Bad Bunny, a superstar rapper, is good business
On Spotify and Netflix Spanish seems to be taking over the world
On one day last month Spotify’s four most-streamed songs were “Ella Baila Sola”, an upbeat tune with a prominent trombone; “Where She Goes”, mixing R&B and rap; “un x100to”, medium-tempo and heavy on acoustic guitar and accordion, and “La Bebe”, a slow, mostly electronic bit of reggaeton, a style from Puerto Rico with a beat adapted from Jamaican dancehall. On the surface, these songs have little in common. But the world’s top four tunes, streamed over 20m times that day, do share one feature: they are all sung in Spanish.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Bad Bunny, good business”
From the June 3rd 2023 edition
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