A phrase worth 40 million dollars: Bad Bunny’s ex-girlfriend sues for voice recording used in songs
Bad Bunny’s ex-girlfriend is trying to get her fair share in a recent lawsuit filed against the Latino superstar.
Carliz De La Cruz Hernández claims in a lawsuit filed in Puerto Rico this month that the “Neverita” and “Títí Me Preguntó” singer has been using her voice without her consent, the The Associated Press reported Monday.
In the center of the suit is a choppy recording of a woman saying, “Bad Bunny, baby,” which has been featured in two of Bad Bunny’s songs. De La Cruz is seeking $40 million in damages.
A representative for Bad Bunny did not immediately respond to The Times’s request for comment on Tuesday.
Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, presents the recording “Bad Bunny, baby” at the beginning of both 2017 “For You” and “Two Thousand 16” of 2022. Respectively, the videos for those songs have at least 355 million and 60 million views on YouTube.
De La Cruz claims that she created and provided the recording before the singer became famous. The lawsuit states that the singer and De La Cruz began dating in 2011 and he consulted his then-girlfriend about her music.
According to the lawsuit, the phrase “Bad Bunny, baby” originated in 2015 and the pop star asked Hernandez to record himself saying the phrase and send it to him.
They broke up in 2016, got together briefly in 2017 and parted ways shortly thereafter, the Associated Press reported.
In 2022, a Bad Bunny representative contacted Hernandez and allegedly offered him $2,000 to buy the recording “Bad Bunny, baby,” the lawsuit says. She refused.
The lawsuit also claims that a representative of Bad Bunny’s music label, Rimas Entertainment, spoke with Hernandez and also offered to buy the recording, noting that it would be used on the 2022 album “Un Verano Sin Ti.” No deal was reached, the AP reported.
The lawsuit comes more than a month after Bad Bunny won urban music album at the 65th Grammy Awards for “Un Verano Sin Ti.”