It would be best if we were early to make the call. I mean, I started campaigning in 2018, especially after Bad Bunny and J Balvin, they landed their first number one hit with Cardi B. In 2018, which was called I Like It.
Audie Cornish
00:03:22
Well, but this is why I'm asking about this. It's like, I'm from Jamaica, so like reggae, reggaeton, like I'm sort of like vaguely aware of this music, but I'm also aware that people see them as some ethnic music over there that comes out of passing car windows that is not related to mainstream music. And over the last couple of years, that has changed so radically that we can now land in this moment. For Bad Bunny, like that this thing that just happened with the Super Bowl in a way was a culmination of something not just for him, right, but in the world of music.
Suzy Exposito
00:03:58
Like the sea change has already come in the music industry and this just further confirms that.
Audie Cornish
00:04:06
But it comes in waves, right? Like, when I think about a moment in the halftime show, you know, my little middle school heart sort of jumped out of my chest when it was like, Ricky Martin appeared, right. And it's because when Ricky Martin burst on the scene with the Grammys, keep that in mind, he literally was already making music and doing great. But he literally burst out with this phenomenal Legend Grammy performance. And this is at the time where people were like, the Latin explosion. And like all the music journalists, right? You remember this. I do, yeah. Even though it was all artists who, in a way, were being embraced for singing in English, were being embrace specifically for their crossover appeal. And that's kind of one of the times I remember thinking people were talking about how global the music scene was.
Suzy Exposito
00:05:02
That's when they were siloing everything into, like, world music. It was a different time. Yeah, if you were making music that wasn't in English, you'd be thrown in a bucket called world music, and if you wanted to make it in the mainstream, you had to sing in English or bust. That's just how it was.
Audie Cornish
00:05:22
'Yeah, and that's why it was so wild having Ricky Martin sing in the show. Not just because, you know, Bad Bunny sort of saying, look, here's an artist I looked up to and I want to give him his flowers, right? As the young people say. Yeah. But he had him singing a song that, as far as I was reading, is kind of an anti-colonial. It is on the Bad Bunny album. So tell me about this song and tell me about that, because I do think this kind of song is the difference between Ricky Martin. And a Bad Bunny.
Suzy Exposito
00:05:53
Ricky Martin singing Lo Que Le Paso a Hawaii, you know, what happened to Hawaii, and singing it in Spanish, which is a language that most people in the United States is not familiar with hearing him sing in, was a really beautiful moment for Ricky Martin as well. You know, like beautiful moment for Bad Bunny, like he's really good about shouting out the people who came before him. And he and Ricky, they... Have been working together since Bad Bunny released his 2018 album. But for someone like Ricky Martin, who came up, you know, in a boy band in the 80s and really just like worked tooth and nail to remain in the music industry. And eventually he did make that crossover in the 90s by singing in English. Like, I mean, the Cup of Life was sensational. Living La Vida Loca, like how can we... forget, you know, but—.
Audie Cornish
00:06:52
Turning up weddings everywhere every year since yeah.
Suzy Exposito
00:06:56
'But he went back to his roots and so like Ricky Martin is somebody for whom he felt like he did have to sell himself out and Just thinking about the trajectory of his career Like he didn't come out as gay until 2010 and then now the way that he really embraced not just as Puerto Rican-ness but his like patriotism for Puerto Rico specifically it was really powerful to see him, especially speak up for like Puerto Rican sovereignty. That's what that song is about.
Audie Cornish
00:07:26
Yeah, we should say the lyrics of that song. Some of them are like, they want to take away the river. They want to takeaway the beach. They want my neighborhood, right? They want me grandma to leave. And the line that comes, I don't want them to do to you what happened in Hawaii.
Lo que paso a Hawaii clip
00:07:47
No quiero que hagan contigo lo que paso a Hawaii
Audie Cornish
00:07:49
I have to be honest, it didn't seem political if you didn't know the song, right? It was like, oh, Tio Martin is singing, this is so great, and all the moms at home screaming. And I wanna talk about the sort of the weight of expectations that was like this will be political and what that was supposed to look like.
Suzy Exposito
00:08:08
Oh, it was political, it just in Spanish.
Audie Cornish
00:08:10
But it's also very fun. You know what I mean? It was like, we're at a wedding. We're at the bodega. We're here. Like to me, you know what they mean? Like the sugar cane fields have feet. Like it was the ultimate split screen. It was an overlay screen, which I've never seen.
Suzy Exposito
00:08:26
It's like a throwback to the history of Puerto Rico, but also the history of the Caribbean, of Latin America. And how we arrived at this musical moment has roots in the sugarcane fields, thinking about how sounds, you know, like folkloric kinds of sounds like bomba y plena, which Bad Bunny plays with on his last album. Those were derived from people brought over from Africa to be enslaved, you know, they were derived from the Taíno people, the indigenous people in the Caribbean. And so like, it was a beautiful way to remind people, oh no, we've been here for like hundreds, thousands of years, and we're using the same rhythms. We're dancing to the same rhythms that people were dancing to 500 years ago. And that's the story, that's America.
