A LIFE IN MUSIC
Bad Bunny
b. 1994 · Musician
Early Life
Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio was born on March 10, 1994, in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, and raised in the Almirante Sur neighborhood of Vega Baja. His father, Benito “Tito” Martínez, worked as a truck driver, and his mother, Lysaurie Ocasio Declet, was a schoolteacher; he has two younger brothers, Bernie and Bysael.
Music was part of his life from early childhood — he received a Vico C album for Christmas at age five and has cited it as his earliest musical memory. He sang in his church choir until age 13 and began writing his own music at 14. After high school, he enrolled in audiovisual communications at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo but left to pursue music full time, supporting himself for a period by working as a supermarket cashier while uploading songs to SoundCloud.
Rise to Fame
His 2016 song “Diles” caught the attention of DJ Luian on SoundCloud, leading to a recording contract with Hear This Music, and the follow-up single “Soy Peor” became his first entry on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart. His 2018 debut album, X 100PRE, established him as a rising force in Latin music, and it was followed by YHLQMDLG in 2020, which became the highest-charting all-Spanish album at the time and won a Grammy for Best Latin Pop or Urban Album.
Later in 2020, El Último Tour del Mundo became the first all-Spanish album to reach number one on the Billboard 200 — a milestone that signaled his crossover from Latin music star to one of the biggest artists in the world, regardless of genre or language.
Career Highlights
Bad Bunny’s 2022 album, Un Verano Sin Ti, became the most-streamed album in Spotify history and the first Spanish-language album ever nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. He followed it with Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana in 2023, and in 2025, Debí Tirar Más Fotos won the Grammy for Album of the Year, making it the first entirely Spanish-language album to win music’s top honor.
He has now won six Grammy Awards and 17 Latin Grammy Awards, and has been named Billboard’s Greatest Pop Star of the year in both 2022 and 2025. He has also been crowned the most-streamed artist on Spotify globally four separate times, a feat no other artist has matched, tallying 19.8 billion streams in 2025 alone. That summer, he staged “No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí,” a 30-date residency at San Juan’s José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum that drew roughly 600,000 attendees and was credited with a $250 million economic impact on Puerto Rico.
On February 8, 2026, Bad Bunny became the first solo Latino artist to headline the Super Bowl halftime show, delivering a performance conducted primarily in Spanish that drew an average of 128.2 million viewers — one of the most-watched halftime shows in NFL history. The announcement drew both strong support and public criticism, including comments from political figures, while artists including Jay-Z and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell publicly backed the selection.
Personal Life
Bad Bunny has described himself as sexually fluid, telling an interviewer in 2020 that he didn’t know whether he might one day be attracted to a man. He has had an on-and-off relationship with jewelry designer Gabriela Berlingeri since 2017, and previously dated lawyer Carliz De La Cruz Hernández.
He founded the Good Bunny Foundation in 2018 to support youth empowerment and cultural preservation in Puerto Rico, and has remained vocal on issues including immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, and Puerto Rican independence — notably excluding the continental United States from his 2025 tour dates over concerns related to immigration enforcement, and opening his 2026 Grammy acceptance speech with a message on the subject that drew a standing ovation.
Net Worth & Legacy
Bad Bunny’s net worth has grown rapidly alongside his career, driven by record-breaking streaming numbers, one of the largest touring operations in music, brand partnerships, and his acclaimed Puerto Rico residency, with recent reporting describing his fortune as having roughly doubled within the span of a year.
From a supermarket cashier uploading songs to SoundCloud to the first Spanish-language Album of the Year winner and the first solo Latino Super Bowl halftime headliner, Bad Bunny has reshaped what global pop stardom can look like — proving, on his own terms and largely in his native language, that music doesn’t need to cross over to English to dominate the world stage.