Karol G: "A heartbreak can destroy you"

It must be pleasant to have a portion of omelette for breakfast with orange juice while your album—your art, your multimillion-dollar business—runs wild on the internet, the numbers skyrocketing and in your mouth the potato, the egg, the freshly squeezed citrus sweet.

The global star of the moment receives us at noon in his hotel room.

"The tortilla was delicious," says Carolina Giraldo Navarro (Medellín, 32 years old).

It's Tuesday, February 28, and she's just released her fourth album,

(Universal Music).

A week later, it would become the first female LP in Spanish number one on Billboard, the main chart in the United States.

They will know her by Karol G. Also as La Bichota —title of one of her

from 2020—.

With her intuitive producer Ovy On The Drums, she has achieved an album that confirms that the succulent ajiaco of Latin urban music, or reggaeton, rules today in pop.

There are 17 songs in which she shines solo and with

, collaborations) like that of his idolized Shakira, with whom he melts heartbreak —Shakira

she after the Puerto Rican rapper Anuel AA— to pour them like liquid gold in the song

(you stayed big), another one for the record crusher.

is called that because, as the Colombian artist frankly tells us, yesterday was really ugly, more than we imagine in front of this jovial and intelligent winner, with Dolce & Gabbana boots, a denim outfit and flamboyant hair

dye resurrection red.

With 'Mañana ser bonito' (Universal Music), Karol G has become the first woman to reach number one on the Billboard chart with an album in Spanish.

Here she wears a coat by Javier Guijarro, a top by Sehnsucht Atelier, a skirt by GCDS, and boots by Dr. Martens.Johnson Lui

The album draws on her healing process, from the rabid melancholy of the breakup to her vitalistic self-improvement.

She is rampant and horny as she corresponds to the voluptuous boss of the perreo world, but she also has the low tones and bitter verses of the hard-working and conscious thirty-year-old who supports vulnerable women with her Foundation with Cora de ella;

the neighborhood girl tattooed with a

and a barbed wire heart.

It contains all the pleasure and anxiety of this strong and vulnerable person in which enjoyment overlaps with self-demand, the cerebral.

This Karol G who 24 hours ago arrived in Madrid from Miami by

In private, she had a chocolate with churros while her fans were waiting for her at the door of a cafe and that, "because of the nerves of the interviews", she bit her nails and shows them this morning with the crushed enamel.

“See, I always wear my super cute manicure…”.

How are you?

Late night, I didn't sleep at all.

I didn't sleep at all, does that mean you didn't sleep at all or that you slept in chunks?

No, I didn't sleep at all means I didn't sleep at all.

It's just that I don't sleep, my head is like a motor that I can't turn off.

I would love to know how to turn it off but I can't.

Even when I manage to fall asleep, ideas wake me up.

This is something that has started to happen to me in recent years.

With all the things I've seen and what I've been able to know and achieve, my mind seems to fly more, I feel like my head is always flying and thinking about the craziest things.

The album comes from a period of darkness due to the end of a sentimental relationship.

The breakup made me realize that inside I was completely destabilized and my level of dependency.

When the relationship ended, I felt that I couldn't do anything anymore and I spent a lot of time devaluing myself.

I believed that all the things that were happening to me in my career I did not deserve.

Girl power

But at all.

It was horrible.

My previous album,

was having an incredible success and I didn't want to celebrate it.

I no longer liked what I did, I didn't like what I saw physically.

I was vulnerable and people's cyber attacks got tougher.

It all affected me too much.

I got to a point where I didn't want anything.

A love can make you feel the happiest person in the world, but a heartbreak can seriously destroy your life.

If one does not have enough internal strength, a lack of love can confuse you to such an extent that your career, personality, and self-esteem crumble.

That happened to me.

That's why it means everything to me that other people can heal with my songs.

Now you are fine.

Happy.

In love?

I am living a special moment.

“I am happy and I enjoy what is happening to me, but every day I wake up feeling that I can do better”.

Vintage Metro T-shirt from Colombia and jeans from Loewe.Johnson Lui

Let's go with details of the lyrics of the album.

In 'Mientras me curo del cora' you say: “I don't even miss Ovy in the instrumentals”.

What is the importance in your music of your producer, Ovy On The Drums?

Total.

He knows me very well, he knows my family a lot.

He lived four years in my house in Medellín and we built the first recording studio together, laying the brick blocks hand in hand.

In 'X if we return'

Sometimes you don't get along with a person and you're no longer with them, but you think: “Just a little while…”.

"You put the bed and I put the

The

It's a kind of marijuana.

In 'But you'

The butt.

You have a very big ass and you have me arrowed there.

In

Ha ha ha, gistro is a thong.

What it says there is that we think so much about the details that we even have diamonds in the registry.

Bellaquear.

Flirt.

Twerk.

Twerking

is dogging.

In 'Gucci the cloths' you say that it was expensive for you to cry heartbreak “because they said Gucci the cloths”.

Does a Gucci scarf spoil with tears?

You would be surprised if you see that a lot of very expensive brand name clothes are of super poor quality!

