Ever wonder why elite colleges are so expensive? It's because what they're teaching kids is so important. Case in point? Bad Bunny 101...

While some of us may be adding some Bad Bunny tunes to our playlists after his 'electric' performance during the Super Bowl LX Halftime Show, some New Jersey college students have already mastered his history and discography in the classroom. A professor taught a seminar on Puerto Rican singer, rapper, and music producer Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, who we all know as Bad Bunny, during the fall 2025 semester at Rutgers. The course went beyond the Grammy winner’s music, exploring the Puerto Rican history and culture that surrounds Bad Bunny’s work. Here’s what we know about the Bad Bunny course at Rutgers University and the other schools that taught similar courses.

The professor is part of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, School of Arts and Sciences. She typically focuses on courses about the literary works of the Spanish Golden Age, not modern Latin music. The two students, Erin Foley and Rosselyn Rugama-Ruiz, grew up listening to Bad Bunny and were persistent that the course would be compelling for students studying Spanish.“I wanted to understand what he was saying in the songs, so I started taking Spanish, and the rest is history,” said Erin. She is majoring in Spanish and speech and hearing sciences in linguistics and wants to become a bilingual speech-language pathologist, working in underserved communities and advancing equity within the field. The students went to their professor when the album dropped to persuade her to start teaching a course around it. 

 

Professor Otero-Torres grew up in Puerto Rico, and when she listened to the album, she was moved. “The (musical) fusion that he had; the way he honored the traditions; I don’t think I had seen that in Puerto Rican history,” Professor Otero-Torres shared. “And when I started listening to the words, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this album is so political.’” The professor eventually agreed, launching the seminar, “Topics in Hispanic Literature and Culture.” The course was devoted to Bad Bunny and the music of his 2025 album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos.