Chances are you have heard of Bad Bunny, or formally, Benito. If you have been even remotely online since the start of 2025, you would also know of the surprise release of his sixth studio album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” on Jan. 5.

What many listeners don’t know is that the visualizers were still being composed just two days before its release and a UW faculty member is the creative mind behind them.

UW assistant professor of Latin American and Caribbean history, Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, was approached by Bad Bunny’s team via Instagram DM in late Dec. 2024 — just under two weeks before his album was released.

Meléndez-Badillo, from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico and author of his recently published book “Puerto Rico: A National History” credits the significant attention his book received in Puerto Rico for putting him on Bad Bunny’s radar.

“I got a message from someone that I did not know, asking me if I was interested in having a potential collaboration with Bad Bunny,” Meléndez-Badillo said.

Unable to pass up the opportunity — as any rational person would not, he immediately began his creative process on the visualizers with almost complete creative freedom from Bad Bunny. While being on vacation without his laptop, he produced 74 pages of handwritten notes between Dec. 24 and Jan. 1, working until Jan. 3 to finalize the visualizers before the album’s release.

Bad Bunny had a specific vision for incorporating Puerto Rican history into his visualizers, seeking to educate listeners both about well-known and unknown aspects of the island’s past.

For Meléndez-Badillo, this project was a challenge. Requiring him to strike a balance between his academic research and creating digestible content for millions of listeners proved both challenging and rewarding.

“Benito was interested in incorporating history, historical narratives, into the slides of his visualizers … Even the general history of Puerto Rico is unknown abroad,” Meléndez-Badillo explained.

The visualizers touch on crucial historical moments of Puerto Rico’s past. One moment in particular included the fact that after the U.S. occupation in 1898, Puerto Rican governors were hand-picked by the president rather than elected. But, in 1947, this was overturned and the people of Puerto Rico were sanctioned approval to elect a governor in the general election of 1948.

For Meléndez-Badillo, whose scholarly work centers around working-class history and marginalized peoples, this project pushed him beyond traditional academic writing.

“As scholars, we’re trained to speak to highly trained individuals,” Meléndez-Badillo said.

The process required a sort of “unlearning” of academic writing conventions to create approachable narratives that would inform a broader audience while maintaining historical accuracy.

The visualizers themselves cover a wide range of topics, from the history of surveillance and repression of pro-independence movements to the evolution of Afro-Caribbean rhythms that gave way to reggaeton. One visualizer, focusing on the sugarcane industry, drew from Meléndez-Badillo’s own academic research.

“I did for an academic article, a peer-reviewed article years ago and so I drew on my own research and scholarship in order to write these visualizers, but they were written in a more accessible tone and narrative,” Meléndez-Badillo said.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of the project for Meléndez-Badillo involved a subject matter outside of his expertise — local wildlife.

This required extensive additional research, particularly about ‘El Sapo Concho Puertorriqueño’ (the Puerto Rican toad), which became an emblem of the record.

“In my training, I did not receive any training about animals in danger of extinction,” Meléndez-Badillo said.

Beyond historical education, the visualizers carry a deeper message about cultural identity and displacement. Its themes of nostalgia, cultural erasure and migration resonate with diaspora communities worldwide.

Further, this collaboration challenges stereotypical views of Puerto Rico as just a tropical vacation destination, instead highlighting the island’s complex history, resilience and ongoing struggles.

“Our histories are interconnected and interwoven, particularly for those outside of the global north,” Meléndez-Badillo said.

Particularly touching is how the album’s title track, “DtMF” — an acronym for “I should have taken more photos,” has resonated deeply with diaspora communities worldwide.

The song’s themes of displacement and cultural erasure have sparked a social media movement, with people sharing their own stories of separation from their homeland.

“It’s talking about nostalgia for that homeland, nostalgia for your culture in the face of displacement, cultural erasure . . . those are things that caught across the record and I think those are realities that a lot of people are facing, whether they are in Palestine, Venezuela or the Dominican Republic,” Meléndez-Badillo said.

Puerto Rico’s resilience in the face of adversity mirrors similar stories of communities with a history of displacement, reminding us that while these histories may be distinct, the emotions and experiences they evoke are universal.

“Benito is talking against the displacement of Puerto Ricans and so this is a record also of cultural affirmation in the face of cultural erasure,” Meléndez-Badillo said.