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Vanessa Díaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, "P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance" (Duke UP, 2026)
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- [00:00]
Marshall Poe
This episode is brought to you by Avid tv. Where do savvy minds go to find masterful documentaries and hard to find films from across the globe? Try a free month long trial at Ovid and go beyond the mainstream. Indiewire says Ovid is unafraid to program films that matter. And the New York Times calls Ovid a terrific streamer for independent film fans. A boutique hand curated streaming service. Yet now with over 2,400 titles, Ovid is the home to films by auteurs from Chantal Akerman to Chris Marker to Wang Bing and has the richest collection of probing, avant garde and provocative films anywhere. Ovid offers many things except conformity. Try Ovid today and get your first month free. Use promo code N B N O V I D. That's Ovid TV promo code N B N O V I D. Hello everybody, this is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:55]
Rebecca Buchanan
Hi, this is Rebecca Buchanan, host of New Books Network, New Books in Popular Culture and today I'm here with Vanessa Diaz and Petra Rivera Radu, who are the authors of Peace Are How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance. Thank you both for being here with me today.
- [02:15]
Petra Rivera Radu
Thanks for having us.
- [02:16]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, thanks for having us.
- [02:17]
Rebecca Buchanan
Could you start out by talking how this book came to be? You have both have a sort of a long history with Bad Bunny. So can you talk about why you decided to write this book?
- [02:28]
Petra Rivera Radu
I don't know, Vanessa, do you want to start or you want me to start? I.
- [02:33]
Vanessa Diaz
Sure, I'll start. Because. Because I'll. And then kind of toss it back to you. This is like, our number one thing is, like, who starts? Because we're both, like, we can both talk all day about every single question, so we better. And I had known each other sort of through, like, conferences and just kind of. I knew her work. I've been teaching her work for many years. And in 2022, I started preparing to teach my Bad Bunny class that was scheduled for spring 23.
- [03:05]
Rebecca Buchanan
And.
- [03:06]
Vanessa Diaz
And when I was looking up other courses, you know, lo and behold, her course that she had just taught in spring of 2022 came up. And so I just sent her a quick note and said, hey, you know, I see you taught a Bad Bunny class. I'm getting ready to teach a Bad Bunny class. Maybe we can connect and share resources. And so that conversation happened in the summer of 2022, and that's exactly what we did. We just kind of started brainstorming. She shared her materials. I started gathering what I wanted to do. And she had initially planted the idea of maybe some kind of a collection, like an edited volume, which we talked about. And then I came back and said, well, you know, there's the Puerto Rico syllabus. What if we did something like that with the Bad Bunny curriculum? And so we started thinking about that, and then it kind of turned into this conversation. Doing a book. And so we started talking about the book, you know, before I even started my semester in spring 23, which was. Was the first term that I. That I taught the course. We launched the Bad bunny syllabus in 2023. And. And then. And then things kind of went through various cycles, so maybe Pedra can pick up there. But we really, you know, the idea for a book was there, but getting to this book was. Was a little bit more complicated.
- [04:30]
Petra Rivera Radu
Yeah. Yeah. So we did the. The Bad Money syllabus, which, you know, we weren't really sure, like, who would be using this website, you know, and a lot of educators used it, but we also learned a lot of journalists use it, and even people in the music industry refer to it for different things. But so it became sort of. I think that the syllabus project sort of took on a life of its own in a way that I didn't expect. I don't know if Vanessa, but I definitely didn't expect it. And so I think the Thing about the book that's, you know, at that time there were no books about Bad Bunny for academics. And I think, you know, we didn't really want to do a biography, although there was some talk about, like, maybe you should do a biography. But I think what we really wanted to do with this book is take the kinds of things we do in our courses and put them in like a book form. And so the book, like our classes, uses Bad Bunny's work as a hook to get people in and then talks about kind of the longer history of Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican culture and politics, particularly over the past 30 years, which is most of Bad Bunny's lifetime, when things like the Puerto Rican debt crisis really spiraled out of control. Right. So that's the kind of approach that.
- [06:13]
Vanessa Diaz
We took to the book.
- [06:14]
Petra Rivera Radu
And then it's really sort of the culmination of the classes of the syllabus, like all this stuff together.
- [06:21]
Rebecca Buchanan
So for people who don't know or don't know much about Bad Bunny, I think the recent Super Bowl, Right. The super bowl performance that's coming up has made him even. I mean, I think he was very popular and very, you know, for a long time, but put him more even in sort of mainstream American media. So can you give us a little bit of background of sort of Bad Bunny and then maybe some background because you talk about. I think what I found really interesting was that you do tie in some sort of Puerto Rican history that is really important. And so can you give us a little bit of those first couple chapters? Like, who is Bad Bunny and where is he coming from? Like, what is going on in Puerto Rico that sort of created and crafted who he has become?
