Rapper 50 Cent slams Grammys for not having Spanish subtitles for Bad Bunny performance, speech

When Bad Bunny opened the 2023 Grammy Awards, the singer got the crowd on their feet.

At home, viewers enjoyed the “El Apagón” and “Después de la Playa” performances, but some raised concerns when during the live broadcast, the captions only said, “[SPEAKING NON-ENGLISH]” and “[SINGING IN NON-ENGLISH].”

50 Cent was among the people who called out CBS and the Recording Academy for the closed captions.

"The Grammys need to be check about this, F------ @badbunnypr bigger than everybody right now and you can’t pay for closed caption," the rapper wrote on Instagram on Feb. 9, alongside a screenshot of the the closed captions and Bad Bunny. "Wtf is this speaking Non-English. 🤨FIX IT ! #bransoncognac #lecheminduroi"

Many agreed in the comments section, with one person writing, “Facts. Spanish is the 2nd most spoken language here, GET IT TOGETHERRRR.”

“THANK YOU! Someone else than a Latino standing up for our language and culture,” another person added, with someone else commenting, “Thank you for repping for us. And holding us down Fif. You’ve always been a real one. Boricuas love you!”

During the awards show on Sunday, Feb. 5, and the days that followed many people expressed their frustration over the closed captioning.

"Seeing [SPEAKING IN NON-ENGLISH] in closed captions in 2023 is a great reminder that a lot of us can’t separate our accessibility from our culture, which is why those conversations need to be inclusive as all hell," Shannon Miller tweeted.

“66,000,000 of us speak Spanish here in the great US of A. USA is the second largest Spanish speaking country worldwide second to Mexico. Non-English. Get out,” added Maria Teresa Kumar.

Armando Tinoco, wrote, “Ok #Grammys inviting Bad Bunny and not getting a bilingual CC transcriber that just typed SPEAKING/SINGING NON-ENGLISH.”

Tinoco also pointed out that [speaking non-english] was also used during Bad Bunny's speech when he accepted the Grammy for música urbana album.

“Speaking non English , of course Spanish is just x,” another Twitter user wrote.

Others, meanwhile, including Spotify, took it as an opportunity to get creative.

The music streaming platform created a “[speaking non-english]” playlist. The song selection was inspired by the viral Bad Bunny and Taylor Swift photo from inside the ceremony, which is also used as the playlist’s cover, and only includes tracks from both artists.

Some people also joked about making t-shirts with the phrase.

Variety reported that CBS added Spanish closed captioning to Bad Bunny’s performance on the West Coast broadcast and replays of the ceremony on Paramount+ after the backlash.

Bad Bunny also included the viral [speaking non-english] screenshot in his Instagram post after the Grammys.

"The most beautiful word that exists is: Thank you," he wrote in Spanish. "I am grateful to God, to life, to the love I receive. Grateful to be able to live moments that I never imagined. Grateful for the people who truly love me, those who genuinely support me, those who understand me and those who don’t too."

"Grateful to be able to do what I love the most, MUSIC. I feel happy, I feel proud of myself and for that I give THANKS," he added.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com