Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2023: No. 8 — Bad Bunny

For this year’s update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard is counting down our staff picks for the top 10 pop stars of 2023 all this week. At No. 8, we remember the year in Bad Bunny — who, with his unrelenting impact on the global music scene, continues to shape the fabric of contemporary pop culture.

In the pop realm of 2022, there was no disputing Bad Bunny‘s indomitable reign — an accumulation of years since urbano’s global breakthrough that shot him to the forefront of the pop culture zeitgeist. With nearly 435 million grossed on the road and one of the biggest albums of the last decade, the 13-week Billboard 200-topper Un Verano Sin Ti, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio became the biggest star in the world, and our Greatest Pop Star of 2022, all while singing in Spanish.

The year kicked off in the afterglow of his 2022 triumphs. From casually tossing off collaborative hits alongside Ñengo Flow (the Christmas season-release of “Gato de la Noche”) and Eladio Carrion (“Coco Chanel”) to the now-infamous incident of throwing a fan’s cell phone into the ocean, Bad Bunny wasted no time making waves in 2023, effortlessly.

Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2023:
Introduction & Honorable Mentions | Rookie of the Year: Peso Pluma | Comeback of the Year: Miley Cyrus | No. 10: Drake | No. 9: Doja Cat

In February, the performer opened the 65th annual Grammy Awards with a historic Un Verano Sin Ti medley that paid homage to his beloved Puerto Rico. Running the gamut of Caribbean music — from merengue to plena and, of course, reggaetón — the superstar brought previously overshadowed genres to primetime television at the prestigious ceremony. (This also included a viral moment when the broadcast’s closed captioning described him as “singing in non-English.”)

Bad Bunny was up for best pop solo performance, best música urbana album, and the coveted album of the year awards. Despite not clinching the latter — memorably losing to Harry Styles’ Harry’s House — Bunny still made history as the first all-Spanish LP to receive a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. (In October, he would tell Vanity Fair, “Maybe they weren’t ready for a Spanish-language album to win the big prize.”) The night was still a success as he secured the best música urbana award for the second year in a row.

Meanwhile, rumors of a romantic entanglement with Kardashian sibling and model Kendall Jenner began to swirl that month, when TMZ captured the couple leaving a restaurant in Beverly Hills. In March, after getting seen on another date in West Hollywood, US Weekly reported from a source that they were “not official,” however, they were “getting to know each other better.”

The pairing, however, was not universally embraced by all fans, especially Latina fans. Refinery29’s Somos wrote that fans felt a “collective sense of betrayal.” “For many Latina fans venting their grievances online, Bad Bunny’s recent dates with Jenner force them to think about the possibilities and limits of popular culture and what happens when the icons we love don’t love us back,” said scholar of gender and ethnic studies, Yessica Garcia Hernandez, in April. “There is no denying that Latina fans have branded Benito as a contemporary symbol of Latina feminisms, and now there seems to be a cultural expectation from fans that want Benito to remain committed to his social justice stardom.” Nevertheless, being half of one of pop culture’s preeminent power couples further reinforced his status as an A+ lister.

April marked another milestone for Bad Bunny, who became Coachella’s first-ever Spanish-language headliner. “Latinos have been rompiéndola (killing it) for some time now. I just did a tour last year that I never imagined I’d be able to do,” he said during his Coachella performance, alluding to his record-shattering World’s Hottest Tour. “I’ve been out for some time but [I’m back] and it feels cabrón to be here tonight and that you’re all here with me.” He brought the usual (as well as some unusual) suspects on stage, including Post Malone, Ñengo Flow, Jhayco, and Jowell & Randy — oh, while also jumping on a jet ski at one point.

Just a few days later, after his historic performance, the Puerto Rican hitmaker embraced the burgeoning música mexicana boom with Billboard’s December 2022 Latin artists on the rise, Grupo Frontera, on “un x100to.” The Edgar Barrera-assisted collaboration not only dominated across multiple Billboard charts — Hot 100 (No. 5), Global 200 (No. 1), Global Excl. US (No. 1), Hot Latin Songs (No. 2) — but further helped fuel the genre’s international explosion.

Breaking a social media hiatus in May, Bunny released the Jersey club one-off “Where She Goes,” produced by MAG, followed by collaborations such as the synth-driven “Mojabi Ghost” by Tainy, from the producer’s debut album Data; and “K-Pop” by Travis Scott, also with The Weeknd, a buoyant trap song with Afrobeat elements. While these tracks debuted well and showcased Bunny’s versatility, none reached the meteoric success of his previous hits.

Then came the reggaetón number “Un Preview” in September, setting the stage for his return-to-roots, Latin-trap-heavy fifth solo album, October’s Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana. The album landed another resounding No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200, but also experienced a somewhat softer reception than Un Verano Sin Ti. (Nadie Sabe debuted with 185,000 units in its first week, roughly 90,000 shy of the 274,000 posted in May 2022 by Un Verano Sin Ti in its first frame.)

Still, five years ago, the Billboard 200 had never had a Spanish-language album atop its rankings, and Bad Bunny has now done it three albums in a row, starting with El Último Tour del Mundo. And although the Nadie Sabe songs didn’t cling to the charts in the same way, it did become Spotify’s 2023 most-streamed album in a single day upon its release.

In a notable moment for mainstream American television, Benito also hosted and performed on Saturday Night Live the week after the album drop. Billboard’s chief content officer Leila Cobo wrote on the normalization of Spanish on one of the longest-running shows in American pop culture: “Thanks to a rapper from Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, Latin presence in U.S. pop culture has been mainstreamed for perhaps the first time since I Love Lucy in the 1950s,” said Cobo. “The big difference is, I Love Lucy used comedy as a vehicle to “translate” Desi Arnaz’s accented English, accompanied by boogaloo. In contrast, Bad Bunny makes no attempt at translation or compromise when he very matter of factly speaks in Spanish.”

As the year draws to a close, Bad Bunny is plotting the Most Wanted Tour for 2024, kicking off on Feb. 21 in Salt Lake City. Despite remaining one of the globe’s biggest and best pop stars, the excitement of his previous year seems to have waned, with increased competition from rising stars like Peso Pluma, who’s leading the música mexicana explosion towards American pop; and Karol G, who also had a historic Billboard 200 debut and dominated the highest-grossing Latin tours of the year. However, Benito still secured a top 5 ranking in Latin tours — he placed No. 28 on the all-genres 2023 year-end boxscore chart. But the singer/rapper still ranked No. 1 on Billboard’s year-end Top Latin Artists chart, with Peso coming in second, and Karol in third place.

And lest anyone forget, El Conejo Malo declared precisely one year ago, “I’m taking a break. 2023 is for me, for my physical health, my emotional health to breathe, enjoy my achievements.” As we stand at the culmination of this year-long journey — witnessing his triumphant return to the Coachella stage as a headliner, his exploration of diverse musical genres, his unyielding influence on pop culture — it’s evident that his version of “taking a break” is still an extraordinary metamorphosis.

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