- [07:12]
Petra Rivera Radu
Yeah, I think that. Well, to start with who Bad Bunny is, I think that, yeah, like the super bowl announcement really introduced him to a lot of US English speaking audiences who didn't know about him before. But he is in the super bowl for a reason. Right? Like, he is really the biggest kind of global pop star of our current moment. And he has been for a while, right. Like in 2025, he was the most streamed artist on Spotify, but before that he was the most streamed artist for three years in a row from 2020 to 2022. He is the first Spanish language artist to headline Coachella, the first Spanish language artist to have an album nominated for album of the year at the Grammys. I mean, he just has this like huge set of accolades, right, that just keep going. And in 2025, it's, I think, you know, really A banner year for him in terms of the release of his album De Vitira Mas. Photos. And it's interesting because, you know, we wrote the book before that album came out. We were kind of doing our reviews after the peer review, like doing our revisions after the first round of review when that album came out. So that was an interesting kind of mad rush to get that together. But so he's just like a really massive global star. And he's from a small town in Puerto Rico called Vegavaja, which is in the northern coast of the island, about 40 minutes, 45 minutes west of San Juan. And in many ways, I think there's a sort of typical Puerto rican in his 30s, right? He comes from a family with a mom who's a teacher, a dad who's a truck driver. He has two younger brothers is sort of like a kind of very, as far as I can tell, pretty regular Puerto Rican childhood. And, you know, he went to the University of Puerto Rico for a small amount of time. And during that time, he was making his own songs and posting them on SoundCloud. And he eventually has a song called Diles, which kind of puts him on the map and gets him signed with a record label. And that was in 2016, so not quite 10 years ago. And since then, he has just been in this upward trajectory that never stops. And I'll let. Vanessa, you want to talk some about the context part?
- [09:56]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, Petra mentioned that there's these ways in which he's kind of got this ordinary Puerto Rican upbringing. At the same time, he's now this massive superstar. But I think when we talk about what we mean when we say ordinary is really the fact that if you are born and raised in Puerto Rico as a Puerto Rican, you. I mean, you're growing up under colonialism. You're growing up right in this context where he's experiencing through his youth some of the harshest and draconian measures under U.S. colonial rule. You have just before Diles comes out, the debt crisis is coming to this major. It's not coming to a halt. It's coming to, like, this moment of, oh, my gosh. Like, Puerto Rico is in this moment of financial crisis that is beyond repair. And so Puerto Rico, because of its status, can't just file for bankruptcy the way a country can or even a state in the context of the US and so what the US does then is says, okay, well, because we're not going to let you file for bankruptcy. And, you know, at this time, the. The Puerto Rican governor is saying, well, we don't have any more money. We can't pay our, you know, we can't, we can't pay against what we owe. So, you know, the US Comes up with the PROMESA bill, which is signed under Obama, which consolidates basically Puerto Rico's wealth and puts it under the management of the fiscal oversight Board, which is known as La Junta Fiscal in Puerto Rico. Right. And so the way that that works is basically them. It's not just that Puerto Rico doesn't have sovereignty, it's also that they can't make any financial decisions for themselves. They really, it's like beyond not having sovereignty, it's not having really any say over your fiscal reality, over the well being of your citizens, of your state employees. And so pensions are being cut. You know, people are, people are really like losing their livelihood in major ways. And this is a turning point. And this is when Bad Bunny's in his early, you know, 20s. He has since started to talk more openly about the ways in which he was directly impacted by these things that we always knew. Based on what we knew about Bad Bunny, it was safe to assume his mom is a schoolteacher. Perhaps she worked for a private school. Maybe it wasn't a public school, but we can imagine that they felt the impact of these things. And then last year when there was the major gubernatorial elections in Puerto Rico where the independence candidate got, you know, the most support ever, Bad Bunny came up in support of that candidate. And he said in a speech just before the elections that, you know, his, that his family was directly impacted by these various austerity measures over time. And I'm even just talking about the financial crisis in particular. But obviously before the financial crisis was the lead up to the financial crisis. So there have been austerity measures throughout his life. And so I think whether you're someone who says I'm super Puerto Rican political, I'm an I, you know, I, or you believe in statehood or whatever, you're not immune to the effects of what it means to be under direct colonial rule, which is the reality of all Puerto Ricans on the island, regardless of how they may or may not benefit from some of what's happening, you know, in, in Puerto Rico. And so I think what we really try to do with the book is say, yes, he's this extraordinary pop star, but how do we see the ways in which his life as a kid in Puerto Rico is informing the art he makes now that then has contributed to a global dialogue about what Puerto Rico looks like now and what it has looked like and what it might become. And so it's really incredible to have him as this resource to give us these tools to think in complex ways about representations of Puerto Rico discourses around it and how this person has been impacted and how it's influenced his art over time. I'm sure I'm missing so much in that, but I don't know.
