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Bad Bunny refuses to give clothes a gender.
The 28-year-old rap star – whose real name is Benito Ocasio – is unsure what defines “masculine” or “feminine” and cannot discriminate clothing choices based on gender.
He said: “Everybody has to feel comfortable with what they are, and how they feel. Like, what defines a man, what defines being masculine, what defines being feminine? I really can't give clothes gender. To me, a dress is a dress. If I wear a dress, would it stop being a woman's dress? Or vice versa? Like, no. It's a dress, and that's it. It's not a man's, it's not a woman's. It's a dress.”
The Latino singer – who had a job packing groceries at a supermarket in Puerto Rico before shooting to fame and becoming Spotify's most streamed artist of 2021 with a reported 9.1 billion plays worldwide – went on to claim that becoming a celebrity was never his intention and explained that his native audience would typically “undervalue” Latino musicians who sang in their own language.
In a new cover story for GQ's June issue, he said:”I was never on a mission to be like, Oh, this is what I'm going to do. It happened organically. Like, I've never made a song saying, ‘This is going to go worldwide.' I never made a song thinking, ‘Man, this is for the world. This is to capture the gringo audience'. Never. On the contrary, I make songs as if only Puerto Ricans were going to listen to them. I still think I'm there making music, and it's for Puerto Ricans. I forget the entire world listens to me.
“The Latino audience would always undervalue their artist. Sometimes, Latinos would want to record with an American, and because they're American, they'd think, I have to do it. No, man. He's not at the level I am, you know? Just because they're American. But that perspective has changed. You can see it now. People have become aware. They suddenly see, Wow, Bad Bunny has been the most listened to on Spotify for 70 days. It wasn't the American. It's this guy, who's Latino.”
Read the full cover story, ‘Bad Bunny's Giant Leap' n GQ's June issue and on GQ.com
