Bad Bunny's "Monaco," Italian-Americans, and Latine Aspirations

I was a Bad Bunny fan when he was mostly still a SoundCloud rapper who only had a few proper singles out. I don’t think I have ever witnessed a star rise the way I have seen Bad Bunny go from being known by a handful of my friends to suddenly everyone talking to me about him. When Bad Bunny really started to grow in popularity (which I would say was about 2018, following his feature on Cardi B’s “I Like It”), I felt I knew Benito more intimately because I had been an early fan. But mostly, what made Bad Bunny feel intimately mine was that he genuinely reflected Latine youth and what we cared about. 

The Puerto Rican rapper was consistently repping the island he called home (which, you know how I feel about) in a way that was so deferential to the history that shaped him and still critical of the U.S.’ treatment of the territory and the people who belonged to it. He was dubbed a queer icon (though he’s never come out explicitly) because he challenged machismo norms in how he dressed and performed gender and showed clear support for LGBTQ folks. He…still objectified women, but occasionally, he wrote songs about their pleasure and independence, which was a real win. He only spoke Spanish, never English, which felt like an exciting and inspiring political refusal. 

Bad Bunny gave Latine kids like me a kind of social currency that was accepted beyond our families and Latine friends. Everyone loved Bad Bunny and started paying more attention to Latine cultural production, especially coming from the Caribbean. And I think, to an extent, that made us feel more loved and attended to. As a cohort of young Latines, I don’t think we had ever really experienced this level of universal love for one of our artists before. We grew up listening to Shakira, JLo, Daddy Yankee, and Pitbull, but we were peers with Benito. He was one of us, and his success felt like our own. 

Bad Bunny has only grown in popularity. He has been Spotify’s most-streamed artist for three years in a row (2019 - 2022). Tickets for his “World’s Hottest Tour” in 2022 were made available before he had a new album out, and fans still hustled to secure tickets. I have seen at least twenty different calls for papers and lectures for academic conferences, anthologies, and journals centered around Bad Bunny. However, his Latine fans, particularly those like me who have been around from the beginning, have been less and less interested in the artist. Mostly, this has been because of slips and contradictions in his politics, which initially drew and inspired these fans. But most recently, his relationship with Kendall Jenner has been taken as a kind of betrayal to his fans, especially Latine women who have been among his most fervent supporters.

Amid fan discourse, Bad Bunny has been framed as a kind of Malinche figure sleeping with the enemy for the clout and credibility a woman like Jenner offers in a white supremacist patriarchal society. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he has kept this relationship relatively private compared to his very public relationship with fellow Puerto Rican Gabriela Belingeri. When asked about the relationship in a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Bad Bunny and his handlers denied answering and tried to skirt around the issue. In a TIME profile, when asked what he thinks of fans no longer supporting him because of the relationship, he responded by encouraging folks to listen to other artists. (To be fair, there are other artists out there to love and adore.) While I could see how his avoidance would be partly to shield himself from further criticism, I also think his own uneasiness about it might be because fans are, in some ways, right. He has changed and is changing, potentially in ways that might not look so good. At what is so far the peak of his fame, the paths and options open to him are perhaps different than what he anticipated. He is, undoubtedly, in a moment of transition. Thankfully, the music he is producing gives us some insight into how he is maneuvering his celebrity around the politics and fan base that were key to his star rising. 

This past Friday, Bad Bunny released his seventh album, nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana. The album delves into the themes of his celebrity, relationships, and state of mind. Specifically, the track “Monaco” (a song about being rich) and the music video for it, I think, tell us a lot about where Benito is at in terms of navigating his fame, power, and place in the world.

The video opens by setting us in lower Manhattan’s Chinatown and Little Italy neighborhoods with a view of the Twin Towers and One World Tower. Bad Bunny is chauffeured to an undisclosed location where paparazzi with old-timey cameras are waiting to take his picture. He walks past them in a sharp black suit and sunglasses covering his face while music that sounds like it was written by Nino Rota swells. He walks through the back of a restaurant toward a host who greets him with, “Don Benito, so nice to see you. Welcome to Carbone.” As he is ushered to his seat, the other, noticeably only white patrons, stop and stare at him as he passes. The camera lingers on a Pam Anderson look-alike whose mouth can’t help but fall open at the sight of him. And then turns to another figure with shaggy gray hair seated behind a bowl of spaghetti. He lowers his sunglasses to get a better look at Benito, revealing that it is none other than Al Pacino. As Benito begins to rap at a table with his boyz, three pasta dishes, and full champagne flutes, he tells us, “Tú eres un charo, Rocky “the Kid,” una porquería / Yo un campeón, Rocky Marciano, Rocky Balboa, Rocky Maivia.” A reference, yes, to boxing and wrestling, a world Bad Bunny is now a part of, and also to the Italian-American community. Eventually, Benito makes his way over to Pacino, shakes his hand, and sits beside him as they both lean in to talk. Benito tilts his head with deference and looks at Pacino intently, thoughtfully listening to what he’s saying. The video then shifts to cuts of Bad Bunny in Monaco on a yacht with a bunch of bikini-clad women, on a helicopter, in a mansion with F1 cars, and at the Circuit de Monaco. This part is less interesting to me, mainly because it just falls into predictable displays of wealth and power via women’s available bodies and markers of extreme wealth.

