When Bad Bunny took the stage at the Super Bowl, what unfolded felt instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent time in working-class neighborhoods across the United States.
I understand why some people immediately read the performance through a Puerto Rico lens. Puerto Rico is his home. That cultural foundation lives in his music, his imagery, his presence. But the show did not stay on the island. When he sings “Titi me prejunto” he moves into a lived reality that stretches across the mainland. What he describes belongs to American cities. It belongs especially to South Central Los Angeles.
Barber shops. Nail salons. People gathered on sidewalks. Music drifting through open doors. Street vendors selling drinks from carts. Friends leaning against storefronts. Kids weaving between adults. These scenes live in Puerto Rico. They also live in South Central Los Angeles, in the Bronx, in East Harlem and in countless cities shaped by migration, labor, and survival.
This is everyday America.
Latin American and African American culture have been woven into US cities for generations. Puerto Rican communities, Mexican laborers, Caribbean families, along with African Americans have shaped urban life through music, food, language, and shared spaces for decades. Barber shops serve as cultural centers. Nail salons carry immigrant stories. Sidewalk vendors build economies. What appeared on that halftime stage already exists in the streets. Bad Bunny showed the America of small businesses, of people gathering outside after long days, of informal economies, of community rhythms that rarely receive national attention. He offered visibility to the parts of the country that carry its cultural heartbeat. It reflected the reality of American cities, where Spanish and English mingle, where Black and Latino histories intersect, where families build lives between borders.
Y al final quiero decirlo así: gracias, Bad Bunny.
Thank you for portraying the America I grew up in, even though I’m white. Thank you for showing what it feels like to be forgotten sometimes, to be vulnerable, to move through the world without the same agency as others. Thank you for bringing back the hot summer afternoons, the drinks sold outside on the street, the people dancing on top of a truck, the music floating through the neighborhood. Those are memories I carry with me. Those are moments I treasure deeply from my upbringing. Thank you for showing an America that lives at street level. An America of corners and small businesses.
That America raised me.