- [14:26]
Rebecca Buchanan
I think that's a great summary, though. Right. And so I think it also one of the other things. And I know, Petra, you've done work on reggaeton before, and that's kind of your space. And so that is important too, because of how when he was growing up and during that time, he was seeing changes in music and in like, the influence of Puerto Rico on reggaeton and that kind of thing. So can you talk a little bit about that, too? So we've got these cultural things going on. We've got things going on in music. Right. And which is part of the cultural. But yeah, can you talk a little bit about that and that influence and his influence too?
- [15:06]
Petra Rivera Radu
Yeah, I think so. You know, in my first book, Remixing Reill Don, I talked about the kind of growth of the genre and the creation of the genre. And one of the things about reggaeton that a lot of people don't realize is that, you know, it may be, like, incredibly popular now, but it is a music that has historically been very stigmatized and marginalized, both by the music industry, but also. And the music industry, not just the US pop music industry, but also the Latin music industry. Right. Because reggaeton initially is music that's created by a lot of disenfranchised people, particularly young, working class, often black Puerto Rican Dominicans living in Puerto Rico. Right. And so the music actually withstood censorship campaigns. Right. One in 1995, Bad Bunny's born in 1994, one in 1995, one in 2002. So these kind of pioneers of the genre, and probably people are most familiar with Daddy Yankee, but also people like Evie Queen or Tego Calderon. Right. Like, they were kind of helping to mainstream this music in the early 2000s and combating a lot of the prejudices and stigma that was associated with it. And much of that stigma is still around, and it comes out in different kinds of ways. But I think what's Bad Bunny is part of a new generation of people, I think, who grew up when reggaeton was pretty normalized. Right. So by the time he's about 10 years old, that's when Gasolina comes out. Right. And so he is a young kid and a teenager in the period of time when reggaeton is really becoming firmly entrenched in the transnational music industry. And although it still, I think, receives a lot of prejudice and backlash within the Latin music industry by politicians, et cetera, it's not the same as it was in 1995, when they would, you know, pull you over on the side of the road if you were listening to it and assume you were a drug dealer, you know. And so I think we see a new generation of artists with Bad Bunny at the helm. But I'm also thinking about people like Raul Alejandro who are using reggaeton in these different kinds of ways and creating new kinds of fusions and kind of have the. A sort of flexibility, I think, to play with the sound and to play with the types of topics they're talking about that perhaps some of the people who influenced them did not have. And so when Bad Money comes out in 2016, you know, Despacito comes out in 2017. And so this mid 2010s era, a lot of people talk about it as like a dead zone in reggaeton, where reggaeton becomes very popular. You know, Bailando comes out in 2014. This by Enrique Iglesias, is sort of the first massive hit that blends a lot of Latin pop aesthetics with a reggaeton beat. You also have a lot of reggaeton coming out of Colombia. And the Colombian reggaeton scene is understood to be one that's more romantic, more soft, more kind of popified, if you will. And there's been stuff written about the kind of the whitening of the genre at this period of time. So during this time in Puerto Rico, there's a group of people who are gravitating towards a different genre called Latin trap, which is Spanish language trap music influenced from the Atlanta trap scene that deals more with the sort of kind of older themes of Ray Dawn. Right, so more quote, unquote, street themes, right? Including a lot of very sexually explicit lyrics and things like that. And so when Bad Bunny comes out with Diles in 2016, that's a kind of a classic Latin trap song with sort of, like, minimal production, slow, very sexually explicit. Right. And he. That's kind of how he gets his start with these Latin trap people who, many of whom are pushing back against this mainstreaming and pop sound of reggaeton at that time. But because Latin trap is so explicit and Latin trap has all of these stigmas that reggaeton had before, too, right. A lot of people aren't paying attention to it in the Latin music industry. So this is the same, you know, same story of reggaeton, a lot of genres. Right. And one of the things that I think Bad Money is really clever at doing in the early time in his career is figuring out how to use these sounds of Latin trap, but also create songs that can be more marketable, for lack of a better word. Right. So he comes out with a song called Soy Peor, which is sort of like a classic breakup song, but it's with a trap sound that can be played in different places. And so in the book, we talk a lot about the rise of Latin trap and the role of streaming in Latin trap. One of the people who we interviewed was Jerry Pujes, who's a Latin music programmer at Apple Music and a huge Latin trap fan. And he's the first person to create a Latin trap playlist on one of the major streaming platforms. And so he's the first person to start putting Bad Bunny on this playlist and kind of integrating Latin trap in a more formal way through these distributions. So, like, mechanisms. So it's sort of like this perfect storm of this kind of homegrown genre, the rise of streaming, all of these things kind of coming together at a time when Bad Bunny is really starting to make a name for himself that I think helps propel him right into the music industry.
