Bad Bunny

Bad Bunny — Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, born 1994 in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico — took reggaeton and Latin trap from SoundCloud uploads to global domination, becoming Spotify’s most-streamed artist three years running (2020–2022) without singing a word in English. Grammy winner, stadium-filler, WWE wrestler, Super Bowl halftime headliner: few artists own their moment so completely.

The NostalgIA eruption

In November 2023 a track called “NostalgIA,” made by the anonymous producer FlowGPT with AI-cloned voices of Bad Bunny, Justin Bieber and Daddy Yankee, went viral on TikTok. Days after releasing his album Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana, Bad Bunny detonated on his WhatsApp fan channel: anyone who liked the song should leave immediately, did not deserve his friendship, and — “chu chu fuera” — was not wanted at his tour either.

He added that this was exactly why he had made the new album: “to get rid of people like that.” FlowGPT responded by cheekily offering him the song’s rights in exchange for a production credit. The episode became one of the defining flashpoints of the 2023 voice-cloning wave that began with the fake Drake track “Heart on My Sleeve.”

Bad Bunny has not pursued the issue through letters or lawsuits the way peers like Billie Eilish have; his opposition is visceral rather than programmatic. But as a signal of how the world’s biggest streaming artist regards synthetic versions of himself, the message was unambiguous.