Bad Bunny is bad, brings obscenity to the Super Bowl

February 11, 2026 • 10:20 am

UPDATE: I couldn’t make out the lyrics, but Grok gave what he sang (h/t Luana), so it isn’t nearly as obscene as the entire lyrics linked here. But there are still obscene bits, not to mention suggestive ones. I suggest you use Google translate on this Spanish: “Si te lo meto no me llame'” And “if I put it in”? What does that mean?

So consider this a partial retraction. However, it’s still a pretty dirty song and there is also the crotch-grabbing and mock copulation.

[Parte II: Yo Perreo Sola + Safaera][Refrán: Nesi & Bad Bunny]
Ante’ tú me pichaba’ (Tú me pichaba’)
Ahora yo picheo (Mmm, nah)
Antes tú no quería’ (No quería’)
Ahora yo no quiero (Mmm, no)
Ante’ tú me pichaba’ (-chaba’)
¡Las mujeres en el mundo entero!
Ahora yo picheo
Antes tú no quería’
Ahora yo no quiero
¡Perreando sin miedo!
English Translation:
Before, you ignored me (You ignored me)
Now I ignore you (Mmm, nah)
Before, you didn’t want to (Didn’t want to)
Now I don’t want to (Mmm, no)
Before, you ignored me (-ignored)
Women all over the world!
Now I ignore you
Before, you didn’t want to
Now I don’t want to
Twerking without fear!
[Coro: Nesi & Bad Bunny, Ambos]
No, tranqui, yo perreo sola (Mmm, ey)
Ey, ey, ey, mueve, mueve, mueve
Yo perreo sola (Perreo sola)
Okey, ey, ey
English Translation:
No, chill, I twerk alone (Mmm, ey)
Ey, ey, ey, move, move, move
I twerk alone (Twerk alone)
Okay, ey, ey
[Verso: Bad Bunny]
Mi bi anda fuga’o y yo quiero que tú me lo esconda’
Agárralo como bonga
Se mete una que la pone cachonda, ey
Brinca en los Audi, no en los Honda, ey
Si te lo meto no me llame’
Que esto no es pa’ que me ame’
Si tu novio no te—
Pa’ eso que no—, ey, ey
English Translation:
My thing is on the run and I want you to hide it for me
Grab it like a bonga
She takes one that makes her horny, ey
She jumps in the Audis, not in the Hondas, ey
If I put it in you, don’t call me
‘Cause this isn’t for you to love me
If your boyfriend doesn’t—
For that he doesn’t—, ey, ey
[Puente: Bad Bunny]
En el perreo no se quita
Fuma y se pone bella, ey
Me llama si me necesita, ey
Pero por ahora está solita
Ella perrea—
English Translation:
In the twerking she doesn’t stop
She smokes and gets beautiful, ey
She calls me if she needs me, ey
But for now she’s alone
She twerks—
The medley transitioned into the next song after this bridge, cutting off before delving into additional explicit verses from the full studio version of “Safaera” (such as references to more graphic sexual acts or substances). This kept the performance energetic but toned down for the event. 


I didn’t plan to watch the Superbowl or its halftime show, and I didn’t.  But when I heard that Bad Bunny was the headliner of the halftime show, and reading that this was repeatedly described as “historic”, I figured his ethnicity was what made it “historic”, though I didn’t know his ethnic background.  Looking him up, I saw that he’s a Puerto Rican rapper, producer, and singer, and occasionally a professional wrestler. Wikipedia describes him as being “widely credited with helping Spanish-language rap reach mainstream global popularity and is considered one of the greatest Latino rappers of all time.” The article below says

So I figured, okay, he’s the first Hispanic to perform at halftime after 59 previous Superbowls.  But that seemed weird; surely there were others before him. Sure enough, Grok told me this:

Several Hispanic or Latino artists have performed at the Super Bowl halftime show prior to Bad Bunny’s appearance in 2020. Here’s a list of them, including the years they performed and brief notes on their heritage:

Gloria Estefan (Cuban-American): Performed in 1992 (Super Bowl XXVI, with Miami Sound Machine), 1995 (Super Bowl XXIX, with Miami Sound Machine), and 1999 (Super Bowl XXXIII).

