The Big Message of the 2026 Grammys
Like a lot of immigrants lately—like a lot of Americans lately—Trevor Noah is mulling life after the United States. Early in this year’s Grammys, during an interlude between speeches and performances, the ceremony’s host asked Bad Bunny a question: “If things keep getting worse in America, can I come live with you in Puerto Rico?”
Bad Bunny grimaced and stated the obvious: Puerto Rico is in America. Noah tried to shush him, saying, “Don’t tell them that.”
This jokey segment set the table for what turned out to be Bad Bunny’s night, at a time when the country is roiling in conflict over the nature of American identity. One week before the 31-year-old singer and rapper Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio will take the stage at the Super Bowl halftime show, he won three trophies, including the night’s final prize, Album of the Year. He was among a raft of stars who spoke out on behalf of immigrants and against ICE from the stage—but his wins, and his words, met the moment in a unique way. He’s become a political flashpoint because of where he comes from and what language he speaks, and he’s not pretending otherwise.
His first win of the night was for Best Música Urbana Album—a category established in 2022 to celebrate the ascendent strain of Spanish-language popular music of which Bad Bunny is the undisputed king. The award was presented by the Cuban-Dominican-American Saturday Night Live actor Marcello Hernández and the Colombian pop star Karol G, who riffed about the Spanish-language music their parents played around the house when they were kids. The nominees in this year’s Música Urbana category, Hernández said, are the musicians he himself will some day play around the house for his own kids.
“Before I say thanks to God, I'm gonna say, ‘ICE out,”” Bad Bunny said during his speech for this award. “We’re not savage. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans.” The terms he used echoed ones that Donald Trump and his followers have used to describe immigrants over the past year. Bad Bunny underplayed his anger, speaking with quiet intensity, and ended with a call to avoid hatred and to fight back with love.
The phrase he had used, “ICE Out,” was inscribed on pins sported by a number of artists at the Grammys. The 26-year-old British singer Olivia Dean, accepting the award for Best New Artist, began her speech by pointing out that she is a granddaughter of an immigrant. She added, “I’m a product of bravery, and I think those people deserve to be celebrated.” When Billie Eilish won the award for Song of the Year, she said, “No one is illegal on stolen land”—a common slogan at anti-ICE protests.
That Bad Bunny won Album of the Year wasn’t a huge shock: His 2025 album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, is a commercial smash and a critical darling that earned him his fourth year of being the most streamed artist in the world. What’s more, this is the first year in which all the members of the voting body for the Latin Grammys were invited to vote in the main Grammys. Even so, Bad Bunny didn’t seem like he took the victory for granted. When the singer Harry Styles, presenting the night’s big award, read out Bad Bunny’s name, the rapper looked down and covered his face with his hand. All evening, he’d looked slick and dapper in a tuxedo with corset-like stitching on the back. Now, the room was cheering, but Bad Bunny was silent and tearing up.
The speech he gave was primarily in Spanish. This also was no surprise, given that Bad Bunny only ever performs in his native language. But it was also a reminder of the historic nature of his win: DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS is the first Album of the Year sung entirely in Spanish. “I want to dedicate this award to all the people that had to leave their homeland, their country, to follow their dreams,” he said in the speech’s brief English portion. Then, in Spanish, he dedicated his win to all Latinos and the artists who deserved to be on the stage before him.
Many MAGA-aligned voices have complained about Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl booking by insinuating him as un-American, divisive, and a tool of the left’s agenda. To them, his Grammys win will likely just be taken as another offense. But the ceremony ended up being a reminder of how facile most of those complaints are. Spanish speakers and immigrants are already embedded in American life, culture, and music. To reject that reality is to reject someone like Bad Bunny, who is, by any definition, an American success story.