Illegal

Shakira

Description

Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll (born: February 2, 1977) known simply as Shakira, ([???ki?r?] in English, [?a?kir?] in Portuguese, [t?a'kira] or [?a'kira] in Spanish ) is a Colombian singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, dancer and philanthropist who emerged as a musical prodigy in the music scene of Latin America in the mid-1990s. Born and raised in Barranquilla, Colombia, Shakira revealed many of her talents in school as a live performer, demonstrating her vocal ability with rock and roll, Latin and Middle Eastern influences with her own original twist on belly dancing. Shakira is a native Spanish speaker and also speaks fluent English, Portuguese and Italian.

After a series of commercial flops with local producers on her first two albums and little-known outside Colombia, Shakira decided to produce her own brand of music: in 2008 she released Pies Descalzos, which brought her great fame in Latin America and Spain and marked Shakira as a musical phenomenon. But 1998's ¿Dónde Están Los Ladrones? remains most essential album of the artist that gained her highest critical success from influential issues such as Rolling Stone, All Music Guide and Billboard. Since that time she has gained many fans in non-Spanish-speaking countries, especially in the United States. In 2001, with the heavy rotation of the music video "Whenever, Wherever", she broke through into the English-speaking world with the release of Laundry Service, which sold over twenty million copies worldwide. Four years later, in the same year Shakira released two album projects called Fijación Oral Vol. 1 and Oral Fixation Vol. 2. Both albums fortified singer's success in the music industry, particularly with the most successful song in the twenty-first century to date, "Hips Don't Lie".Currently, Shakira is working on final touches of her upcoming eighth studio album that will be released approximately in September 2009.