Arturo Sandoval (Cuban): Performed in 1995 (Super Bowl XXIX).

Christina Aguilera (Ecuadorian descent): Performed in 2000 (Super Bowl XXXIV).

Enrique Iglesias (Spanish): Performed in 2000 (Super Bowl XXXIV).

Taboo (Jaime Luis Gomez of The Black Eyed Peas) (Mexican descent): Performed in 2011 (Super Bowl XLV).

Bruno Mars (Puerto Rican descent): Performed in 2014 (Super Bowl XLVIII) and 2016 (Super Bowl 50).

Gustavo Dudamel (Venezuelan): Conducted the orchestra in 2016 (Super Bowl 50). 

So I didn’t know what was “historic” about Bad Bunny’s appearance, but I supposed that it was because he sang in Spanish. Well, that’s one thing, but probably the most salient reason for all the excitement and praise was that the show occurred at an opportune moment: a time when liberal Americans, in the face of ICE’s assaults, can show their colors by being pro-immigrant (though Bad Bunny is, like all Puerto Ricans, an American citizen by birth).  As the article by David Volodzko in The Radicalist below begins (WARNING: graphic, sexual, and obscene language!):

The Apple Music Super Bowl LX halftime show opened in a sugar cane field with Bad Bunny singing in Spanish about girls sucking his dick, featuring guest appearances by Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin, some rapping about fucking girls with big tits in his car with his erect penis, then the dancers waved the flags of various Latin American countries with a sign that read, “Together, we are America,” and Bunny listed the countries of the Americas. At least it was entertaining. The political message was about as subtle as anything else Bad Bunny writes. We are all American. All Latinos are American. All the illegal immigrants coming to America from Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras are American. Love defeats hate. Oppose ICE. Or something like that. The guy’s not exactly a philosopher.

As TODAY says, “Bad Bunny celebrated the history, culture and pride of Puerto Rico with his historic Super Bowl 2026 halftime show.” (The link also gives all the songs he sampled in the show.) Also, note that Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin, Cardi B, and Karol G. made cameo appearances in the show.

Here: take 13 minutes and watch for yourself, and note that, as a few readers said yesterday, he grabs his crotch quite a bit. Watch it by clicking on the “Watch on YouTube below” icon or here.

Click to read.

The point of the article, besides Bad Bunny’s obscenity, is that “Americans” refer to people in the U.S., not generally Latinos. Well, that doesn’t bother me. But Volodzko points out not only that this was not at all the first Spanish artist headlining the Superbow, and that the show was overly woke (again, I couldn’t care less).  The part I’m pointing out here is not only humorous but hypocritical: the nature of the show, with Bad Bunny grabbing his crotch and singing Spanish lyrics so obscene that I have to put them below the fold, would not be tolerated if the show was in English. Even Bad Bunny wouldn’t even get away with it if the lyrics were in English.

Remember when Justin Timberlake (accidentally) tore off Janet Jackson’s nipple cover at the Superbowl halftime show, exposing her nipple? That caused a huge scandal, which was called Nipplegate and has its own article on Wikipedia. Football is one of our national sports, and Americans want a good, clean halftime show.  I have to say that Bad Bunny’s show was lively and enjoyable, but think again when you read the lyrics below.

Finally, Volodzko avers that trying to mainstream Hispanic culture is unnecessary as it’s already here:

You see, Bad Bunny’s halftime performance signals the mainstreaming of Latin culture in America at a time when Latinos make up 20% of the population. The problem is, this abrasive performance was also totally unnecessary. It comes off like a celebration of Latino diversity, as if America has finally reached a moment when Latinos can be themselves. We’re here — deal with it. Except Latinos don’t need any mainstreaming. Shakira and J. Lo already did the halftime. Despacito was the No. 1 song in the United States and everybody loved it. Coco is one of the biggest Disney movies of all time. Chipotle is everywhere. Americans love Latin culture. Bad Bunny is declaring victory in a war that no longer exists. That’s because the subtext here is Trump, ICE, and immigration. And I’m sorry, but if that’s the conversation we’re having, then we are not all Americans.

