Bad Bunny brought a live horse, an orchestra and Puerto Rican pride to Austin concert

There was a live horse.

Friday night at the Moody Center, reggaetón idol and fashion trendsetter Bad Bunny switched sides and costumes. Earlier he donned a suit and wig under an L.A. Dodgers cap, then he rocked a tan jacket with frills. In between, a soliloquy about taking the road less traveled via pre-recorded video.

In it, Bunny crossed the dessert on a horse with the self-serious swagger of a cologne ad.

“No one else dares to take this path,” he narrated on-screen in Spanish.

Then, for about 15 seconds, he walked into the arena on a brown horse, gave it a pat, and we never saw it again. For one of the world’s mightiest rock stars, it was the most over-the-top flourish in a night filled with them.

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A full orchestra; 20 back-up dancers; a rotating cat walk; 10 to 15 minutes of just posing on said cat walk to breathe in the idol worship while giving back brooding stares; barroom singalongs of sweeping breakup ballads like “un x100to” performed while lounging on top of a grand piano; the audacity to not book an opener; the bravado to leave out song of the summer 2022, “Callaita,” which was in a beer commercial, from the set list. And like Leo Messi, the rock star born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio never bothered to address his adoring English-speaking public in anything other than his native Spanish.

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He’d ask where all the Latinas in Austin, Texas were at to get screams, sure, but also offer affirmations about identity and self-actualization.

“What we can’t control is what people will say about us,” he’d say, later shouting out how special it was to see Puerto Rican flags from fans. (I counted more than 10 large ones stretched out by patrons, including a giant flag draped over the mezzanine wall like a soccer match.) In his pep talk, Bad Bunny was alluding to being a tabloid regular—he split with Kendall Jenner in December—but also seemingly shouting out what it’s like to be a Latinx person in the U.S.

And the Spanish-first community was proudly about town. Selling $10 cowboy hats; enjoying hot dogs with a million toppings, fresh off a street griddle; even third- and fourth-generation Texans seemed excited to tap into the fashion and swagger of Mexican uncles at a child’s birthday party on Bad Bunny night.

You forget that Bad Bunny is an idea and lifestyle, too. Locally, dance clubs like Mala Vida are molded in his neon image. In South Austin, the same operating group’s Gabrielas restaurant has a permanent Bad Bunny throne that diners can snap photos on. He’s emboldened the community with a zest for gender-neutral brightness so undeniably appealing that Mark Zuckerberg is now wearing gold chains and letting his curls flex.

Between bangers at the Moody, he told us to seek out “people who love you and support you.” The dude projects a lot, defiantly adding banter like “people tell me things every day, but I’m sure of who I am.”

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Were his gradient lights hypnotic? Was the cowboy boot necklace we all got at the door, that synced to the lightshow Coldplay and Taylor Swift-style, a lovely souvenir? Were his vocals muffled and mixed to overpowering degrees so that at times you heard him echo twice as loud as the accompanying beat? Absolutely and of course.

Structurally, this Most Wanted Tour is a celebration of October’s “Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va Pasar Mañana” record, a more somber and rap-centric offering relative to 2022’s relentlessly romantic party masterpiece “Un Verano Sin Ti.” The former is almost a Rick Ross album, rich with thumping beats and strings—mood music for the bosses that makes you want to put a bib on and eat crab.

And so the show began with 10 uncompromising new songs, then revved into a string of party barge standards post-horse: “Yo Perreo Sola,” “La Santa,” “Me Porto Bonito.” Illuminate your reality and proudly let the dog out—he couldn’t be any clearer.