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Short-lived Spotify ad crowns non-Spanish speaker Justin Bieber the ‘Latin King’

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By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

June 22, 2017 | 3 min read

Canadian popstar Justin Bieber was dubbed a ‘Latin King’ by Spotify in a sponsored Instagram post, an accolade that aggravated viewers and eventually led to its removal.

Spotify's Justin Bieber ad

The Latin King ad and one viewer's response / @J_S_Robles & @blancmodenuit

The assumedly tongue-in-cheek ad read: ‘Justin. Now Latin King’ in reference to the singer's appearance on Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee's Despacito remix.

It recently emerged Bieber actually does not know the Spanish lyrics in the song, and as a result he will not perform the song live. This stance saw an item lobbed at his head during a recent gig at Summerburst Festival in Stockholm.

In retrospect, Bieber is a poor choice for the Latin King label for several immediately reasons. One of which is, as fans pointed out, he isn't Latin. There’s a video of the artist in Sao Paolo rhyming the words Dorito and Burrito during a stumbling live performance (assumedly his last) of Despacito. It was shared by Twitter user @biebeart.

A Spotify spokesperson confirmed the deletion of the ad to the Daily News.“We made a creative decision to feature Justin Bieber in our ad because we wanted to celebrate Despacito as key cultural moment when music genres crossover,” they said.

“We realized that this could be seen as culturally insensitive so we have pulled those ads.”

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