Great Expectations

How Bad Bunny bent global pop culture to his will-by refusing to compromise on anything

- Andrew R. Chow and Mariah Espada. Photographs by Elliot and Erick Jimenez

In 40 minutes, the former grocery bagger from Puerto Rico will try on outfits worth thousands for the cover of this magazine.

In 12 hours, he will be photographed embracing the world’s highest-paid supermodel. In one month, he will be staring out onto a sea of 125,000 superfans from the heights of Coachella’s main stage.

But right now, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, who also goes by Bad Bunny, is slouched almost completely horizontally on a green-room couch in downtown Los Angeles, thinking about being with his parents back home in Puerto Rico.

“Outside of that house, perhaps the world is listening and talking about me,” he murmurs in Spanish. “But in that house, everything is the same. Nothing has changed. It’s beautiful for me to go there and they still look at me with the eyes of, ‘Come here, Benito Antonio. The baby. The son.’”

Bad Bunny wants to be the biggest artist in the world—and he is. Last year, his fifth solo studio album, Un Verano Sin Ti, was Billboard’s top-performing album of the year, beating out Taylor Swift and Harry Styles. He broke the all-time record for tour revenue in a calendar year—with $435 million earned—and was Spotify’s most-streamed artist for the third year in a row. But Bad Bunny also wants to just be Benito; to do whatever he wants, or