Shakira Breaking Barriers

"I had a dream of having this album break barriers of cultural and language frontiers," says Shakira, who has been pinching herself ever since her sixth studio album, Fijacion Oral Vol. 1, entered the charts at Number Four on June 15th -- the highest-ever debut for a Spanish-language album.

But that's not the only record the twenty-eight-year-old Colombian singer broke: Fijacion scored the best first-week sales for a Spanish-language album (a mark previously held by Ricky Martin's 2003 Almas del Silencio), with more than 157,000 units sold. And the soap-opera-like video for the single "La Tortura," which features a greased-up Shakira performing mind-boggling undulations, is the only all-Spanish clip ever to be added to regular rotation on MTV. On top of all that, she nabbed two MTV Video Music Award nominations (Best Female Video and Best Dance Video), and she'll become the first singer to perform entirely in Spanish at the ceremony in Miami, on August 28th.

Until then, Shakira is logging late hours at her home studio in the Bahamas, putting the finishing touches on Oral Fixation Vol. 2, the English-language sequel to Fijacion Oral. One track features Carlos Santana, which Shakira considers "a soulful ballad that has the flavor of the Seventies."

Both discs were executive-produced by Rick Rubin, who advised Shakira long-distance from L.A. while she recorded in the Bahamas and Vancouver. "I gave him some of the demos I had, and he loved them," says Shakira. "He made me believe in the project."