Jermaine Dupri has a simple theory for why Bad Bunny keeps breaking through to audiences that don't speak a word of Spanish.
In a new interview on the YouTube interview series The Manager's Playbook, Dupri breaks down to host Mauricio Ruiz what he sees as the engine behind Bad Bunny's crossover appeal.
"I'm playing Bad Bunny records, and I'm not playing it because he's cool," Dupri says near the 33-minute mark in the video linked below. "I'm playing it because they sound good … I don't even know what the fuck he's talking about. I'm just saying the records sound right."
Ruiz suggests the language barrier isn't unique to non-Spanish speakers.
"I'm going to tell you the honest truth," Ruiz said. "If you're not from Puerto Rico, a lot of Spanish people are still having a difficulty understanding what he's saying."
His point was less about the words and more about the pull of the music itself.
"It's not even about what he's saying. It just feels good, right?” Dupri insisted. “It just feels like, put this shit on, and you dance … I come from that space, so that’s why I react to the music.”
The veteran hitmaker also credited the breadth of Bad Bunny's sonic palette for removing the usual friction listeners have with unfamiliar genres.
"It's not something that sounds like, ‘Oh, that sounds Latin. I don't want to listen to that.’ No. … If you kind of like Latin music, if you've ever liked Latin music, if you like music that has some kind of Latin influence, he got all that shit in there, and some hip-hop shit. He got everything in there."
The comments arrive just days after Bad Bunny wrapped his record-breaking Debí Tirar Más Fotos World Tour, closing out a 57-date run on Aug. 22 at San Juan's Hiram Bithorn Stadium in front of nearly 35,000 fans.
The album behind the tour won both Best Música Urbana Album and Album of the Year at this year's Grammys.