Audie Cornish
00:09:22
Yeah, that's America, which a lot of people are pointing to the end with all of the flags of the countries of the Americas, which people may not remember in all of that Monroe doctrine of it all.
Suzy Exposito
00:09:36
Exactly, exactly. And that was like a course correction in the narrative of America. It's just reminding people that America is really a lot more than the United States. It's a bunch of different countries and also like unincorporated territories, colonies. And we're all part of this broad fabric that is America but people want to make it singular. Where people want to also like. Ignore the humanity of so many people who are on the same land. And I feel like the scenes with, you know, the nail salon, the bodega.
Audie Cornish
00:10:18
That's where I felt represented.
Suzy Exposito
00:10:20
Yeah, the taco stands. Like, these were these are beautiful little vignettes that touched upon our humanity as Latinos, like we keep the neighborhoods running. We keep society running in so many different ways. And to see the working class being represented. But I just, I loved the ways that he, that he brought it to the stadium. It was like a movie set. It was a living organism that we're watching on the screen.
Audie Cornish
00:10:53
It was. That's a great way to put it. He takes his context wherever he goes.
Suzy Exposito
00:10:59
Exactly.
Audie Cornish
00:11:00
When I try and come up with a parallel, I was thinking about Beyoncé and the roots of her Cowboy Carter album coming from her being sort of snubbed at the Country Music Awards. And then I was thinkin' about how, you know, it was a while back where Tony Hinchcliffe, the comedian at the Trump campaign rally, called Puerto Rico garbage.
Tony Hinchcliffe clip
00:11:19
But there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now
Audie Cornish
00:11:24
And now, here we are. Here we are! I know you're going to tell me because he's been working on this album for a while, but there is something about this that feels, it's not just a rebuke, it is undeniable.
Suzy Exposito
00:11:41
I think that the core of DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS is the love that he has for Puerto Rico. And it's a slogan that he used at the Grammys that he brought up again at the Super Bowl. The only thing that's more powerful than hate is love. The theme of the album really is just how much he wants his people, his culture, to thrive. It's not just about him. It's about you know, like uplifting the Puerto Rican people. Also, whether they live in Puerto Rico or whether they've had to leave, because it's astonishing the number of people who left Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. You know, they're estimating 180,000 to 200,000 people left the island, which is a massive exodus.
Audie Cornish
00:12:32
Yeah.
Suzy Exposito
00:12:33
And his latest album, it's all about, like, also reaching out to the diaspora, you know, the reason why he sings, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, is because he's like, I should have taken more photos when you were around. You know, when we were in the same neighborhood, when we were all living in grandma's house together, I really wish that I relished that time with you. And that's something that transcends. Puerto Rican culture, I think especially it speaks to so many Latinos, so many immigrants who had to leave their homes, who were seeking a better life, or they had to flee their refugees. And I think that's what made this album so powerful, or if you've ever had to leave your home to make a better live or fulfill your dreams, this is an album for you.
Audie Cornish
00:13:22
We're talking with Susie Exposito. We'll be back in a moment.
Audie Cornish
00:13:30
I have been seeing, while you have one part of the political culture trying to define what it is to be an American in very specific ways, which we saw with the TPUSA answer about faith and freedom and the people who couldn't stand that bad bunny did not sing in English. But at the same time, you have people embracing Latino pop culture figures. And when you look at that as someone who's had to lobby right to even talk about these things to get stories done What do you see?
Suzy Exposito
00:14:08
I see a cultural dissonance that's really alarming, to be honest. I live in Los Angeles where I've been seeing people being arrested outside of like, you see street vendors getting arrested. You see videos of ICE agents like running into shops that people frequent and taking out our neighbors. And so it is really wild to see Spanish language music on such a prominent platform, but also people being excited about it. And there is a political significance to the number of people who don't speak Spanish and didn't grow up in the culture being really enthusiastic about it because it is to be so loud and proud. In a time when a lot of people really, like in their everyday lives, are hiding. You know, they're not going to work. They're not going to school. They're afraid of being profiled. There are people being profilled for speaking Spanish or just being brown. And it's something that...
Audie Cornish
00:15:18
Right, under the allowances from the Supreme Court ruling and commentary from Brett Kavanaugh.
Suzy Exposito
00:15:23
That's the thing is it's been enshrined in the law. These things are being written into laws. I know that black people in the US have been sounding the alarm for ages and ages. And I think that this is a time when the enthusiasm, the joy of it all is showing like a growing resistance to these insane overreaches of power that we're seeing from the federal government. And the racism and discrimination and xenophobia that is being written into law every day.
Audie Cornish
00:15:57
I have to admit, I actually really wrestle with this because I think, you know, there's that old saying of like, everybody wants to be black, but nobody wants to BE black. Like the idea that, you know, American culture is very good at embracing black and brown people singing, dancing, running with a ball. And then there's some wall you hit of acceptance. This is a struggle question for anyone thinking about racism in the U.S., I think.