- [21:30]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah. And one of the things that throughout this is you're looking at Bad Bunny, but you're also looking at him as an activist in multiple ways. And so even at the sort of start of his career. And a lot of that ties to what is going on in Puerto Rico, politically and culturally. And so, I mean, we don't need to talk about. I mean, we could talk about all of them, but I mean, you talk about Hurricane Maria, you talk about some of the protests that have to do with political events. So if. I don't know if there's one in particular you want to. Or a couple, but you want to talk a little bit about some of that sort of political activism. And then maybe we can also talk about some of the social gender activists, that kind of thing as well.
- [22:18]
Vanessa Diaz
But, yeah, so there's so much to say here. But I'm going to try to, you know, think about a kind of track that we can then build on, because I think this even goes back to your. To the earlier point about the ways in which Bad Bunny is like. In certain ways, like an ordinary Puerto Rican in the sense that he's experiencing all of the crises of Puerto Rico in ways that are very relatable. So I mentioned the debt crisis. I mentioned Promesa La Junta Fiscal. You have all of this, right? That is. That is really wreaking havoc on Puerto rico. And then September 2017, you have Hurricane Maria. And at this moment, Bad Bunny is abroad on a tour, and he. So he's not. He's not there. He's not experiencing Hurricane Maria. It's this moment where his experience, even though he is born and raised in Puerto Rico, is one that was shared by many people in the diaspora. Inability to contact family, uncertainty about, you know, is my home standing where, like, we could not reach people. And he's going through this along with the rest of the Puerto Rican community in the diaspora and expressing these concerns and posting raps that he's doing off the cuff on social media and sharing in this pain, right? And really sharing in this pain at the same time. You know, we, in 2018, get his first album, and one of the songs on it is this song, Estamos Bien, which, you know, is a. It's a. On the surface, it's a feel good song, but it actually is quite layered. He talks about not having electricity in the home still, right? Because of the. The devastation of Hurricane Maria that left people, many people on the island without electricity for more than a year. So he's referencing this, but it's all with this kind of, like, tone of resilience or the ability to withstand, at least, right? Like Estamos Bian. We're going to be okay. And we speak at length about this in the book. We talk about this in our classes. It's a very important moment. The very first time that he goes on US Television, he's on Jimmy Fallon, he performs Estamos Bien. And I think this is the really important moment because part of what we have heard from Bad Bunny, right, Despite what, what he talks about now and how political we can see his lyrics are now. You know, he. He would often, you know, say like, I'm. I'm not. I'm not political, right? He's not a politician, and he's not aspiring to be a politician as far as any of us know. But you don't have to say that you're a politician to do things that are political. And we all have sort of different understandings of what that is. That performance on Jimmy Fallon was profoundly political. It was profoundly important. He gets on stage, his first television, and he calls out Donald Trump. He says, you know, people are still without electricity. Thousands of people have died. And Trump is still in denial. He Speaks in English. This is at a time where his English was quite limited. And he makes it a point to go on national television, critique the president and speak up for his homeland. Then he performs at Estamos Bien. And it's, I think, this super powerful moment in terms of understanding that even if on the surface, people might walk away with this kind of like what they think is a feel good song, he's saying more. He's saying more. And he wants you to pay attention to these other messages. So maybe he performs in Spanish, and so maybe people who don't speak Spanish lose the messaging. But he took that opportunity to say, I'm speaking to the American public right now. Right. I'm speaking in English. I'm directing this at you. And I'm taking this moment really seriously. And so I think that was a time where it became clear that he was going to be speaking up. And then 2019, the next year, right. Again, he's out of the country. He's out of Puerto Rico. He's on tour. These protests break out in the wake of the release of nearly a thousand pages of incriminating texts from the then governor, Ricardo Ricky Rossello and his cronies, who are saying all kinds of horrible things, making fun of people who died in Puerto Rico, saying racist, homophobic, sexist things all over their chats. And so that was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. It wasn't the chats, it was, we have the debt crisis. People are suffering. We have all of these austerity measures happening. People are losing pensions, people are losing jobs. People are fleeing Puerto Rico from the debt crisis, Fleeing Puerto Rico as a result of the crises that came out of Hurricane Maria and the complete embarrassment of a response to that disaster. And now you have these politicians showing themselves to be completely heartless at a time when Puerto Rico is suffering, Puerto Ricans are suffering. And so he leaves his tour. He says, sorry, I have to go home and be with my people. And he goes and he takes to the streets. He releases a protest track with Residente and Ile that we can talk a bit about. But 2018 and 2019 are super important moments for I think this point at which it becomes very clear how critical Bad Bunny is going to be for representation and national and international dialogue around Puerto Rico.
