The Making of a Rocker

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY/MIAMI

There are a couple of things you should know about Colombian pop-rocker Shakira before you go any further with this thing: 1) Shakira is a control freak. She could have released her English-language debut album months ago. Years, even. Gloria Estefan was going to rewrite Shakira's songs into English for the young Colombian to sing. Instead, Shakira decided to improve her English, and Estefan ultimately assisted on just two tracks. "I can't hire other people to write songs for me," Shakira says. "I have to write them myself." 2) Shakira is a control freak. Sorry, this bears repeating. See, the reason this story is set in Florida to begin with is that Shakira wouldn't send any tracks from her still-in-the-works CD to TIME's offices in New York City. She wanted a critic to go to the studio where she was working and listen to her new music there. She wanted to stand right next to the critic as he took in her just recorded songs. Hmm. Actually, come to think of it, having Shakira--who recently graced the cover of PEOPLE EN ESPANOL's "25 Bellezas Latinas" issue--personally play her new material isn't all that bad a deal. Maybe this control-freak thing is something we can live with.

So it's showtime. Shakira, 24, breezes into the studio with her mother Nidia, a petite woman who doesn't say very much, and her older brother Tony, 35, a solidly constructed guy who looks like he doesn't need to say very much. An MTV crew is waiting nearby to do an interview. A couple of years ago, Shakira did an MTV Unplugged show that MTV passed on but that aired on MTV Latin America. Now, with her new CD getting revved up, the network plans to air the show on its spin-off channel MTV2, along with some spliced-in interviews with the star herself. Her mainstreaming moment has finally arrived. A couple of years back, when Latin stars weren't so much in vogue, Shakira's stuff couldn't have got play on MTV2,347.

In a world ruled by packaged pop, Shakira offers up a refreshing blast of off-center rock. Her music has a bit of edge, a healthy helping of guitars, and she writes it herself. "In Latin cultures historically, though not always, females are interpreters," says Jose Tillan, vice president of music and talent at MTV Latin America. "For the most part, they don't make records. Shakira isn't like that. From the very beginning she has been involved with the songs and the recording."

Colombia isn't the first country one tends to think of when it comes to rock. It is, perhaps, the first when it comes to magic realism (as the home of Gabriel Garcia Marquez), and also tops when it comes to stuff that's a little too real (the narco-violence that has ravaged the country for decades). However, Colombia has also produced a number of notable rock-edged acts in recent years, including the veteran duo Aterciopelados (which played The Tonight Show this year), the rhythmic rockers called Bloque, folk star Carlos Vives and up-and-coming male crooner Juanes (who had the highest number of nominations at this year's Latin Grammys). In centuries past, the conquistadors believed Colombia could have been one of the locations for El Dorado, the fabled city of gold. They were only a little bit off. They should have been looking for gold records. "Colombians are people with a great sensitivity surrounded by a difficult reality," says Shakira. "That makes us look for ways to channel all those feelings. Sometimes pain creates artists, or at least shapes them."

Fusion shaped Shakira's life. She was born Shakira Mebarak in the coastal city of Barranquilla, the youngest of eight children. Her father William is of Lebanese descent; her mother is Colombian. By age 8 she was writing her own songs; by age 13 she had released her first album, Magia (Magic). On her past two studio albums, the affable 1996 release Pies Descalzos (Bare Feet) and its 1998 follow-up, the excellent ?Donde Estan Los Ladrones? (Where Are the Thieves?), she grew more ambitious, giving her sound a rawer edge and drawing on a wider range of influences, including Mexican mariachi and Middle Eastern grooves (she's given to doing a kind of belly dance when she plays her Arabic-influenced song Ojos Asi). "Yo soy una fusion. I am a fusion," says Shakira. "That's my persona. I'm a fusion between black and white, between pop and rock, between cultures--between my Lebanese father and my mother's Spanish blood, the Colombian folklore and Arab dance I love and American music."

So what does the new album sound like? Shakira sits down at the studio controls and flicks a switch. The sound of her newest song, Objection (Tango), fills the room. It starts with an accordion-driven Argentine tango passage before moving into fast-tempo retro-rock. "If the guitar riffs are true to traditions like Led Zeppelin, then I'm satisfied," says Shakira. Objection, however, has a very un-Zeppelin-ish feminist theme. "I grew up in a very machista society where men have a lot of difficulty being faithful," says Shakira. "I hope the song makes clear that the tango is a dance for two, not three." One of the lines in the song says, "Next to her cheap silicone I look minimal/that's why in front of your eyes I'm invisible." Not a bad rhyme. Some of the lyrics on Shakira's new album sound a bit odd, but it's hard to tell if the oddness is poetic license or simply a beginner's English grammar. In any case, it works.

The balance of Shakira's album is forceful, well-conceived pop rock, with occasional worldly flair (such as the engaging Andean flutes on the song Whenever, Wherever). "I knew I could write songs in English," says Shakira. "I just had to get over the fear." In general, she says she finds English to be less accommodating than Espanol. "Spanish syntax is more flexible--I can put a verb before a noun any time I need to. English is more rigid," she says. There is an aspect of her new songwriting language that she finds useful: "The great thing about composing in English is that with three words you can make a more direct statement." As an example, Shakira leans back and lets out a cry: "Go for it!"

The poet Derek Walcott once wrote, "To change your language you must change your life." Translations can change poems (the Aeneid, for example, has an elegant architecture that's hard to rebuild in English), and translations can ruin movies (who wants to see the dubbed version of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?). Shakira is struggling to prove that a person's career can be translated, from one tongue to another, from one country to the next, without changing its essence. After stops in Uruguay, Argentina and the Bahamas, she now resides in Miami, at least for the time being. "I don't know where I really live now," she says. But she has settled on a hair color. She was brunet; now that she's a budding North American star, she's blond. Shakira says her blondification was not a marketing move, merely a whim: "The color of my hair is a completely secondary consideration for me. Latin women are always making these little changes. My first choice was to be a redhead, but the color kept streaking at the beach. So I tried the Marilyn Monroe look."

In true Marilyn fashion, Shakira has become a subject of fascination for Miami-area gossip columns, especially since her recent engagement to Antonio de la Rua, the son of the President of Argentina. Shakira has also become a subject of corporate interest: she's appearing in TV spots for Pepsi. Now that she is blond, represents an American soft drink and has an upper-crust Argentine fiance, will she be able to remain the same hard-driving Colombian rockera? "I plan to keep on being the same artist, with the same musical language, just in a different spoken language this time," says Shakira. "It's all still coming from my real feelings, my real-life experiences." In other words, watch out. Shakira plans to go for it.

--With reporting by Tim Padgett and Mary Sutter/Miami

With reporting by Tim Padgett and Mary Sutter/Miami