Two lawsuits against Bad Bunny illustrate the battle fought by women who lend their voices to reggaeton

Every time Bad Bunny did a live performance of EoO, from his 2024 album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, during his recently ended European tour, the music stopped right before the musical bridge. Thousands of people waited expectantly as a robotic sound was heard, a voice saying “Pe“, then being cut off. ”Pe... Pe... Pe...“, it came increasingly fast, yet never fully saying the entire word, which was instead shown on a screen: PERREO. After a few tense seconds, the audio track was finally delivered in full, with the woman’s voice saying: ”Mira, puñeta, no me quiten el perreo” (loosely translated as ‘Hey, asshole, don’t take the perreo from me’), with a Puerto Rican accent. That voice is now at the center of a $16 million lawsuit against the singer.

The speaker is Tainaly Serrano Rivera, who sued Benito Antonio Ocasio Martínez (Bad Bunny’s real name) in January, claiming she had not given consent for the use of her voice in two of his songs: Solo de mí, from the album X 100pre (2018), and EoO, although the word “perreo” is not fully heard.

She is not the first person to sue Bad Bunny for a similar reason: the singer is involved in another legal battle with his former girlfriend, Carliz de la Cruz, over a recording in which she says: “Bad Bunny, baby“, and which the singer used at the beginning of his career, when they were still together. In the song Diles, one of his first successes in January 2016, the recording is heard during the first few seconds. De la Cruz’s complaint says he also used it in two songs without her consent after their relationship ended: in the single Pa’ Ti, released in December 2016, and the song Dos mil 16, from the album Un Verano Sin Ti (2022). De la Cruz is seeking $40 million in compensation.

“Carliz called us to go over some contracts she’d received from the Puerto Rico label Rimas Entertainment and from Bad Bunny so she could sign over the rights,” explains Joanna Bocanegra Ocasio, one of the lawyers handling both cases. “The thing is, practically right after that, two days later, the song was already out with her voice, without any written agreement.”

According to Puerto Rico image laws, consent must be given in written form and for a specific period of time, explains José Marxuach Fagot, another one of the lawyers representing Rivera and De la Cruz. A court has determined that the deadline for filing a lawsuit has nothing to do with the date of the work’s release, but with the knowledge of the affected person, that is, the date on which the plaintiff realized that her image - in this case her voice - had been used without her permission. From that moment on, there is a year to mount a legal case.

In the case brought by his ex, Bad Bunny’s defense claims that including her voice in a song is not the same as using her image. His lawyers say that a song is an artistic work (even if it earns revenue) and so image laws do not apply. But the Supreme Court of Justice of Puerto Rico has accepted the suit because it believes that the specific voice recording could fall under the protection of the law; in July the court found that there is enough evidence to keep the case alive, although only in connection with the song Dos mil 16, as the deadline for suing over Pa’ Ti had already expired.

In the meantime, the lawyers for both women say there is a lot of ignorance regarding image rights in the music industry, and that some people take advantage of that. “For instance, the fact that consent was given at a specific moment in time does not mean that consent is forever,” says Bocanegra. “That voice cannot be used permanently, unless there is a contract that says so.” And that did not happen in either case.

That ambiguous practice of not putting down in writing what the recordings are going to be used for — recordings made by “vocales” or women who say short, sometimes melodic sentences in reggaeton— has been a regular occurrence since the genre was born. “A lot of young people fell into that trap. They were sold a dream, told they were going to be great. And who got rich? Not me,” says Irenis Cruz, who made a name for herself in the early 2000s for singing several hits together with DJ Joe in the series of albums Fatal Fantassy. She says there is a song by Bad Bunny where her voice can be heard saying “¡Ay!” and other one-syllable words in a sexy tone, recorded 20 years earlier without any contract allowing for their use. “They are using my voice, of course. But at this point in my life I don’t mind.” She likes to think that her grandkids are hearing her voice when they go out, and while she says she was never paid what she deserved, she has ruled out legal avenues after several negative experiences.

“Dame más gasolina”

To avoid similar situations, other artists take care to sign documents before making any recordings. “I was always a soloist, ever since this was an underground [genre],” recalls Glorimar Montalvo Castro, better known as Glory, who recorded with Daddy Yankee, Don Omar and Héctor y Tito in songs like Gasolina, Dale Don Dale or Baila Morena. She was the voice that said memorable sentences like “dame más gasolina”, “dale, papi, que estoy suelta como gabete” or “dale, moreno, que nos fuimos afuegote”, among others.

“We were very few women at the beginning. The genre is very dominated by men. And they would say ‘Here she comes with her papers’ when I showed up with my documents to sign. Sometimes those remarks are also intimidating, are even meant to be so.” Although she adds: “I’m not saying that’s the way it happened with other female colleagues because I don’t know. It would be quite interesting to have a meeting and listen to those experiences, because when I make a recording, I say: ‘We’re all pals, but this is business.” Glory has maintained her musical career to this day, and although she did not become as famous as her colleagues, she enjoys high industry recognition. This year she released an EP with five new songs.

It is also important to remember that these situations do not only arise in reggaeton. Copyright suits are a regular occurrence in the United States, whose law system is largely mirrored by Puerto Rico’s judicial system. Any genre where there is an imbalance of power between famous artists and newcomers trying to make their way can give rise to this sort of situation. “Maybe the newcomers think ‘here is a great opportunity’ and they do not seek legal advice,” notes the lawyer Bocanegra.

Bocanegra and Marxuach don’t think that this only happens to women, but they do admit that ever since news of the lawsuits against Bad Bunny emerged, they’ve had to fight against a public opinion narrative: “There are those who think that their motivations as women lie elsewhere, in the case of Caliz for being his ex-girlfriend. They don’t think [these women] are truly doing it to claim their rights. From our viewpoint, Bad Bunny may be the most famous artist in the world, but out approach has always been not to attack this aspect of the case. If the women’s image, their voices, were used without written consent, they have the right to sue.”

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