- [28:02]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah, so, I mean, one of the things that comes up throughout this too, as you talk about that, is how he kind of. Well, I don't. Maybe I'll ask this question. I'm trying to think of how I want to Ask that. But like what you mentioned too, like he, he sings in, in Spanish, right? Like he spoke in English. But like, one thing I think is really important or, or really about Bad Bunny is that he does everything in Spanish, right? Like, he does it and he doesn't. He. He shoot like you, you talk about the COVID of. You talk about the Rolling Stone article. I think it was the Rolling Stone article where it was like the first. A sort of COVID piece written by Latinx reporter, that kind of thing. Right? Like, so he is very instrumental in that movement. I mean, I would probably, I mean, you would know better than I would, but I would probably say that more people in the United States speak Spanish than they do English. Right. Or we're at that point and yet we still have this very much sort of English first, English only movement. That's very political. Right. And so I think Bad Bunny is also pushing against some of that politics. So can you talk about that too? And that choice, or I mean, not his choice, but his, you know, what he's been able to do as well as a Spanish language singer and performer.
- [29:25]
Petra Rivera Radu
Yeah, I mean, I think it is a choice, right? In a way. Right. So I think one of the things that's really, you know, a lot of the conversation that we've had about crossover for Spanish language artists, you know, historically people have had to switch to English to cross over. Right? And so, you know, people, the most notably, like in the 1990s, the Latin boom, where you had Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias and Shakira, you know, like hugely, hugely popular Latin pop stars who switch over to English in order to make it in the US Market. Right. You could even think of someone like Desi Arnaz as somebody who did that. Right. And every once in a while you have a Spanish language song that will pop up and be number one, like La Bamba, like La Macarena, like Despacito, but they never kind of open a way for other Spanish language music. They're kind of like one offs. I think what's interesting about Bad Bunny and a lot of the conversation about Bad Bunny has been this question of has he been crossing over, maintaining his Spanish. Right. And I think there's a lot of different conversations about why now that could happen. Some of it could be Bad Bunny himself. Some of it could also be the role of streaming and distributing music and things like that. Some of it could be the changing demographics of the country with Latinx people being the fastest growing demographic. So there's all kinds of different sort of explanations but regardless of how it happens, I think it's profoundly important that he is doing all of this in Spanish. And I don't think he's the first artist to sort of double down and say, I'm not doing things in English. Right. Like Daddy Yankee famously said he was never going to make a song in English. You know, before Bad Bunny was like, collaborating with people like Drake, you know, there was a bachata singer who's incredibly popular named Romeo Santos, who had songs with Drake, with Usher, with Nicki Minaj. So I think what's different is that is the level of global popularity he's been able to attain and the level of crossover status he's been able to attain while doing that. Right. And I think that's really, really critical. At the same time, I think one of my favorite chapters in our book is the one you're talking about where we talk about the Rolling Stone cover. I mean, one of the things that has been, for me, really fascinating about doing this research, even if it's a little bit maybe disheartening, is we talked to a lot of journalists who have covered him for major publications like Time magazine, like Rolling Stone, like the New York Times, and it's just really interesting to hear from them the amount of work they have to do to get coverage for Bad Bunny. Right. So, like, even in, you know, the earlier the Rolling Stone cover is, I think, in 2020, but, you know, these years, 20, 20, 2021, 2022, when he is hands down, the most streamed artist in the entire world, that alone is not enough for some of these publications in the United States to think he merits a cover story. Right. And so just the statistics alone are not enough. And the kind of hoops some of these journalists have to jump through in order to get him coverage was a little bit, I mean, something I thought about, but it really is really intense. And I think that shows that despite the kind of amazing success he's had as a Spanish language artist, despite all of the barriers he's been able to break as a Spanish language artist, there is still a tremendous amount of resistance to that. And I love how in the book we're able to talk about the kind of behind the scenes negotiations of these cover stories. But we see that most explicitly right now with the backlash to the Super Bowl. Right. And the call for a different performer, this idea that the super bowl must be in English, that nobody's going to understand him, nobody even knows who he is. Right. That kind of debate around the super bowl is a microcosm Of, I think, how the US media industries continue to treat Bad Bunny despite his profound success. So on the one hand, I do want to say it's so amazing. We should celebrate. He's done all this stuff as a Spanish language artist. On the other hand, I think we have to be really careful because he. When I think about that part of our book and I think about the hoops people jump through for that, then it makes me wonder how much things have actually changed and what will happen in the future. Is this a Bad Bunny thing or are more Spanish language artists going to be able to be in these spaces?
- [34:33]
Rebecca Buchanan
No, very much so. It makes me think about. So Bad Bunny is a man, right? He's singing songs in a very reggaeton, right. This very sort of masculine. In a space that even though, I mean, you talk about him sort of performativity and thinking about gender and that kind of thing, but he's still performing in a very masculine space and these kinds of things. So what does that mean for female performers? Right? What does that mean for. Yeah, so I think about. I think about those things often, right. With those.
