Bad Bunny’s Year of Rest and Relaxation

It’s 10 minutes past noon in the historic San Juan neighborhood of Miramar, and Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio is hiding just out of sight, in a coral-colored speakeasy behind a ghost kitchen on a street that snakes to the beach. The chameleonic reggaeton supernova known as Bad Bunny is sitting at a corner table before an ever-growing feast of garlic knots and meatballs and two untouched pizzas, one pepperoni, one Hawaiian.

For once, he’s doing nada, the 29-year-old tells me in his blithe baritone. “It’s been my quietest day, with nothing to do.” This latest trip home came on a whim. “Summer came, a couple of great reggaeton songs came out, and I said, ‘I’m off. I’m going to Puerto Rico—like a vagabond.’”