I love Latin america. I have lived in many parts, including Puerto Rico. I am married to a Latina and we have a Latina daughter. I speak Spanish, I cook Latin food, and I dance salsa. Latin culture is a permanent part of my everyday life. Saying that we are not all Americans is not in any way disrespectful to Latinos. It’s just a fact.

Again, this isn’t a big deal to me. But the part below is—not that I’m a prude, but that Bad Bunny’s lyrics wouldn’t be tolerated except by people who don’t understand Spanish.  If he sang them in English, it would be a scandal worse than Nipplegate.

Writing for The Chicago Tribune, Christopher Borrelli described it as “close to art” and “a cultural moment, a paradigm shift.” Time characterized the show as “a fierce act of resistance” and “a sharp cultural and history lesson.” I could go on, but I’ll spare you. What I won’t spare you, however, are his lyrics. Yes, I’m exactly the kind of white-privileged male that Fienberg is taking about. One who looks things up. Here are some selected lyrics from the song “Safaera,” which Bad Bunny sang during the show:

GO BELOW THE FOLD TO SEE THESE LYRICS IN ENGLISH, which you can see in Spanish here, I had them checked by a friend of mine of Puerto Rican descent, and she said they were “adequate enough”. She was also said they were “disgusting.”

They are about as graphically obscene as yu can get.  Would they appear in a halftime show in English? Of course not.  They didn’t fly among many Hispanics, either. Here’s a contrast between assessments of Bad Bunny’s sbow by the Washington Post versus UHN Plus, a very popular Spanish-language online newspaper originating in Miami.

Wholesome? Did they even translate the lyrics?

I asked Luana, who speaks Spanish as well as her native Portuguese, to translate the UHN bit in the tweet on the right, and it says this: “Critique of the halftime show: images that generate embarrassment and reproach on the part of the public.”

There you go.  In the photo, of course, Bad Bunny is feigning copulation with a woman. I can’t see this as exactly a “wholesome” depiction of Hispanic culture. (It isn’t of course: it’s seen through the misogynistic lens of Bad Bunny.)

Anyway, if you don’t mind sexually graphic lyrics, go below the fold and read what Bad Bunny, who was very bad, sang during the show. Here’s the penultimate paragraph  from Volodzko:

You can decide whether you think the Super Bowl should be family-friendly or whether that ship has sailed. But I don’t think the English equivalent of this song would be allowed. So then what’s going on here? That’s the part that bothers me most about this latest flashpoint in our culture wars. I couldn’t care less whether Bad Bunny performed. I don’t watch the Super Bowl. But it’s the attempt to bullshit me, to gaslight me, to get away with something as if I wouldn’t notice, that rubs the wrong way. For example, to sing about girls sucking you off in front of millions of Americans and then pretend that people are objecting simply because they don’t like the sound of Spanish. Oh, because xenophobia is the problem, is it? Or as if Americans have a serious anti-Latino issue that needs addressing.

Rumors that BB was fined $10 million for crotch-grabbing and obscenity are false, though he was guilty of both!

Click “continue reading” to see the lyrics in English:

Part of the lyrics from “Safaera,” sung during halftime:

Pussy with dick, dick with ass (push it in)
Pussy with dick, dick with ass, yes (push it in)
Pussy with dick, dick with ass (push it in)
Your tits rubbing my nipples (push it in) …

Really big tits like Lourdes Chacón
Really big ass like Iris Chacón
I don’t know why I haven’t seen the pussy
But let’s go to bed to fuck you in panties …

I want to grind on you and smoke a blunt
To see what is hidden in your pants
I want to grind on you and grind on you and grind on you (hard, hard)
I want to grind on you and smoke a blunt (hard, hard)
I want to grind on you and grind on you and grind (hard, hard)
I want to grind on you and smoke a blunt, a blunt (hard, hard)
The ecstasy is already kicking in …

