Everything About Bad Bunny Is Political, Even His Choice of Perfume

Just when we thought Bad Bunny’s popularity couldn’t reach new heights, we were proved wrong. The most streamed artist of all time made global news after his stunning Super Bowl performance on Feb. 8, when he became the first artist to headline a halftime show performed primarily in Spanish.

A new wave of fascination with the Hispanic icon ensued. People wanted to get into his business — including what he smelled like.

Fortunately, in 2024 he sat down with Vogue Italia for an interview during which he went through everything he carried in his bag, and two of the items were bottles of perfume. He flashed them quickly, but long enough for a perfume aficionado to recognize the bottles.

One, which he said his brother gifted him, was Maison Louis Marie’s No. 04 Bois de Balincourt. The other bottle was Amyris Homme Extrait by Maison Francis Kurkdjian, the mastermind behind the legendary Baccarat Rouge 540.

If you’re new to fragrance, I can tell you as someone who has been studying perfume for years that Bad Bunny doesn’t do basic Dior Sauvage or other mainstream designer perfumes. As a true artist, he’s into niche scents.

While both of these perfumes have woody and spicy tones, Amyris is especially Bad Bunny-perfect. Amyris is a genus of tree from the citrus family, native to the Caribbean and Central and South America. Is it just a favored scent for Bad Bunny, the symbol of Puerto Rican cultural insurgency, or is it a political statement? As with everything to do with Bad Bunny, more is always to be assumed.

The word “Amyris” comes from Ancient Greek and means “intensely fragrant.” The plants go by different names, including West Indian sandalwood, reflecting their similarity in smell to sandalwood’s creamy and woody fragrance.

These trees don’t just add to the olfactory landscape in the places where they grow, they are also known as candlewood or torchwood because the high resin content of their wood makes it useful as a long-lasting torch. Amyris has also been used for centuries in folk medicine to treat wounds and in aromatherapy to help ease anxiety, as well as in perfumes.

In this particular perfume, Amyris is combined with notes of mandarin, saffron, vanilla (not sweet, but more leathery), cinnamon, tonka bean and iris. Which means Bad Bunny smells like fresh, creamy vanilla with spice — and very political.