After the song ends, we continue to get spliced shots of Monaco and the yacht. Then the Godfatheresque strings come back, and we return to Pacino and Benito at the dinner table. “You certainly are -you’re right here for me,” Pacino mumbles as he takes Benito’s hand and plops both his on top. Benito chuckles, a kind of nervous laugh that is polite, and also says, “wut???” “How’s it going?” Benito asks more casually, perhaps in an attempt to recover. Pacino leans back and, in a booming voice, explains, “Playing games! What else is new,’ he cuts himself off, “Hey, you’re doing great, man.” “Thank you,” Benito replies in an earnest, sweet voice that we all take with elders we respect. Pacino continues mumbling words of encouragement, and Benito bows his head with humble appreciation. “Enjoy life,” Pacino advises him, “tomorrow is coming. They wrote a song,” and in a voice similar to another proud Italian-American, he begins to croon, “You never know what tomorrow brings / you never know what tomorrow takes from you.” Benito chuckles and pats Al on the shoulder before muttering, “yeah, that’s true.” Pacino leans back into his seat and in a more ominous tone repeats, “nobody knows what tomorrow brings.” He turns and tucks his chin down while raising his eyebrows at Benito. His words are optimistic and cautionary at the same time. Benito nods in recognition, “Thank you for the blessing,” he takes his wine glass and toasts with Pacino. The Italian strings come back, confirming to us a kind of agreement has been made between Consigliere Pacino and Don Benito. Benito wishes Pacino and his friend well and gets up from the table. 

For a song named after Monaco (granted, a country that borders Italy), the presence of Italian-American iconography feels too strong to ignore. Especially given that on the song off of Drake’s recent For All The Dogs that Bad Bunny is featured on, there is the line: “me gusta you sonrisa / aunge me hago daño // I live like Sopranos, Italianos,” it would seem that the Italian-American community is on Benito’s mind. As a noted supporter of the Italian-American community, I think this has to do with particular links between Latinos and Italian-Americans and how Italian-Americans fit in a broader U.S. context. 

The video is obviously making a connection between Benito and The Godfather, and arguably the broader mob-movie cannon, which is not only an easy point of access for drawing connections between Latinos and Italian-Americans. For starters, there is a kind of aesthetic kinship between Latine and Italian excess across the clothes and jewelry featured in films like The Godfather, Casino, and Goodfellas. From these texts, it’s also easy to see how Latines and Italian-Americans share a similar need to prove themselves worthy of respect and choose to do it primarily through the accumulation of power and money. Many of these movies center around a deep sense of loyalty to our communities, which is also common among Latines. We have similarly rigid gender codes and family dynamics, which I assume is because of Catholicism. And the lore of the mob mirrors the lore of narcos. Al Pacino’s (and the characters he represents) presence in the video alludes to these links and, at the same time, highlights the major difference between Latines and Italian-Americans: they have been absorbed into whiteness, and we remain racial outsiders. However, it seems that the point of this song and video is to remind us that we can perform a certain kind of white credibility through wealth and a certain level of success. That Benito is greeted as “Don” when he enters the restaurant in a way confirms this. Don in Spanish is a title of respect, similar to what the title means in the Italian-American movies Benito references. Although, to be a Don in the mob sense, you do famously have to be 100% Italian. But if Al Apacino can play Cuban, Benito can certainly play White. In fact, his ability to be accepted in Monaco and spend time on yachts overflowing with white women and champagne, as the video depicts, coupled with the song’s lyrics, might suggest he’s already doing so. 

While money can pay for his vacations in Monaco, it can’t buy belonging. Thinking back to how the video is set in Little Italy/Chinatown as opposed to Alphabet City or the Bronx, historically more Puerto Rican parts of the city, to me, suggests he is still a little unsure of where he fits in the U.S. when he’s not in Puerto Rico. A more critical reading of this choice would argue that he doesn’t want to be associated with those areas in this new era. The video is an exercise in imagining Benito as belonging not only to a different time (again, we see the Twin Towers and One World Tower) but to a different community entirely. However, there are limits to how far Bad Bunny can take this metaphor. His conversation with Pacino feels slightly awkward and clunky for the usually suave and charismatic Bunny. I bring this up not as a critique of Benito, he is still learning, and I am sensitive to the fact that it’s tough to try to learn a second language, but more to show how his inability to speak fluidly with Pacino undoes the character he has portrayed throughout the video. Caught in translation, he doesn’t have the same level of ease as the version of him we say in Monaco. The inability to converse freely reminds us that even when we accumulate certain markers of elite status, some barriers still mark us as other or keep us from fully belonging.

An interesting dimension of Bad Bunny’s rise in celebrity is that it aligned with most of his fans being in college and/or very online. This is to say we were learning a new language around social justice and systemic inequalities and actively using Twitter and Instagram as a space to practice this vocabulary and work through our developing politics. This was also taking place against the backdrop of Trump’s presidency and hypervisible xenophobia and racism in the U.S. That Bad Bunny was so successful, loved, and celebrated even as he was so explicitly and unapologetically Puerto Rican, I think, gave us hope that we didn’t need to assimilate or conform either. Whereas with other celebrities, we might aspire toward their wealth, fame, or beauty, I think the aspiration that Bad Bunny prompted in us initially was a desire for a freedom that alleviated our fear of fully loving and embodying our Latinidad. 

Right now, it’s unclear what his celebrity stands for. Taken in its entirety, this album lacks the political punch others had. Also, it has a couple of disses that feel a little out of character. And maybe Benito is done with being the guy who “is not like other guys” and truly just wants to be with hot girls on a yacht and flaunt his wealth. But I hope not, for his music and fans’ sake. 

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