My dick is being chased and I want you to hide it
Grab it like a bonga
She took a pill that made her horny
She fucks in the Audi, not in the Honda, ayy
If I give it to you, don’t call me
Cause this is not to make you love me, ayy
If your boyfriend doesn’t eat your ass
He better fuck off

Come down to my house, I’ll lick it all up
Mami, I’ll lick it all up
Come down to my house, I’ll wear you out, ayy
I’ll wear you out
Come down to my house, I’ll lick it all up (papi, keep going!)
Mami, I’ll lick it all up (papi, keep going!)
Tell me, servant (papi, keep going)
If you smoke weed (papi, pa-papi) …

The dealer is twerking (hard!)
It seems like she fucks well while high
I want to take a selfie with that huge ass (wow)
Erect, erect, I’m erect, and it shows (whoa, whoa)
What are we gonna do with that huge ass?
In university they’re all A, A, A
But those tits are C
You are super horny, mami, I already know
I’m also horny, what are we gonna do?
With that bum-bum, go crazy, bum-bum
Go crazy with that bum-bum, go crazy, bum-bum
If you have that bum-bum, go crazy, bum-bum
If you have that bum-bum, go crazy, buoh!

23 thoughts on “Bad Bunny is bad, brings obscenity to the Super Bowl

  1. I hated the crotch-grabbing, but Bad Bunny was just following in the footsteps of other crotch-grabbers, so I didn’t regard his behavior as “historic.” I did wonder at what the lyrics were. Now I know. Very juvenile if you asked me, even laughable. No, lyrics like that should not be part of the Super Bowl halftime show.

  2. The alternative performance by Kid Rock: he also apparently has gross lyrics.

    Modern pop music: didn’t like it at all before. No intention of exploring further !

      1. I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean with “it was his voice”. I understand he has some really explicit lyrics. The article above (from the radicalism) makes it sound (to me) like he actually sang those explicit parts during the show. And it’s just not clear to me that he did, and I thought that’s a distinction worth making.

          1. Thanks for the clarification! And for the update on the post. I meant to imply that the explicit parts weren’t included in the performance (not that maybe they were sung by someone else), but that didn’t come out well in my post.

      2. I think the question is whether he sang those lyrics or did he avoid using the objectionable words? A printout of the lyrics of a song as it appears on his recordings is not necessarily the same thing as what was performed live. To me this is still ambiguous. Are those the words he sang live? I don’t like censorship, but if you have some standards they need to be enforced without regard to language.

  3. Michael Jackson used to grab his crotch when he danced. At least he didn’t sing lyrics as vulgar as this. Whoa. I saw conflicting reports on the Kid Rock show. Daily Mail reported “MILLIONS tune in to Kid Rock Halftime Show” while another news source reported “Kid Rock Halftime Show Falls Flat”. Lol. I did see that blurb from WaPo about how Bad Bunny’s show embodied “family values”, though. Whose family values, exactly? Esptein’s?

  4. Blatant, crude, cynical lyrics do significant harm to the perception of lovemaking.
    There’s no love in these “songs.”
    Eros is beautiful. Why do we celebrate those who pull it down into a sewer?

  5. There is apparently a question whether the words Bad Bunny actually sang are the “official “ lyrics of the song, which are indeed obscene, or whether he sang a version that had been cleaned up for broadcasting. He can’t be described as having brought obscenity to the Super Bowl if you have to look up a version which he didn’t sing in order to criticize him for bringing obscenity to the Super Bowl.

  6. OK, I’ll say this :

    “Queering” and “To Queer” is a verb – an action. (It is also an “identity without an essence”, quoting David M. Halperin, but leaving that aside for now.)

    There is a lot of literature about “Queering __anything___” e.g. Queering Critical Literacy and Numeracy – see reference link below.

    What we have here is – IMHO :

    Queering the Super Bowl

    And it isn’t even 100% Queered yet. See? Janet Jackson did it too, but not with a proper Queer Consciousness.

    ref: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-11584-5

    PS : library still hasn’t gotten it for me.