In other words, for a heartbreak you don't need to buy Gucci scarves.

No, for a heartbreak you do very well with normal toilet paper.

When you started, did you think that to be a star you would have to sing in English?

Yes, I thought about it at some point, of course.

The biggest reference we had was Shakira and she always did her songs with a Spanish and English version.

I took a little while learning it and when I learned it I realized that she no longer needed to sing in English for my music to work.

Good, right?

If the truth.

what a chimba

What a chimba!

Oh I love it!

It's like how cool…?

More, in Colombian when we say that something is very chimba it is that it is incredible, wow, the most.

Karol G, with a Loewe coat, a David Albiol vest, Maison J. Simone shorts and Dr. Martens boots. Johnson Lui

In 'Ferrari Eyes'

Yes, I get asked a lot about this song.

Do you know what's up?

In the process of breaking up, one feels that freeing oneself is going to feel better, and they say "I want to drink, I want to drink, I want whatever it is I'm ready to arrive...", to later realize that it wasn't that way

. …But, well, he had a good time at the party.

What is the Karol G movement?

How does one explain that quickly.

This was created from Bichota and is about an empowered woman who works, who fends for herself and who is strong in difficult situations.

I swear that it is something that is reflected in the concerts, in the messages that they write to me…

Are you bored when they ask you about feminism?

No, what bores me is being asked what it's like to be a woman in an environment so dominated by men, because it's not so dominated by men anymore.

It is a question sent to pick up a long time ago.

But I do want to continue talking about feminism in general because it is something important and still in development.

Shakira has only made songs in collaboration with three women: Beyoncé in 2006, Rihanna in 2014 and Karol G in 2023. How do you feel?

What a scare!

You still don't believe it.

I was wondering for a long time if she would be as talented as this or that one.

I know that there are people who sing better than me, who dance better than me, who are better

than me, but I have disciplined the talent that I had too much.

I have worked too hard to achieve the things that I have achieved, and when I see them, it is hard for me to know that it is a reality, but I enjoy it, because I know how much it has cost me.

I read that you love NASA and space things.

If you weren't a music star, would you have wanted to be an astronaut?

No. Yes, I'm obsessed with it, but I wouldn't have wanted to be an astronaut, I would have wanted to be a professional motocrosser.

I love it since I was a child.

In the midst of a rush of success, the artist is thoughtful and open to other long-term plans: “I don't see myself in this all my life.

Five years, yes, at least, but staying in this would be monotonous.

She is wearing a coat by Alpha Industries and a top by Calvin Klein.

johnson lui

About Shakira.

Do you know what she said to Gabriel García Márquez in 1999?: "I am more afraid of marriage than of death."

Incredible that García Márquez interviewed her!

I mean, it's that when you stop at her career…, she's legendary.

And I think that I am also more afraid of marriage than of death.

How was your childhood in Medellín?

It was a dream childhood, a childhood that no longer exists.

We were from the time when we still played at making swamp fritters.

Swamp?

The mud, how do you say it?

We made arepitas with the mud, we used to be on the street and I didn't know what a telephone was until I was 16 years old, literally.

My family was huge.

It was a special childhood.

Despite the context.

Two of my father's brothers were killed because of the curfews in place in Medellín.

After six in the evening, nobody could go out on the streets because they [the drug traffickers] were trying to put pressure on the government to reach a negotiation.

The way to put pressure was by threatening the whole society, and whoever was on the street after a certain hour was killed.

Just like that: whoever was on the street was killed.

They had no mercy because they were at war with the government.

Karol G, with a 'tank' top by Loewe.Johnson Lui

You thought several times about stopping singing.

Since 2006 I started making music and in 2012 it was the first time that I said that I didn't want to sing anymore because I was tired of being told that as a woman I couldn't, of encountering indecent proposals from any producer or engineer...

Many?

many.

So, I felt that they were making me lose love for what I liked, which was making music and songs, and if I had to stop respecting myself to get to something..., I wouldn't do it.

But my dad set about the task of being my manager and he was very committed, and there yes that anyone who came with an indecent proposal, I was super armored with him.

It was very important to me.

Reviewing the Medellín press, I saw the recent news about a woman, Daniela Rivera, who committed suicide by jumping into the subway with her daughter, who survived.

Supposedly, she came from an abusive relationship.

Machismo is something universal and it seems to have no end.

It is something that we work on at the foundation.

You don't know the stories of girls who no longer want to live.

Your album is called

That in our culture we grew up with the chip that we are not capable or strong enough to achieve things and we distance ourselves from situations of pain, when they are the most evolutionary in the growth process of a person.

I can tell you that the last two years of my life, after the pain I have felt, have been the clearest, the happiest.

He will say: "Yeah, but I'm not Karol G. She was screwed and came out, but I'm not Karol G."

No, actually, the one who was screwed was Carolina.

Karol G was very good, because his career as such was very good.

But Carolina was screwed and Carolina learned the greatest things from darkness, if you understand me?;

when we get to that point, either we learn and leave or we stay.