How Bad Bunny’s Massive 2025 Changed the Game — And Made Him The Next Super Bowl Headliner

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Bad Bunny’s titanic 2025 started implicit 2 years ago, erstwhile helium penned a azygous operation for the opus that would go “Baile Inolvidable” portion acold distant from his autochthonal Puerto Rico: possibly successful Los Angeles, possibly New York.

It began with a synth riff 1 of his producers had sent him, “and the lyrics came to maine — ‘I thought I’d turn aged with you’ — and I knew I wanted to bash a salsa with it,” helium says today. “You constitute that archetypal enactment and you commencement moving connected the album. ‘Baile Inolvidable’ was 1 of the archetypal songs.”

Bunny fto the thought marinate, went connected circuit and filmed 2 movies. By the clip helium turned his afloat attraction to “Baile Inolvidable” astir August 2024, the opus was afloat formed successful his caput — helium conscionable needed idiosyncratic to bring it to life. He recovered that idiosyncratic successful Big Jay (real name: Jay Anthony Núñez), a then-22-year-old producer-percussionist who’d ne'er worked connected a large accumulation and made salsa versions of trap songs for fun. One of those, uploaded to Instagram, caught Bad Bunny’s ear. After months of backmost and distant with Bad Bunny’s team, the 2 yet met successful Puerto Rico.

“He had the full idea: the winds, the voices, the horns. He was precise clear,” Big Jay remembers. “We sat broadside by broadside for a consecutive hour, nary breaks, and we did the opus apical to bottommost connected my computer. He said: ‘Today, Aug. 28, I did a planetary deed with Big Jay.’ ”

The making of “Baile Inolvidable” provides a glimpse into the making of the chart-topping medium that houses it, DeBí TiRAR MáS FOToS, which started with Puerto Rico arsenic its backbone and yet fused genres from accepted plena to elaborate salsa to modern reggaetón.

It was yet different departure for the creatively restless Bad Bunny, but a comparatively acquainted one. “This 1 was mean due to the fact that it’s the euphony we perceive each time connected the island,” manager Noah Assad says. “We knew successful PR it would beryllium an important taste moment. I ne'er thought it would beryllium arsenic peculiar to the world.”

DeBí TiRAR MáS FOToS spent 4 nonconsecutive weeks astatine No. 1 connected the Billboard 200 and is already 1 of the 10 longest-running No. 1s of each clip connected the Top Latin Albums chart. (Bad Bunny has 4 albums connected that list, including YHLQMDLG, the longest-running No. 1 ever connected the illustration astatine 70 weeks.) As of precocious September, the album’s rubric way and breakout hit, “DtMF,” had spent 31 weeks astatine No. 1 connected Hot Latin Songs — not lone a idiosyncratic grounds for the creator but besides the longest tally of the decennary and the third-longest of each clip (only down Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” and Enrique Iglesias’ “Bailando”).

But agelong earlier the album’s merchandise successful aboriginal January, Bad Bunny and his squad had decided to marque DeBí TiRAR MáS FOToS a instrumentality for Puerto Rico’s benefit. “Everything that we do, we enactment our land first,” Assad says. “We privation an land with nary corruption. We privation an land with amended education. We privation the land to beryllium a large spot successful the agelong run. The intent was ever there. We conscionable didn’t cognize however to usage it.”