Spotify has been forced to acknowledge that pop star Justin Beiber is not now, and—barring some truly extraordinary future life events—likely never will be a “Latin king.” The streaming service has pulled online ads dubbing Bieber as such, in reference to his chart-topping appearance on a remix of Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito.”
The ads were not well-received, to say the least, especially since there are videos out there of Bieber flubbing the song during a nightclub performance, replacing lines in Spanish with “blah blah blah blah,” “I eat a burrito,” and “I don’t know the words, so I say Dorito.”
A representative for Spotify noted that the ads were intended to “celebrate ‘Despacito’”—the first primarily Spanish-language song to hit the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart since “Macarena” in 1996—“as a key cultural moment when music genres crossover.” Still, they admitted, “We realized that this could be seen as culturally insensitive so we have pulled those ads.”