Suzy Exposito
00:16:27
I think that the right is really struggling with the fact that they're losing the culture war. Like the things that the federal government is doing right now, like they're wildly unpopular. They're only like losing popularity. They don't have a cultural leg to stand on. We see how, you know, like Kid Rock's alternative halftime show was a flop.
Audie Cornish
00:16:59
I think at one point it had a few million viewers on socials, but yes, comparatively. In comparison, and actually there's no comparison. But even the fight over the Kennedy Center or the fight, one of the things that I remember is there's so much conversation on the right that's like, we need to take back the conversation around culture.
Suzy Exposito
00:17:22
'Mm-hmm.
Audie Cornish
00:17:23
Reorient it around all the things we care about. English speaking, faith, Western culture, you hear that a lot, Western civilization.
Suzy Exposito
00:17:33
Yeah, and it's like who in the West? Who? Who are we? Yeah, and I think they really struggle with the fact that Bad Bunny was not asked to perform at the Super Bowl for diversity points. The NFL was not looking for diversity point when they asked Bad Bunny to play the Super Bowl. They asked him because he's the best.
Audie Cornish
00:17:57
Yeah, not just because they literally never are.
Suzy Exposito
00:18:00
He's just the best man for the job. But he is like the number one most streamed artist. In the world, why wouldn't they ask him? And I think that, you know, like, I mean, if you wanna talk numbers, like his residency brought in hundreds of millions of dollars to Puerto Rico. We know how tough of a competitor Taylor Swift is. She released an album last year and Bad Bunny still eclipsed her in streaming numbers.
Audie Cornish
00:18:27
We haven't had so many big pop culture displays of solidarity for the Latin American community. You can tell me if I'm wrong there, if I miss any people online.
Suzy Exposito
00:18:36
Oh, we're usually fighting.
Audie Cornish
00:18:39
Yeah, yeah. Yes, I mean, it's a huge community, right? It's a diaspora community with like very big domestic politic partisan splits. But is there something about this moment that could be like a catalyst for more conversation, or a catalyst for people to feel more comfortable speaking up.
Suzy Exposito
00:19:05
I think it's massive that a Puerto Rican artist like Bad Bunny has expressed so much solidarity with immigrants. Puerto Rico is under its own conditions. The way that Puerto Ricans experience the United States, it's a different relationship. It's a colonial relationship. I've heard other Latinos be like, oh, you know, Puerto Rican's complain so much, but they're the ones who, you're part of the US and it's like, they can't even vote. Like—
Audie Cornish
00:19:34
Yeah.
Suzy Exposito
00:19:35
'What kind of citizenship is that? It's not citizenship, it's second-class citizenship. And so the solidarity between Puerto Ricans happening right now and the rest of the Latin American, Latino population in the US is incredible to see.
Audie Cornish
00:19:55
So we are hearing and are gonna be hearing people who complained about the show, who didn't like it for one reason or another. One of the Real Housewives, Jill Zarin, if that name means anything to you, reach back into your way back machine.
Suzy Exposito
00:20:08
It doesn't.
Audie Cornish
00:20:10
Good. When she was complaining in a way that felt very familiar, which is to say, it wasn't in English, I couldn't understand a word, why would they make this choice on the 250th anniversary of the US? I see you rolling your eyes already.
Suzy Exposito
00:20:28
I think the subtext is they're having a party and I wasn't invited, but they were invited. They just didn't take him up on the invitation. They thought they were too good to take him on the invite. And I think like—
Audie Cornish
00:20:44
Or they didn't think it was his to offer.
Suzy Exposito
00:20:46
'Yeah, yeah, I mean, the nerve, again, being the number one most streamed artist in the world performing at the Super Bowl. Like, people need to understand, like, the NFL halftime show is not for Republicans. It's for everybody. It is not even for the players. The players aren't paying attention. They're in the locker room. And the rest of us have to watch at home. And so it's for the rest of us watching at home. And how powerful is it that Bad Bunny was bagging groceries 10 years ago, and could become a Super Bowl halftime headliner in 10 years? And that is the beauty of America. That is the American dream. And I don't take that for granted. But to say that only specific kinds of people should be able to use the U.S. as like an incubator for their dreams. I think that's so small-minded. I think it's so high school. Like, grow up. People migrate. People migrate for so many reasons and there are talented people in every ethnic group that you can think of. Why shouldn't they be able to grow their talents in the United States?
Audie Cornish
00:22:08
Tell people where they can find you in your work right now. Any socials, any newsletters, where can people see what you're up to?
Suzy Exposito
00:22:16
You can follow what I'm doing at De Los, which is our Latin culture section at the Los Angeles Times. It's where I'm an editor and we also have some, you know, some plans for a podcast that are in the works. So you might be able to see me.
Audie Cornish
00:22:36
Come, come to the dark side.
Suzy Exposito
00:22:39
Yeah. You can read my work in the LA Times as well as magazines like Vogue, Elle. Where I sometimes write features, so...
Audie Cornish
00:22:50
Thank you so much for being here, Suzy Exposito. I appreciate you.
Suzy Exposito
00:22:53
I appreciate you, Audie, thank you.
Audie Cornish
00:22:56
That's it for today's show. We'll see you next week.
