\n<\/p>\n
E<\/span>arlier this month, a wave of tourists from the continental US began visiting Puerto Rico for the chance to see Bad Bunny. This would not be that remarkable \u2013 plenty of people go overseas for concerts, as tickets often go for much less than in the US (any dedicated Swiftie will tell you it was much cheaper to see her in Mexico City than, say, LA) \u2013 if not for the fact that Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Mart\u00ednez Ocasio, planned ahead for an influx of outsiders to the island. The first nine dates of his landmark 30-show residency at San Juan\u2019s Coliseo de Puerto Rico were reserved exclusively for island residents, who had to present proof of residency at one of nine locations, primarily agricultural markets. Only afterward could anyone from the outside attend the Puerto Rican superstar\u2019s show, No <\/em>Me Quiero Ir de Aqu\u00ed (I Don\u2019t Want to Leave Here), a three-hour magnum opus of Boricua pride in support of his new album Deb\u00ed Tirar M\u00e1s Fotos (I Should Have Taken More Pictures).<\/p>\n In the nearly 10 years since Bad Bunny broke containment on Soundcloud, he has made defiance of norms and expectations a personal rule. From donning drag in the Yo Perreo Sola video, to seamlessly blending genres old and new, to his refusal to sing or conduct press in English \u2013 even his appearances on Saturday Night Live, one of several forays into English media, kept Spanish as the default \u2013 Mart\u00ednez has thrillingly redefined what it looks like to be a global superstar. His residency in San Juan, the triumphant opening salvo of a world tour that will entirely skip the mainland US, is not just the latest bucked model but, I\u2019d argue, the best use of megastardom in recent memory, an application of generational celebrity that unites potent symbolism with actual material change.<\/p>\n With a capacity crowd of about 18,000 fans each night, the 21 dates of No Me Quiero Ir de Aqu\u00ed open to non-residents are expected to bring 400,000 people to San Juan, two-thirds of them from overseas. The whole residency will inject about $200m into the long-suffering local economy \u2013 enough to bump up Puerto Rico\u2019s GDP by 0.15%. The boon would feel at odds with Mart\u00ednez\u2019s mocking of thoughtless visitors in songs like Turista, if he did not also take steps to redirect the usual flow of American dollars on an island the US keeps in perpetual and extractive colonial purgatory. Tickets outside Puerto Rico are given premium price \u2013 at the moment, they cost $600 or more, on par with decent seats for Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s Cowboy Carter or Taylor Swift\u2019s The Eras Tour \u2013 and come bundled with rooms in locally owned hotels during the off-season. The deal is intended to dissuade visitors from booking one of the Airbnbs transforming the island into a second-property investment haven pricing out local residents, particularly in the wake of Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island in 2017.<\/p>\n <\/span>Bad Bunny\u2019s No Me Quiero Ir De Aqu\u00ed residency.<\/span> Photograph: Edgardo Medina\/NurPhoto\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n Maria profoundly affected Mart\u00ednez, who grew up an hour outside San Juan in Vega Baja, and has spent his career atop the global streaming charts redirecting the spotlight toward the archipelago\u2019s issues, from chronic blackouts to tax breaks for outsiders, as well as celebrating its rich history and fluid diaspora. The new show opens with a slew of national facts broadcast in Spanish, from the serious to the cheeky \u2013 \u201cSan Juan is one of the oldest cities in the Americas. It was founded in 1521\u201d as well as \u201cSancocho cures anything, according to our grandmothers.\u201d It features lavish sets \u2013 built by 1,000 local workers \u2013 evoking the lush hills and beaches of the island, as well as a whole traditional casita. The show has, unsurprisingly, provoked an outpouring of catharsis and celebration from the thousands within the Puerto Rican diaspora who have attended, and confirmed a core principle of the whole residency: this is for Puerto Rico, specifically and broadly. People like me \u2013 non-Hispanic English speakers who found Bad Bunny\u2019s music far away from his homeland, who groove without fully understanding the lyrics \u2013 can participate, but they will not be the center.<\/p>\n All of this is, ultimately, one of the most interesting and thoughtful flexes of celebrity power, particularly at the time when the economics of live music feel so precarious. While smaller artists scrabble to make the money work, and venues struggle to keep their bottom line, the biggest artists compete to put on increasingly elaborate shows, for increasingly exorbitant prices. Tickets to Bad Bunny\u2019s residency for US residents still run easily into the thousands of dollars, but at least with a political point. This is an artist who has routinely eschewed US centrism, who posted a video to his Instagram referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents as \u201csons of bitches\u201d who can\u2019t leave \u201cpeople alone and working\u201d. In an interview with Variety, he deemed touring the mainland US at this time \u201cunnecessary\u201d, as fans there have had ample opportunity to see him in the past six years. (For instance, 32 American stops for 2022\u2019s World\u2019s Hottest tour, including two sold-out nights at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.)<\/p>\n He\u2019s right, and even from afar \u2013 the tickets are, unfortunately, out of my price range, though I would pay good money to see one of our most electrifying and charismatic performers on stage again \u2013 it is thrilling to witness. \u201cBefore the residency, my fantasy for the longest time was to do a massive free show in Puerto Rico that could be locals only,\u201d Mart\u00ednez told Variety. \u201cAnd if it were up to me, all of the shows for the locals would be free, but what we\u2019ve got planned now is next level.\u201d The dream is ultimately improbable, for an artist of his stature and for it to be safe. But he\u2019s gotten as close as a superstar can get.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Earlier this month, a wave of tourists from the continental US began visiting Puerto Rico for the chance to see Bad Bunny. This would not be that remarkable \u2013 plenty of people go overseas for concerts, as tickets often go for much less than in the US (any dedicated Swiftie will tell you it was<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1295,8264,8261,3964,1547,8262,485,2893,8263],"class_list":{"0":"post-14642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bad","9":"tag-bunny","10":"tag-bunnys","11":"tag-fame","12":"tag-good","13":"tag-puerto","14":"tag-rare","15":"tag-residency","16":"tag-rico"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}