Bad Bunny's warning about what could happen to Puerto Rico if its people lose control of their land has traveled more than 3,000 miles south, entering Brazil's extraordinarily tight presidential election with a new landscape and a new political message.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's reelection campaign is using a Brazilian adaptation of "LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii," one of the most explicitly political songs from Bad Bunny's Grammy-winning album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS.
The political visually relocates the warning, as the spot goes further than simply translating the Puerto Rican superstar's lyrics into Portuguese.
The piece opens on the faces of Indigenous Brazilians before moving into expansive images of the Amazon rainforest, using some of Brazil's most recognizable symbols of Indigenous identity, land and environmental sovereignty to reinterpret a song originally written about Puerto Rico.
One major element of Bad Bunny's original is conspicuously absent: Hawaii.
The Brazilian version doesn't mention the islands that give "LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii" its title. Instead, Lula's campaign takes the song's larger argument about land, displacement, outside economic interests, and national identity and applies it to Brazil.
Bad Bunny cedeu direitos autorais para que Lula usasse uma versão de "LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii" durante sua campanha presidencial em 2026, a informação foi confirmada pela equipe do artista. 🇧🇷🇵🇷 pic.twitter.com/IRuL6cfBLf
— Info Bad Bunny Brasil (@InfoBadBunnyBR) September 24, 2026
Brazilian reports published Wednesday said Bad Bunny authorized the campaign to use the song. The fan account Info Bad Bunny Brasil said the information had been confirmed by the artist's team. Revista Fórum and Diário do Centro do Mundo subsequently reported that the song had been authorized for the campaign. Bad Bunny's representatives had not issued a separate public statement announcing an endorsement of Lula as of Wednesday morning. (Revista Fórum)
That distinction matters. Allowing a political campaign to use a song is not necessarily the same as formally endorsing its candidate.
But this is hardly an apolitical song.
Bad Bunny's Warning to Puerto Rico
"LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii" is essentially an alarm call.
Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, uses Hawaii as a cautionary parallel for Puerto Rico, warning about gentrification, displacement, privatization of natural resources, mass tourism and an economic system in which increasingly valuable land can become inaccessible to the people who were born there.
The song asks Puerto Ricans not to surrender their flag or forget their culture as the singer describes outsiders wanting the island's rivers, beaches and neighborhoods while local families are pushed away.
The Hawaii comparison is deliberate. The islands were annexed by the United States in 1898 and became a state in 1959 after profound changes to Indigenous Hawaiian political power, land ownership and culture. Puerto Rico also came under U.S. control in 1898 and remains a U.S. territory.
Bad Bunny turns that history into a warning about what Puerto Rico could become.
The song addresses the privatization of natural resources and the displacement of communities while criticizing conditions that have forced Puerto Ricans to leave the island. It also reflects concerns over tax incentives that have attracted wealthy newcomers and investors to Puerto Rico and accelerated arguments over housing affordability and gentrification.
In the Brazilian campaign piece, those concerns acquire a different visual vocabulary that fits neatly into one of Lula's central reelection themes: Brazilian sovereignty. The topic was also at the center of the South American president in the U.N. this week.
A Presidential Race That Is Almost Even
The Bad Bunny spot arrives less than two weeks before Brazilians vote on Oct. 4 and as Lula faces a far more competitive reelection contest than once appeared likely.
His principal rival is Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro and the candidate carrying the Bolsonaro political movement into the 2026 election.
The latest AtlasIntel/Bloomberg poll underscores just how close the contest has become. In the first round, Lula registered 45.8% support and Flávio Bolsonaro 43.4%. In a simulated second round, the difference virtually disappeared: 47.7% for Lula and 47.4% for Bolsonaro, within the poll's margin of error.
Other major polls tell essentially the same story even when they disagree about who is numerically ahead.
A Datafolha survey released Sept. 17 had Lula at 46% and Bolsonaro at 44% in a runoff. Two polls released this week split the advantage, with Quaest putting Bolsonaro one point ahead and BTG Pactual/Nexus giving Lula a one-point advantage. All showed a statistical tie.
If no candidate receives more than 50% of valid votes on Oct. 4, Brazil will hold a second round Oct. 25.
Why Bad Bunny Suddenly Matters in Brazil
There is also a practical electoral reason why Bad Bunny's music carries more weight in Brazil in 2026 than it would have only a few years ago.
His popularity there has exploded.
Brazil is now Bad Bunny's third-largest streaming market among countries where Spanish is not the primary language, behind only the United States and Italy, according to Spotify. His streams in Brazil grew 170% between 2022 and 2025, according to Spotify.
Then came 2026.
After Bad Bunny performed at the Super Bowl halftime show on Feb. 8, his Spotify streams in Brazil soared 426% compared with the equivalent period a week earlier.
The song Lula's campaign is now using experienced an even larger surge.
Brazilian streams of "LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii" jumped 755% following the performance. Other songs exploded as well, with "Yo Perreo Sola" rising 2,536% and "El Apagón" 1,759%.
Perhaps even more relevant to a presidential campaign is who is listening. Spotify says 73% of Bad Bunny's Brazilian audience is between 18 and 34, putting much of his local fan base among Gen Z and younger millennial voters.
His relationship with Brazil then moved offline.
On Feb. 20 and 21, Bad Bunny performed his first concerts in the country, filling São Paulo's Allianz Parque on consecutive nights. Spotify created an immersive De Puerto Rico Pa'l Mundo installation in São Paulo around the concerts, recreating elements of DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS and its Puerto Rican cultural universe for Brazilian fans.
By then, Brazilian media were describing an extraordinary reversal. Folha reported that Bad Bunny had never previously ranked among Spotify's 50 most-played artists in Brazil during nearly a decade as a recording artist. Following the Super Bowl and ahead of the São Paulo shows, he climbed to the top of the country's streaming market among international artists.
That makes the timing of Lula's use of "LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii" particularly intentional, as while Bad Bunny wrote the song about Puerto Rico, its central questions can travel: Who owns the land? Who benefits from development? What happens when outside economic interests collide with local communities? And what does a country risk losing while pursuing investment and growth?
Lula's campaign has replaced Puerto Rico's beaches with the Amazon and put Indigenous Brazilian faces at the center of that argument and in a presidential election. which polls show could be decided by an extraordinarily narrow margin, the warning at the heart of Bad Bunny's song remains recognizable: Don't lose control of what belongs to you.
