Cover Story: Shakira

Though she's been speaking English for only two years, she is an adventurous conversationalist, leaping between topics in a way that is random but feels logical. "People are not depressed in Colombia the same way people are in America," she says. Colombia is a country that has been in a civil war for nearly four decades. It is a land of drug lords, kidnappings and car bombings that have produced a wave of 600,000 emigres in the past three years alone. It is also home to a devout, almost mystical form of Catholicism and to the literature of magical realism. Shakira was educated by nuns in a school called the Teaching. She says, "The seeds of their education are well-planted in my system. I believe in God. I believe in the sacraments."

Despite the fact that she has devoted her entire life to her career, she is hesitant to take credit for her own success. It's a humility so extreme it borders on arrogance. In some ways, Shakira seems bonded with her massive audience by sharing with them their awestruck worship of her public persona. "I always knew I was going to be a public figure," she says. "There was no doubt. Call it a premonition, or fatalism" — she pauses — "fatalidad is how we would say it in Spanish." It is a word that does not translate directly into English — suggesting some combination of destiny, fate and premonition. In his profile, M?rquez put it like this: "With the face of a perfect young girl, and her deceptive frailty, she always had the absolute certainty she would be a public personality of world renown. She did not know in what art or in what manner, but she did not have a shadow of a doubt, as if she were condemned to a prophecy."

Of course, in America, pop success depends more on promotion than on prophecy. For this, Shakira has benefited from the intervention of Freddy DeMann, the legendary impresario who helped launch Michael Jackson's solo career, introduced the world to Madonna and signed Alanis Morissette to her first major record deal. A couple of years ago, DeMann was watching a Latin music awards show on television when he spotted Shakira singing with Melissa Etheridge.

Shakira's music harnesses teen-pop energy to do the work of rock & roll. Like Britney and Christina, she has wanted fame since she has been old enough to walk. Unlike them, she's a rock girl through and through. Her singing is full-throated and urgent, her manner commanding onstage or on record. And her music is omnivorous, as likely to sound like Blondie one moment, like Britney another, and almost always underpinned by two things: rock guitar and Latin rhythms.

"She was authentic," DeMann says. "You could feel it even on television." He became her manager in early 2000. "Shakira wanted to be a world artist," says DeMann. "The way to do that is to record in English." He describes his client as "a very sexy girl with very pure thoughts." He adds, "She's right for the time. She's a good Catholic girl."

There is a spine-tingling screech as helicopter runners slide directly onto the roof overhead, but Shakira remains calm. We go up to the roof and get into the aircraft. She snaps the lap belt around her tiny waist and chats about an experience she had in Spain watching a bullfight. "At first, the bullfight was like a festival, a medieval pageant on horseback," Shakira says, her voice ringing brightly beneath the roar of the helicopter. Most of the cabin is filled by her ever-present bodyguard, a watchful 220-pound former bouncer from Brooklyn named Miguel. Before coming to work for Shakira, he shadowed Jennifer Lopez (about which he says little except, "I will never work for rappers. Everyone in their entourage carries guns").

As Mexico City lurches into view thirty stories below, the cabin fills with the acrid stench of kerosene. Did someone forget to put the cap on the fuel tank? Is fuel leaking from the engine? Shakira chatters on. "Then it was so bloody," she says. "The bull dies, of course." The helicopter dips abruptly. The machine sputters for a moment, like a lawn-mower engine choking on the weeds. The turbulence doesn't seem to bother Shakira a bit. She is now discussing her premonition that she will one day give birth to two boys: "I wish that one of my children will be like the Australian guy from the Discovery Channel show. The crocodile hunter."