The professor who decided to teach a course on Bad Bunny at Yale after hearing the singer's new album

Albert Laguna, a professor at Yale University, one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the US, says that understanding Bad Bunny's success isn't just about the music industry.

Benito Martínez Ocasio, the 31-year-old Puerto Rican artist's birth name, has proven himself to be a marketing genius, capable of transforming Spanish-language music—and Latin culture in general—into products that transcend the borders of Hispanic countries like never before and reach global audiences.

In 2024, for example, he was the most-streamed Latin singer in the world on the popular streaming platform Spotify. His new album, "Debí Tirar Más Fotos ," remained in the global top 10 for weeks after its release in January.

But its impact is not limited to the music market, says Laguna, a cultural studies specialist.

Over the years, Bad Bunny has adopted an increasingly political stance. In his music—and also in public appearances—he addresses issues such as gender, inequality, migration, and the colonial situation on the island where he was born, a US territory since 1898.

Furthermore, he managed to reinvent reggaeton, fusing its characteristic rhythm with genres such as salsa, bachata, bomba and plena.

Laguna states that, through his lyrics and melodies, Bad Bunny builds a map that allows us to understand the history of Puerto Rico and its diaspora.

According to the Cuban-born doctor of literature, all of this reinforces the importance of the Puerto Rican artist's undeniable influence on contemporary popular music.

For this reason, in September, Laguna will offer a course on the "bad bunny" at Yale University.

What does it mean to include Bad Bunny in the curriculum of one of the world's most prestigious universities? How does the professor intend to address the artist's role in the classroom? And what was the students' reaction when they learned about the new course?

"Part of the appeal of this course is the fact that I'm offering it at Yale University. Sometimes people think that Bad Bunny is one thing and Yale is another. My job is to reaffirm that Bad Bunny has his place at Yale," he says.

"All popular culture has its place at Yale. Through an artist like Bad Bunny, we can understand the present and past of Puerto Rico, the United States, and also how it became a global phenomenon."

The idea of creating a course about Bad Bunny came about when Laguna listened to the Puerto Rican artist's new album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, while walking through the streets of New Orleans, a city with a strong Caribbean heritage.

"My students are very interested in Bad Bunny, but they have little knowledge about the relationship between the island and the US," he said.

"I will use your songs to address issues that are important to both the Puerto Rican diaspora and those who live in the territory.

For example, the song Nuevayol , which opens the album, references Un verano en Nueva York , a song released in 1975 by the salsa orchestra El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico.

"When I heard a snippet of this melody on Bad Bunny's album, I was shocked. I thought: there's something different about this production," he says.

Now TURiSTA which deals with the tourism industry and how there are people from the USA who travel to Puerto Rico and behave as if they own the island.

"Through the salsa genre, which originated in New York, we can talk about the migratory flow of Cubans and Puerto Ricans to the United States and the Afro-Caribbean influence in the country."

The artist's cultural impact, says the professor, is to bring the world to Puerto Rico.

"Bad Bunny is doing a 30-show residency in Puerto Rico this summer. These events, in and of themselves, are a political act."

"Many artists build an audience in their home country and then take their culture to the world," he says.

"He's centering his shows on the island, turning them into an opportunity to discuss local issues."

This is another political point on the album. In his lyrics, Bad Bunny insists that Puerto Rico should be for Puerto Ricans. And he does so amid a difficult economic situation, with the island being administered by a US-appointed Fiscal Oversight Board.

"It seeks to highlight the colonial relationship between the two countries and how it affects the Boricuas [as Puerto Ricans are also known] today. Many Americans still don't know that Puerto Rico is a colony of their own country."

For him, this helps students understand the reality of the diaspora, not just the Puerto Rican diaspora, but the Latino diaspora in general, especially at a time when the US government has adopted more restrictive measures regarding migration.

"For many immigrants and Latinos in general, their country of origin, their parents' land, is always a reference when they live abroad. In Debí tirar más fotos, Bad Bunny explores and celebrates this constant connection," he says.

"You can't talk about the history of New York without Puerto Rico, nor Puerto Rico without New York. You can't talk about salsa without talking about New York and the relationship with the Latino diaspora that made the city its home."

For Laguna, the Caribbean's impact on the music industry is not sufficiently recognized.

"There aren't enough references. That's one of the reasons I'm going to offer this course. In a way, with his new album, Bad Bunny is offering a music course. It's not just reggaeton with salsa, bomba, or plena—it's a combination of genres," says the professor, also mentioning jíbara, a rhythm from rural Puerto Rico.

"The album opens up ways to understand a broader history, and in particular, the Caribbean."

Laguna says that historically, there is an idea that what is very popular is not very sophisticated.

"In the 19th century, Cuban danzón was treated as a scandal. Maybe, 50 years from now, we'll laugh at those who mocked it and say that Bad Bunny was like that too," he says.

"But I must say that it is important to maintain a critical perspective. My job as a teacher is to understand the full complexity of a cultural product: how music represents gender, race, ethnicity, and other themes."

The course will be offered at a difficult time for US universities, when their diversity policies have been questioned by the Donald Trump administration, which has even cut funding for this reason.

Recently, the administration attempted to prevent Harvard from accepting international students. Laguna believes the program could open a space for continued debate on race, ethnicity, and diversity in the country's educational institutions.

"What happened at Harvard is an anti-intellectual stance on the part of the administration. This administration wants to keep people it considers 'different'—immigrants, Puerto Ricans—on the sidelines, as if they weren't important," says Laguna.

"What I do with this course is put Puerto Rico at the center of the academic discussion. This allows us to understand the United States as an imperial power—something our students rarely consider."