- [35:05]
Vanessa Diaz
And I think he does too, right? I think that's part of what we talk about is the ways in which he has been very deliberate about bringing up other Puerto Rican artists with him and sharing his stage with up and coming queer artists like Young Nico, like Viano Antiano, and really having an impact on other people's careers already. And we see that continuing with and all the musicians that he's working with, groups like Los Planeros de La Cresta and Chewy and, you know, all these young musicians from Puerto Rico, where I think we start to see really, like the kind of bigger picture, which is another thing that I think is so interesting about Bad Bunny and I think we make clear in our book. But it's something that I think every day we see more and more, which is that, like, nothing is an accident. Everything is premeditated. Everything is so care and such a part of a much bigger plan that like this evolution we've seen of him as an artist, there's the reception part, which we can't control. But his intentionality as an artist, he's in complete control of. And it's just. It just keeps working.
- [36:23]
Rebecca Buchanan
Well, because I think at one point too, I mean, you talk about how he is actually, you know, he's like, yes, I know. I said. I mean, because he's gotten backlash for, you know, saying things that are sort of sexist and racist. But like, you see this, him saying, I've listened to what people are saying and I'm going to. And one thing I appreciate about artists like Bad Bunny is that it's so. It can be really hard to be an artist because you can be like 19, 20, in your 20s and you do something and then 10, 15, 20 years later you're like, what the hell was I thinking? Right? Like, we all do stupid shit, but like when it's out there for everyone to see. So he is really open about talking about some of those things as well.
- [37:04]
Petra Rivera Radu
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think he's a very sort of. Seems to be a very self reflexive person. So he definitely does do that. And I think. I think there's two things about it that come to mind. The first is, you know, in the book we have a chapter about gender and performance. And that chapter revolves in part around an event that I did with bad bunny in 2019 at Harvard. And this was like between his first two albums. So he was really popular, but he was not in the phase we see him at now. And that event, one of the things that really impressed me about him and that we talk about in the book is that he was very aware of how people, you know, about machismo, about hyper masculinity in reggaeton and his role in that. And you know, he says, like, I listen to people and I'm trying to, you know, learn different things and unlearn other things in terms of his gender politics. So I think that's something that's really interesting about him, is that he is very much seems not that afraid of saying, yeah, you know, I messed up. On the other hand, another thing I think going back to this chapter about the journalists and stuff that we have in the book is we also see how the way that the media frames him influences profoundly how people understand what he's saying. And this is one of the kind of tricky things I think about being a Spanish language artist operating in this English language thing, because the sort of cultural nuances, even the verb tenses, get translated in articles in different ways that then produce backlash. So I mean, you know, we've all heard interviews with artists and other celebrities who are like, you don't know what's happening in my real life, like, shut up. And Bad Bunny is someone who says that a lot. And I'm always like, what a cop out. But I think in doing this research, one of the things that really emphasized to me is how much that is true. Right. And how everything we're like, we're making these arguments about Bad Bunny and I feel confident in them. And part of the reason I feel confident in them is that we were able to interview people like artists. He's collaborated with, his producers, people like Jerry Poodles and Apple, who worked with him since early in his career. We didn't interview Bad Bunny, but we interviewed a lot of people who have worked with him very closely throughout his career that have helped us understand the context in which he operates. Because he's absolutely right. We don't know those behind the scenes things. And so I think it's been really interesting to see as a kind of combination of both him as a person and also watching this person in the public eye at this time, like this prime time in his adult development, right. His twenties. And then also understanding, like what Vanessa was saying about his intentionality as an artist. You know, he has a very close knit set of people who he collaborates with and they seem to have this like very good understanding with each other and sort of are all on the same page. And very, very. You know, another thing that I think is sort of in this vein is that Bad Bunny is also a very collaborative person. He's always giving props to people who he works with and acknowledging that his success is sort of like a giant group project. Right. Over and over and over again he does that. And so I think it's. I think that makes him really interesting because we. He is a very private person. We don't get a lot of insight into his personal life. But I think that's part of what makes him appear so genuine and authentic. Right. For fans.
- [41:19]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah. I mean, I. One of the things I'm glad you brought up because one of the things I wanted to ask you about is that idea that he does seem to be recording and with the same. Right. He finds someone to collaborate with and sort of sticks with that person, or stick. You know, he creates these relationships. And some of that to me also feels like it goes back to just like Vanessa, how you talk about, he's just this kid from Puerto Rico, right. Like that connects to that. Like, these are my people, these are the people I know I can trust. There's few people I can. I think it might even be at the beginning where he kind of says, I might be living in LA or I might be renting in, you know, wherever, but I live in port, right? I might be renting here or there, but I live in Puerto Rico. So I feel like some of that goes back to that idea, like, these are the kids I can trust. These are the people that I know. Especially in this market where you don't know what people you know, right. You date the wrong person and, yeah, everything explodes.
