\u201cMy name is Benito Antonio Mart\u00ednez Ocasio,\u201d Bad Bunny said in Spanish. \u201cIf I am here today at Super Bowl 60, it is because I never, ever stopped believing in myself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Congrats to anyone betting on the opening song. The Puerto Rican singer, wearing an all-white suit sporting his last name on the back, began the show with \u201cTiti Me Pregunto.\u201d Pedro Pascal, Jessica Alba, and Cardi B danced underneath him, and the football field was transformed using prop plants and power lines into a vibrant and active miniature Puerto Rico. Benito passed piragua stands, played a bit of Daddy Yankee\u2019s \u201cGasolina,\u201d and adorably passed his Grammy Award to a young child. \u201cAlways believe in yourself,\u201d he told him, in Spanish. Ricky Martin performed too!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was such a fun scene that I could have easily watched Bad Bunny run around the field while singing \u201cDTMF\u201d and waving the Puerto Rican flag instead of another half of this terrible game. It was 6-0 at halftime, with the Seattle Seahawks in the lead over the New England Patriots, making for one of most boring halves in Super Bowl history. Not a single touchdown. So, Benito dancing on top of a car (and semi-officiating a live wedding while Lady Gaga sang a Latin remix of \u201cDie with a Smile\u201d) was the energy we desperately needed this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For months leading up to this halftime show, there was a sad contingent of America that was against this performance. They even staged their own \u201cAll-American\u201d halftime show for the late Charlie Kirk\u2019s Turning Point USA platform that featured Kid Rock and a smattering of white country artists. Their viewership numbers, big or small, will likely surprise us for different reasons tomorrow morning. But what\u2019s more surprising\u2014especially for such a country and an NFL that is historically against change of any kind\u2014is that the NFL has come a long way in the past decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2016, Colin Kaepernick was essentially ousted from the league after kneeling in protest during the National Anthem. President Donald Trump, in his first term, called for kneeling players to be fired. And NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who initially condemned the protests and ordered their players to stand, didn\u2019t acknowledge until after the deaths of George Floyd and Jacob Blake to police violence that the league should\u2019ve listened to the players. So, when Kendrick Lamar split a field of dancers in the red, white, and blue of the American flag in half and harked to Gil-Scott Heron by stating \u201cThe Revolution’s About to be Televised,\u201d it was a massive leap forward for the Super Bowl Halftime Show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year, Bad Bunny\u2019s performance marks another major step forward. Though he promised<\/a> that the event would be a \u201chuge party,\u201d there was no way in hell that he was leaving one of the biggest platforms in the world without delivering a political message. At the Grammy Awards last week, his \u201cICE Out\u201d statement inspired many artists who accepted awards after him to speak out against the government\u2019s racist attacks on its own citizens. And when the Puerto Rican artist added that the halftime show would still highlight \u201ca lot of my culture\u201d in a press conference<\/a> earlier this week, he was referring to a culture that\u2014the last time I checked\u2014was still a territory of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bad Bunny danced on top of a car, looking over a set designed to look like a miniature Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, Benito didn\u2019t speak a word of English throughout the entire show outside of stating \u201cGod Bless America\u201d near the very end. He plastered \u201cTHE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE\u201d on the big screen behind him, and he passionately shouted out the countries of Latin America one by one before displaying a football with the phase \u201cTogether We Are America\u201d written on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are likely some viewers who thought Bad Bunny would have said much more. Much like M.I.A. giving the camera the middle finger before him, he would’ve risked paying fines from the NFL so that he could continue to protest the actions of Trump\u2019s administration. But from what we saw from the reaction to Kendrick Lamar\u2019s halftime show last year, It\u2019s a hard line to balance. To Lamar\u2019s own credit, as well, most of his political messaging was buried under his own showboating for winning his rap battle with Drake. It\u2019s hard to blame him for wanting to take the victory lap. So, if all Bad Bunny did was put on a good show, no one would have faulted him either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, he put on a great <\/em>show. A show so celebratory of his career and his impact on music that I\u2019m sure no one will be able to hear in Puerto Rico when they wake up tomorrow morning because of how loud they were screaming for their hometown hero. And if it wasn’t three degrees Fahrenheit where I am in Brooklyn, NY, I bet I could have opened up my windows to hear Bad Bunny’s anthems blasting out of every home in the neighborhood. Hopefully, it won\u2019t take America another 250 years to learn how to have that much fun again.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSan Francisco Chronicle\/Hearst Newspapers\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n