The Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny — whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio — has become a global megastar, and he’ll be performing at the Super Bowl halftime show in just a few weeks. Despite his notoriety, there are plenty of people who are unfamiliar with the extent of his impact, and a professor from Florence wants to change that.
Professor Juan Pablo Rivera will present a lecture, “Understanding Bad Bunny,” at 33 Hawley in Northampton on Saturday, Jan. 31, from 6 to 8 p.m. Rivera’s goal is to explain the artist’s rise to superstardom both to fans and to people who are unfamiliar with Bad Bunny’s work.
Rivera, who teaches Latin American literature, language and culture at Clark University, said he’s been listening to Bad Bunny’s music with his students since 2020. Drawing from his classroom experiences, he was inspired to develop a lecture on the artist’s cultural impact.
“At first, I hesitated to do that because the lyrics can be quite vulgar, but this was back then. When the latest album came out, ‘DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS,’ I recognized that it was an important cultural moment and that [Americans] might not be able to understand his trajectory … so I thought, ‘Okay, this is a good moment to explain to people who might not know why his music is important and why his persona is also important,’” Rivera said.
So why is Bad Bunny so important? For one, his popularity has given members of the Puerto Rican diaspora — including Rivera, who grew up in Puerto Rico — an increased sense of pride in their identity.
“You see it even in his language, his refusal to sing in quote-unquote ‘standard’ Spanish,” Rivera said. “He sings in very identifiable Puerto Rican Spanish.”
Rivera explained that just as other languages tend to value certain accents over others — a British Received Pronunciation accent, also known as “the Queen’s English,” is considered more refined than a Deep South accent, for example — the Spanish-speaking world tends to prioritize Castilian Spanish and Argentinian Spanish at the expense of Caribbean Spanish accents. Bad Bunny, however, performs in a way that makes his Puerto Rican-ness obvious and his songs often feature Puerto Rican themes at the forefront.
“This has given us a sense of pride in our language, in our culture, in being Puerto Rican, in being Latino, at a time when it feels so dangerous to be Latino in the United States,” Rivera said. “He’s doing very, very important work for our communities, not just for Puerto Ricans, but for Latinos more generally.”
Besides that, Rivera said that Bad Bunny has played with gender and sexuality in genres that are “often perceived as very heterosexist or homophobic” because of “lyrics that attempt to shame gays, to hyper-sexualize women and put down femininity in general,” which made him “kind of a singular artist” in 2020, with the release of his album “YHLQMDLG” (“I Do Whatever I Want”).
Bad Bunny has racked up billions of hits on streaming platforms. In fact, his album “Un Verano Sin Ti” holds the Guinness World Record for the most-streamed album of all time, and he was Spotify’s Global Top Artist in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2025.
Rivera said the NFL’s choice of Bad Bunny, “the most global of global artists,” as the Super Bowl headliner was “a very clever move,” not only as the league tries to expand its international influence, but also because having a Latino singer who will perform primarily — if not exclusively — in Spanish is a recognition of the country’s sizable Spanish-speaking population.
“It does interesting things to the way we think of the U.S. cultural imaginary, the way that we imagine ourselves,” Rivera said. “For that reason, it’s a historic moment, and I’m looking forward to what he is going to do there.”
Rivera said he wishes more people understood about Bad Bunny that “despite the global pop cultural appeal, there is a political agenda behind his work.”
“It has to do with Puerto Rican liberation, with ensuring that future generations of people in Puerto Rico have a place they can be proud of, a place that works, where the educational system works, where the health system works, where there is less governmental corruption or corruption has been eradicated — this utopian vision for what Puerto Rico could become if it had the support of the U.S. government, which it does not,” Rivera said. The YouTube visualizers for Bad Bunny’s album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” are info cards (in Spanish) about different periods and events in Puerto Rican history, including the 1868 rebellion “El Grito de Lares,” a 1905 strike by sugarcane workers, women’s suffrage, and more.
The songs that Rivera highlights in his lecture include “Yo Perreo Sola” (“I Twerk Alone”), in which Bad Bunny dresses in drag; “El Apagón,” which translates in English to “The Blackout,” and whose video is partly a typical music video and partly a documentary about the island’s sociopolitical struggles and the privatization of beaches in collaboration with journalist Bianca Graulau; “NUEVAYoL,”which spotlights the Puerto Rican diaspora in New York City; and “LA MuDANZA,” which translates in English to “The Move,” and is about Ocasio’s own upbringing in Puerto Rico and his pride in his homeland.
Rivera said he doesn’t know what Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance will be like, though he hopes he’ll bring big-name guests like Beyoncé or Lady Gaga, and expects the half-time show will likely have some political elements — perhaps a Venezuelan flag or a statement against ICE.
“I can’t really predict which songs he’s going to sing, but I can guarantee that it’s going to be a spectacle — that it’s going to be fun and uplifting,” he said.
Tickets, not including fees, are $5 to $35, sliding scale, at nohoarts.org, and proceeds will benefit the Northampton Center for the Arts’ Community Fund. This event is intended for audiences age 16 and up.