Bad Bunny’s history-making Super Bowl performance on Sunday was a sight to behold, with everything from elaborate sets to cameos from several A-listers, including Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin and Jessica Alba.
A fan-favorite moment from the 13-minute-long performance saw the Puerto Rican artist, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, hand his newly-won Grammy Award to a young boy in a powerful moment for Latino representation.
In the middle of his performance, the camera switched to a family watching Bad Bunny accept his Grammy Award on an old-fashioned TV, before the artist walked into the shot, bent down, and gave his Grammy to Lincoln Fox, a child actor of Argentinian and Egyptian descent.
Lincoln later took to Instagram to thank Bad Bunny for the experience, writing: “I’ll remember this day forever! @badbunnypr – it was my truest honor,” alongside bunny, award and football emojis.
Fans immediately rushed to social media to speculate as to the meaning behind the powerful moment, with some hypothesizing that it reflected young Puerto Ricans and Latinos seeing themselves represented in artists like Bad Bunny.
Others claimed that it represented Bad Bunny reflecting on his childhood and how far he had come. Other social media users claimed that the young boy was Liam Conejo Ramos, the five-year-old boy detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minnesota recently, an event which caused an uproar online.
© NBCLiam is of Ecuadorian descent and was taken into custody along with his father on his way home from school, despite the pair entering the US legally as asylum applicants. He was released after spending 10 days in a Texas prison. Bad Bunny has spoken out against ICE on several occasions, most recently at the Grammy Awards on February 2, when he won the award for Best Música Urbana Album.
“Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say, ICE out,” he said. “We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans. I know it’s tough to not hate these days. And I was thinking, sometimes we get contaminated. The hate gets more powerful with more hate.”
© NBC“The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love,” he continued. “So please, we need to be different. If we fight, we have to do it with love. We don’t hate them; we love our people. We love our family, and that’s the way to do it – with love. Don’t forget that, please.”
© Getty ImagesThe 31-year-old superstar even went as far as to avoid scheduling shows in the US during his world tour, which included a 31-show residency in Puerto Rico.
© Getty Images“There were many reasons why I didn’t show up in the US, and none of them were out of hate,” he told I-D in September. “But there was the issue of like…ICE could be outside [my concert]. And it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about.”
Although Bad Bunny weathered backlash from conservative voices over his Super Bowl Halftime Show appointment, several A-listers came out in support of the star, like Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, Katy Perry and Shakira. He brought out a slew of celebrities for his history-making performance, including Cardi B, Pedro Pascal and Karol G.
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