- [42:17]
Vanessa Diaz
I mean, I think that. I think that's very true.
- [42:19]
Petra Rivera Radu
Right.
- [42:20]
Vanessa Diaz
Like, a lot of the people who he continues to produce with, like, we. We talk about the fact that, yes, like, he started producing with Mag during the Pandemic, but prior to that and up until today, right? Like, his dj, DJ Orma, is his childhood friend. Paciencia, who's his vocal engineer, has been with him throughout his career. His creative director, Yanthony Oliveiras, has been his friend since high school. Like, these are people who have been in his orbit for much of his life. And he has talked really openly about the fact that it, It's. It is like grid. It is his connection that. And he said that he doesn't, you know, he doesn't have children, but that if he want. If he has children, he doesn't want them to live in, like, a gated community. And so he wants them to be, like, with the people. And so I think that that is also a testament. It's not just a testament to who he is. I think it's also a really clear reason why he feels grounded in the work, right? And this question of, like, authenticity is because it's the same crew, right? And, like, and I think Petra saw that when she went to Harvard, it was like him and 15 of his closest friends, right? And that's still how it is. I mean, we went to the residency in Puerto Rico and it's like, well, there's Paciencia and there's DJ Orma, and there's like, there's all these people who are just like his crew and they're there. I saw him in Mexico City, same thing. It's the crew. And now the crew grows in the sense, as Petra mentioned, he likes to collaborate. And so it's like he keeps his core people, but that that core group is the foundation. And it kind of facilitates him being able to trust and open up and say, okay, well, like, who can I rely on? Like, for example, Cacho Lopez Mari, who we talked to in the book at length, who's produced multiple music videos for him, right. And produced a commercial during the last election cycle in Puerto Rico that Bad Bunny sponsored. He produced the visuals for Coachella that include these short documentaries for which Petra was one of the consultants for these videos on the history of reggaeton, right? So he's not editing those videos, but he has people who he trusts who are in his orbit that he Knows can execute his visions and his hope. And it's our understanding very much that nothing doesn't have to go by Bad Buddy, right? Like, he is. He is going through every single thing and everything has to get his sign off. It's never. And. And so as much as, like, yeah, he makes a slip up or he said something that didn't go over well or whatever. Like, it's also, he takes responsibility for everything because it's all what he wants. He's. He's. That level of intentionality and that level of, like, if my name is on it, I am in. It feels like it is very consistent in his work.
- [45:33]
Rebecca Buchanan
And.
- [45:34]
Vanessa Diaz
And that's why I think a lot of his collaborators, including Kacho, are just like, he's a genius, right? Because, like, how do you even do all of this? How do you keep your thumb on all of this? How do you grow like this, but still stay grounded and have that really, like, organic connection, right? Like, he. It. You can't do what he's doing by accident. You just can't. There's no way you could just be like, whoops, and it happened. You know, it's so meticulous. Every last part of everything he does.
- [46:10]
Rebecca Buchanan
So what are you hoping, like, with this book, right? Like, what are you. I don't know what your goal or what you're hoping comes from it or where do you think, like, Bad Bunny's going? Like, he wrote, like, you say you wrote this and the super bowl, then this. You write. At first he announced that he's not going to tour in the US and then he's like, oh, wait, I'm gonna do one. To do one show. Yeah, right. Which. Which is really, you know, even his, like, idea not to tour in the US was very political and very thought out. Right? So. So what are you hoping that comes from writing this book in this moment about Bad Bunny? And some of it might be things that you didn't expect until after you finished, right?
