Shakira reveals the impact of her collaboration with Bizarrap: ‘It was necessary for my own healing’

Marysabel Huston-Crespo, CNN

Shakira feels emotionally empowered after her song with Argentine producer Bizarrap.

“I think I would be in a very different place if I had not made that song, [to have] the chance to express myself, to think about pain,” the Colombian singer told Mexican journalist Enrique Acevedo in her first interview since releasing two songs, one with Bizarrap and more recently with fellow Colombian singer Karol G.

The interview aired Monday night on the Mexican network N+, part of Televisa, a CNN affiliate.

“BZRP Music Sessions Vol. 53” released on January 11 and alluded to her breakup with the former soccer player Gerard Piqué.

“I think someone had to take a photo of the day I worked on Session 53 with Bizarrap, a before and after. I entered the studio in one way and left in another. This is one of the things that I am most grateful to Biza, for giving me that space, that opportunity to vent. It was a great relief, also necessary for my own healing, for my own recovery process,” the singer said.

She credited their collaboration, in part, to her 10-year-old son, Milan.

“It was a suggestion from Milan,” Shakira explained.

“Milan told me: ‘Mommy, you have to do something with Bizarrap … he’s the Argentine god!'” the singer said, adding that it was thanks to her son that she got to know the producer’s work.

The hit unleashed a wave both support and criticism on social media about Shakira’s artistic choice to heal the wounds of heartbreak.

In the interview, Shakira said that she has always been “emotionally dependent on men” and that she “also bought that story that a woman needs a man to complete herself, a family,” she said.

“Now I feel complete because I feel that I depend on myself and that I also have two children that depend on me, so I have to be stronger than a lioness,” she added.

That strength, Shakira explained, comes from grieving and accepting that sometimes things don’t turn out the way you think.

“I also had that dream of having a family in which the children had a father and a mother under the same roof. Not all dreams in life come true, but life finds a way to make it up to you in some way,” Shakira said.

Shakira noted that women were at the center of the support she received after the couple revealed the end of their 12-year relationship.

“I have realized that women are at a key moment for society. We are at a point where the support that we can receive from each other is very relevant, it is very important,” she added.

To describe that support, Shakira paraphrased a quote from the late former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright.

“She has a phrase that I love, which says ‘there is a place in hell reserved for those women who do not support others.’ And I completely agree,” Shakira said.

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