Bad Bunny, the six-time Grammy Award winner and upcoming Super Bowl 60 halftime performer, has become the subject of an academic course at San Diego State University that examines his cultural influence on a global scale.
The Puerto Rican artist recently won the 2026 Album of the Year Grammy for "Debi Tirar Mas Fotos" (translated as "I Should Have Taken More Pictures"). During his acceptance speech, Bad Bunny dedicated the award to people who left their homeland to follow their dreams.
"He's everywhere and I think he just keeps growing bigger and bigger and he is in every single aspect of media whether it's the music he does, the halftime show, he does WWE, movies, commercials," San Diego State Professor Nathian Rodriguez said.
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Rodriguez is teaching "Bad Bunny: Perreo, Performance and Pop Culture Politics" at SDSU as a case study on the artist. Perreo is a popular dance style originating from Puerto Rico that's connected to reggaeton music.
The class aims to give students a global perspective on Bad Bunny's impact across different spheres of influence.
"When students leave the class, I think they're gonna have one, a newfound appreciation for the culture and the music but also a lot better understanding of themselves and how music and videos and all pop culture really relates to them and how they relate to it," Rodriguez said.
The course will focus on topics including the global flow of music from South America to North America, social justice and politics.
Looking ahead to Sunday's Super Bowl 60 halftime show, Rodriguez anticipates a memorable performance from the cultural icon.
"It's gonna be dance, it's gonna be culture, it's gonna be Spanish, it's gonna be this sort of diversity of all these artists that he's worked with in the past and I think it's just gonna be a super performance that's what he's good at," Rodriguez said.
The class is being offered this spring as both an undergraduate and graduate course but has reached capacity. It will also be offered this summer.
This article was written by Jane Kim for the Scripps News Group in San Diego.
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