- [46:51]
Petra Rivera Radu
I mean, that is one of the things that's hard when you write about a figure who is still actively working and then who, like, every time he does a project, there's some other big mind blowing thing. I mean, I think one of the things that was so interesting to me about his last album was, as I mentioned, it came out when we were revising the manuscript. And so we centered our conclusion around it, but it wasn't very hard to integrate because all of the stuff he was doing in that album, all of those statements he was making are things he's said before, right? Just in a different kind of way. So in some ways, it was a really nice sort of gift to us to kind of wrap up the whole argument of the book, because it was so amazing to see how much what we were saying in the book aligned with what happened in that project. So it's very hard. People ask us all the time, what do we think is going to happen in the Super Bowl. I mean, it's really hard because he keeps everything under wraps, and he's very diverse. Every kind of era of his career has a different vibe, a different sound, a different look. So it's really. I'm not sure what's going to happen at the super bowl, but in terms of what I hope happens with the book, I mean, I am a Puerto Rican person who grew up in the United States in a family that was very proud of being Puerto Rican. And with a parent who spent a lot of time teaching me about my history, about my culture. He wanted me to feel a deep connection to this place. And in my lifetime, I feel like Puerto Rico has never been part of the conversation as much as it has been since Bad Bunny has been around. Right? Suddenly, so many people are learning about Puerto Rican history, are kind of realizing for the first time that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, even though Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizen since 1917. I mean, yesterday I went to the doctor, and the doctor was like, I love Puerto Rico. I've been reading. And I was like, seriously? And he. He is this doctor. He's not Puerto Rican, but he learns about it from Bad Bunny, you know? So I think it's. I'm hoping our book contributes to part of that conversation, like, to showing how I think of our book. On the one hand, our book is about Bad Bunny and his work. On the other hand, again, like our courses, right. We're really trying to tell this bigger story about Puerto Rico and its relationship to the United States and what the impact of that has been on people in the past, you know, in modern times, in recent history. And I think I'm hopeful that the book will help people think critically about what it means that the US Continues to be an empire. Right? Something that I think until relatively recently, a lot of people sort of locked out of their minds, if they ever knew it at all. So I'm really hopeful that the book kind of helps to continue to shed light on these histories, on this information, and to create more understanding about what's happening there. That. That's, I think, what motivates me to, like, Participate in this project.
- [50:27]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah. And I think I feel really similarly. I mean, I think that was always the hope behind the class was, you know, how do we make this content something that feels and is incredibly relevant in terms of pop culture, youth culture, and also has a much deeper purpose. Right. Like our kids. Our kids. I say kids, I mean, our students, they, you know, come out of our classroom class, like some of Petra's students have gone to study in Puerto Rico. Many of my students have become engaged in long term research projects as a result of what they did in my class. I was just this morning submitted a letter of recommendation for a student of mine who's now going to law school because she wants to do bigger research on citizenship questions around, like, Puerto Rican futures. And so, you know, I think that the book carries with it possibilities. And I think that the hope is that those possibilities are, yes, creating tools for future generations of Puerto Ricans who want their history documented. And that's why we dedicate the book to all our children, our fathers, and also all of the children of Puerto Rico and the diaspora, because we want this piece to be part of the archive. And I think that hope and that possibility also comes from Bad Buddy's music and as Petra said, the reality that he is this, this tool that has become so, so critically important to getting people energized, interested in learning about Puerto Rico, and not in a simple way, in a really complicated way. And I think that that grappling with the both sides of things that, like Puerto Rico is this place that is full of pride and like culture and amazing people, but also has been experiencing suffering since the beginning of colonialism and that continues today. And so I think really getting that nuance. And that's part of what makes Bad Bunny such a great vehicle for it. Right. His songs can be dance music, they can make you feel good, and they also teach you. And so I hope that the book does a lot of that for people too. Like, wow, I didn't know that. And also now I even love that song more. Right. Like that side.
- [52:48]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah. I will say I've had, well, one that just graduated last year and one right now that I'm working with two graduate students who are looking at. Porter. Right. Really interested. And one of their things is, like, we don't have, like, our history is not talked about. We don't talk about it in school. We don't learn about it. We don't learn about it. Sometimes we don't learn about it at home. Right. Like, so wanting, really wanting to know and wanting to know that there are other people who have those things. Right. So exactly what you're. So I'm like, this is. I really appreciate about your book, that connection to. Yes, here's this artist. But also this artist is really connected and embedded in this space and this culture and this history that you need to know about. And you need to know that history to really understand. So it really grounds it in all of that. So I really appreciate my students will be very happy.
- [53:40]
Vanessa Diaz
Well, I hope they like it.
- [53:41]
Rebecca Buchanan
So the book comes out at the. In the end of January. So my final question is always like anything that you going out you want to promote. Right. Self promotion with the book or anything else? Like, yeah, is there anything going on that you want to give a shout out to?
- [53:56]
Petra Rivera Radu
There's a lot going on.
- [53:58]
Vanessa Diaz
There's a lot going on. I will say the first thing is that it is coming out in both English and Spanish. So that was always really, really, really important to both Petra and myself. And so we're just super happy. Duke is the English version and Planeta is publishing the Spanish version. They're both available now. So, you know, whichever or both. We're going to be doing a lot of events in different places. We have a website that's befakenerebook.com p f k n r book.com and we'll update that with different events we have going on. I think that's the two big things.
- [54:36]
Petra Rivera Radu
I agree. Yes.
- [54:39]
Rebecca Buchanan
Fabulous. Well, thank you so much. Vanessa Diaz and Petra Riviera Ridot. Thank you for talking to me about pfucking R. How Bad Bunny became a global voice of Puerto Rican resistance.
- [54:51]
Petra Rivera Radu
Thank you so much for having us.
- [54:52]
Vanessa Diaz
Thanks so.
- [54:59]
Petra Rivera Radu
Much, Sam.