  7. I couldn’t care less about football or, by extension, the Super Bowl halftime show. However, it seems that the Bad Bunny performance was a huge middle-finger to football fans. Why wouldn’t the NFL pick an artist with broad appeal among their fans? And to pick one whose music is obsure and that isn’t even performed in English? I saw that a Congressman was trying to get FCC Standards involved, but I didn’t know why until you posted this. My impression is that the alternate halftime show by Kid Rock was highly viewed. I think the NFL should expect that fans will tune away from the halftime show if this keeps up.

  8. Many folks are conflating the lyrics of his songs with the lyrics that he actually “sang” on Sunday. He certainly did not sing the lyrics lyrics from “Safaera,” Yes, he used the colloquial “fuck” a few times, but there was nothing like what is being claimed by the deranged MAGA crowd. Go here for the complete translation, start to finish: https://www.justjared.com/2026/02/10/super-bowl-lx-halftime-show-lyrics-english-translation-hear-bad-bunnys-entire-set/

      1. Sorry, that was not my intent; we certainly know you ain’t MAGA. I was referring to the outrage on the far right that seems to be blinkered to Kid Rock and his lyrics 🙂

  9. Pop lyrics have been in the gutter for decades. What used to be slipped into pop songs as innuendo became about as subtle as a sledgehammer.

    Remember 2 Live Crew, circa 1990? This stuff was played on the radio.

    Sometime around the mid-80s, enterprising young men from the “hood” allied with savvy business types to produce “gangsta rap”. It glorified violence, machismo, gang activity, drug use, crass materialism, and misogyny, but became as popular in suburbia as it was in South Central, and therefore normalized this type of “music”. It became a way for white liberals to show how cool and enlightened they are.

    This is why you may find yourself at a barbeque with white liberal types of a certain age and hear Biggie Smalls playing. The same people that would dress you down for the slightest hint of sexism will gladly listen to “Dead Wrong” by the Notorious B.I.G., whose lyrics could have been written by Charles Manson.

    1. Exactly. It had crude and vulgar bits that likely would not have made it if rapped in English. However, crude and vulgar has been a part of the halftime shows for many years, going back to at least the boob grab and breast reveal 😅

  10. Like any other content scheduled to air on TV, Bad Bunny had to have his performance sanitized by the NBC and NFL censors. And it was; the most explicit lyrics were not sung. Those controlling the broadcast also had a 10-second delay in case Bad Bunny went rogue.

  11. Hip-hop music generally is often rife with obscenities, it’s really appalling. I have no idea why they think “singing” about such things is cool (or whatever slang word the current generation prefers), especially young women. The lyrics often sound misogynistic to me.

    OK, this is not exactly new. There have been lots of examples of somewhat vulgar lyrics in rock & roll as well (many of us will remember Robert Plant singing about giving someone “every inch of [his] love”). But hip-hop has taken it to a completely new level.

    Each to their own with music, I guess, and I’m not advocating censorship, but there are limits to what is appropriate in certain circumstances. The Super Bowl halftime is one of those. Presumably Bad Bunny has some songs with lyrics that aren’t vulgar, so why didn’t perform those?

    A while back I had a very unpleasant experience while out to dinner at a highly regarded local restaurant, owned by a Black female restaurateur of high local repute. The food was good but they were playing hip-hop as the background music, though it wasn’t very “background” as the volume was much higher than I would have preferred. But that would have been OK except that the lyrics, for which I did not need a translator as they were in English, were shockingly obscene. Really disgusting along the lines of some of the lyrics quoted above. When I complained that I really didn’t want to listen to such lyrics over dinner and asked them to play a different song, I was accused of being a racist. And so it goes…

  12. If all Brazilians, Canadians, Ecuadorians, Peruvians, etc. are “all Americans”, then I guess when Trump tells ICE to take people from a Home Depot parking lot and fly them over to Guatemala, they aren’t actually being deported.

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