Bad Bunny left a hole in over 27 million timelines back in May, but he’s made a brief return to the spotlight with an empowering statement. The Puerto Rican hitmaker broke his public silence to speak out about the Black Lives Matter movement this week, saying that he wants to “go deeper” than other artists merely supporting it on a surface level. “There are many simple but powerful ways of helping, such as teaching, educating your community, your family, your friends,” Bunny a.k.a. Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio began in a lengthy statement to TIME. He elaborated on how he’s supporting the fight from self-isolation on a phone-less front.
© @badbunnypr“At the moment, we are working on where to contribute seriously, economically and humanely, using the resources we have to support and in some way be part of the #BlackLivesMatter movement,” he continued. The reggaeton artist has remained off of social media lately. “I simply do not have a phone,” he explained.
“There are artists who only upload a photo or a basic message just to calm public pressure or to look ‘good,’” he candidly told the publication. “Not me… I want to go deeper and see in what way I can serve, how I can support the fight against a systematic monster that has been [around for] centuries.”
Benito then made it clear where his place in the struggle was. “In the case of reggaeton music, we have always struggled against discrimination, and even though today it is the world’s number one Latino genre, we continue to suffer from that discrimination, both in the world for being Latino, and in the Latino community itself for being a genre that comes from the street,” he wrote.
Like a true artist, Bad Bunny poured his full statement into a song-like prose that swirled with lyrics like: “Living in a world like this, none of us can breathe.” He ends on a powerful note, saying: “MAYBE WE WON’T CHANGE THE WORLD TODAY, BUT TODAY WE CAN WORK ON MAKING A DIFFERENCE FOR TOMORROW.”
