How Bad Bunny is making history while celebrating Puerto Rican culture on the world stage

John Yang:

Lately, the global superstar and Grammy Award winning singer known as Bad Bunny has been getting hotter and hotter. Last night he hosted the season premiere of Saturday Night Live and next year he'll headline the Super Bowl halftime show. His celebrity reaches beyond the music industry, spanning generations and encompassing politics, Caribbean culture and Puerto Rican and Latin pride.

Bad Bunny makes music on his own terms. His latest album, "Debi Tirar Mas Fotos" or in English I should have taken more photos has propelled him to new heights. He followed it up with a three month residency in San Juan that drew hundreds of thousands of fans and hundreds of millions of dollars to his native Puerto Rico. Fans appreciate how he celebrates his roots.

Alice Gimenez, Bad Bunny Fan:

He is very original. He hasn't lost his essence. He keeps on leaving an impression on us with each new record. What he has done on this occasion was truly spectacular for us. For us and also tourism overall, the economy.

Miguel Angel, Bad Bunny Fan:

He is bringing our culture to the world. He is putting Puerto Rico in the spotlight in front of the world and that fills us with pride.

John Yang:

His latest album blends familiar styles with hip hop influences, providing an entryway for listeners less familiar with salsa and Afro Caribbean beats. It appeals to the broader Latino community.

Bad Bunny is one of the most streamed artists in the world and has 77 million monthly listeners on the streaming service Spotify. He ended his residency with a live stream on Amazon Music that was the most watched single artist performance in the streaming services history. Now he's getting ready for next month's kickoff of his world tour.

For that tour, 2.6 million tickets have already been sold. Albert Sergio Laguna is a professor of ethnicity, race and Migration and American Studies at Yale, where he teaches a course called "Bad Bunny: Musical Aesthetics and Politics."

Mr. Laguna, what is it about Bad Bunny that makes him such a phenomenon? Crossing over generational lines? Is it the music? Is it his Persona? Is it a mix of the two?

Albert Sergio Laguna, Yale University:

I'd say it's a mix of the two. But I can speak directly to this last album. You know, if you look at my inbox, John, I'm receiving emails from students in high school who are writing reports on Bad Bunny. And I'm also receiving emails from folks in their 70s and 80s who want to audit my class as well.

And I think what he's been able to do is combine Puerto Rican rhythms from throughout the history of Puerto Rican popular music. So you have like reggaeton that speaks to 21st century interests and that generation, but you also have salsa from the 70s, 80s and 90s. You also have him pulling from traditional Puerto Rican rhythms like the African percussion of bomba music, Lena music, earlier Puerto Rican musical forms. And he's combining them on this album to imagine new rhythms and new possibilities.

John Yang:

He's pulling on all these traditions, but he's also tapping into what's going on. Now he's worried about ICE raids. How else is he sort of tapping into the popular culture to the current culture?

Albert Sergio Laguna:

That particular decision was prescient on his part in the sense to the Supreme Court ruling that's basically making racial profiling legal. ICE agents stopping people on the basis of race, perceived race, ethnicity, language. And he speaks to that directly in his lyrics, talking about issues related to migration, people feeling like they need to leave Puerto Rico in order to have success. He's speaking into relation to gentrification in Puerto Rico and the question of tourism and what's ethical and non-ethical tourism.

So he very much has his finger on the pulse of issues that are affecting the lives of Puerto Ricans on the island. But also people in Latin America specifically can listen to these lyrics and say these kinds of things are also relevant to our experiences in our own backyards.

John Yang:

To that point about the difficulties Puerto Rico has been facing. What does it mean to the island? What does it mean to the residents that he chose to do this Three month residency in Puerto Rico, not anywhere else?

Albert Sergio Laguna:

It's a powerful political statement. The title of the residency is No quiero irme de aqui, I don't want to leave here. In the history of Puerto Rico and a lot of places in the Caribbean, Latin America, the narrative has long been, if you want to have success, you have to leave.

So for him to say, I'm going to start off this tour for this massively popular album in Puerto Rico, I don't want to leave. It's part of his — the broader message of the album and the marketing around the album, which is how can we imagine a Puerto Rico for Puerto Ricans? A place where people don't have to lead to live and to thrive.

John Yang:

In a lot of his music, Bad Bunny talks about some of the problems facing Puerto Rico. He talks about over tourism and the effect on the environment. He talks about the bad economy there. Is it somehow ironic that he would be critiquing over tourism while drawing hundreds of thousands of people to Puerto Rico for his concerts?

Albert Sergio Laguna:

A song on the album called "Turista" is specifically speaking to the dangers of tourism in the sense of people not respecting where they're visiting, but also materially on the economics of the island. Tourism isn't going anywhere. It's an important part of the Puerto Rican economy. I think he's walking that line offering a critique, but also understanding that this is part of the livelihood of many Puerto Ricans. Ideally, this is a model for maybe thinking through a more ethical kind of tourism.

John Yang:

: A lot of Spanish speaking singers who want to build an audience in the United States sing in English, but Bad Bunny will not do that. He insists on singing in Spanish. How significant is that?

Albert Sergio Laguna:

I think what's interesting here is so many artists, many from Latin America, will become extremely popular in their local context. And as they get bigger internationally, you know, sometimes the music gets a little watered down, right, to kind of appeal to a broader global audience. He's done the exact opposite.

The album is the most Puerto Rican album he's ever put out in terms of rhythms and musical influences. Caribbean music has shaped global musical tastes since the 19th century, English and Spanish. So it's important also to put Bad Bunny in that larger, broader, longer context.

John Yang:

Albert Sergio Laguna of Yale University, thank you very much.

Albert Sergio Laguna:

A pleasure. Thank you.