"I had indecent proposals... it was a situation that hurt me": Karol G

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Karol G was a family affair. The great project of the Giraldo Navarro family. Her career began to take shape as a child as soon as she demonstrated a charming voice and a resolute fascination with any familiar setting involving song and clapping. Carolina Giraldo Navarro (February 14, 1991) was born and raised in Medellín. She was the youngest of three daughters from a wealthy middle-class home and an early promise.

Her father, Guillermo, an empirical musician, very soon assumed —and with paisa stubbornness— the promise for which today the whole world knows her as Karol G and him as Papa G. When she was five years old he became the promoter , manager and coach who took the young artist to sing at town fairs, a children's reality show, to sign her first contract at age 14 and even to the United States in 2009. Although that time it was he himself who did it to stop from the table of a record label that proposed her to be a songwriter and not a main star. She says that her career had to go “on the slow road”. Something that the two understood when they hugged each other in Don Francisco invites you, in 2018, and the veteran presenter sentenced: "He is Karol G's dad!" as he entered the set and she, a 27-year-old artist with a successful studio album (Unstoppable, 2017), greeted him with pride. Four months ago, in January 2018, Karol G had won the Latin Grammy for best new artist and had taken her father by the hand to go on stage. "This I want to share with this man here, who is 99 percent of the success of my career: my dad!" To which he added: "To the Academy, the Latin Grammys and everyone in the industry: my God pay you for believing in our project." (You may be interested in: The BOCAS interview with J Balvin, the 'child e' Medellin')

By then, Karol G had been signed to Universal Music for two years, the same record company of great stars of the urban genre such as J Balvin, Daddy Yankee and Don Omar. All this after a persevering career that put her in the position of the first woman to succeed as a soloist within the new generation of reggaeton, singing openly sexualized lyrics like her male colleagues. (Also: The BOCAS interview with Leonardo Villar, the manager of Banco de la República) Today, she is the #1 Latina in the world for the second consecutive year (2019 and 2020), according to Billboard, the most watched singer on YouTube, and one of the most listened to on Spotify, where she has 33 million of monthly listeners and a cumulative of more than 2,200 million streams, at least until the end of 2020. His latest megahits, Bichota and Ay, Dios mío, were certified with 5 and 6 platinum discs, respectively. In Medellin it is not uncommon for one of these songs to sound like a cell phone ringtone in a pharmacy, or for younger children to sing them carrying a cell phone in any popular neighborhood. She is an omnipresent musical figure in Colombia. In 2020, while the world was reeling from the pandemic, she reached an important throne with her Tusa , her song with Nicki Minaj, which debuted at #1 on the Hot Latin Song list of Billboard and became the most 'strimeada' Latin song of 2020. Quite a phenomenon. The year of the phenomenon, Karol G attended the Latin Grammy gala in a pink Dolce & Gabbana dress intervened with a slogan: "A man he paid poorly, he is no longer sentimental”. Minutes later, she did one of the main shows of the gala with a band made up exclusively of women. Harpist, drummer, bassist, cellist and violinists reaffirmed Tusa as the anthem of the year in the midst of a setting reminiscent of Mount Olympus where she, Karol G, was her most exalted mythological figure: the 'Bichota'. "She says that for another man she doesn't cry, but if they play the song [...]”, she sang. She was nominated in three categories for that edition of the awards, including the best recording of the year for Cob. Today, she remembers the moment, many years ago, when she envisioned that scenario. "One day there will be an entire audience going to a place for me," she told herself one of the first times she performed as a backing vocalist for Reykon 'the leader', a Colombian reggaeton singer, more than ten years ago. Karol G has a sweet and outgoing voice. She just turned 30 and she has blue hair, like she did when she was in college. She studied at the Calasanz, a religious female school in Medellín. Her first YouTube channel was called CaritoGCol, she created it in 2010 and she only uploaded three videos there. She has a tattoo on her right forearm with the faces of her three great musical loves: Rihanna, Selena Quintanilla and herself. On her latest album, Ocean (2019), she collaborated with Damian Marley, Anuel AA, Yandel, Maluma, J Balvin and Nicky Jam. Guilty, one of the most successful songs on that album, was the origin of her courtship with Anuel AA, the Puerto Rican ragpicker with whom she got engaged in 2020 and with whom it seems that she ended her two-year relationship in the last days.

(We suggest: The BOCAS interview with Nubia and her children, the youtuber peasant family)

Her career does nothing but expand because she is a fundamental part of a musical genre that has captured world pop since 2015. At the beginning of February, the Bloomberg portal, a US corporation that provides global financial information, ranked her in 10th place on his Pop Star Power Rankings, the list that measures, month by month, the 25 biggest pop stars in the world and that currently includes five Puerto Ricans (Bad Bunny as #1 on the list) and four Colombians. Now he is preparing the launch of his third studio album: KG0516, an encrypted name from May 16, 2005, the date of “the first time I legally called myself Karol G on paper”. It includes a cover designed by David Lachapelle and a seven-minute reggaeton tribute song featuring Ivy Queen, Zion, Wisin y Yandel, and Nicky Jam; and a feat with rapper Ludacris and a tiktoker girl that he discovered one day while scrolling on her cell phone. “I am going to die [laughs]. If this album doesn't come out, I'm not going to last them,” she says, flashing that playful smile she stamps all of her music videos with.

In my family it was crazy because from day one they saw that everything was possible, especially my smallest nucleus: my parents and my sisters. Since I started with the idea that I wanted to be a singer, they were always there. I say that video was of my first platforms. It is brutal to be able to have photos and videos of those moments because today I can see where we have come and remember that since I was little I wanted to be this.

My dad always wanted to be a singer. He had a music group with which he played at town parties, it was his hobby. Several times he took me to sing Pimpinela songs with him. My first artists were Pimpinela, Sandro, Tormenta, also a lot of Vallenato. Thalía was an artist that I fell in love with a lot when I heard her for the first time and she was tiny. But my dad also listened to a lot of music in English: The Bee Gees, Metallica. I was very romantic in my first years of making music; It was like those ballads I heard when I was little were the first thing I expressed in my songs.

I had my dream of being a professional motocross rider. I have two cousins ​​who have done motocross for many years of their lives and had awards. But that was zero viable in my house. One of my cousins ​​had a very serious accident and from that moment riding a motorcycle was super prohibited in my house. When he saw me with my cousins ​​he would give a motico once or twice, but that's it. Nowadays, it is one of my favorite hobbies, I really like to ride two-wheeled motorcycles. But actually, of all my talents, my favorite was music.

At school I was a very introverted girl. She was very nervous, she didn't have much self-esteem or many relationships with people, but she was the tough one in music class. At least there was one class where I didn't play alone, or wait to see who was left to do the groups, but in music class there was always someone who wanted to do it with me. It was my moment of glory. (Would you like another BOCAS interview?: Maluma, the 'Pretty Boy' who conquered the world)

Never. I was recently talking to someone on my team that the way they raise you is code. There are some people who manage to release them and develop their personality more, but there are others in whom those codes stay with us for life. In my house we were the traditional Colombian family that goes to mass every Sunday, and on Saturdays we visited our grandmother, so I never had a problem with my education at school. Maybe, in tenth and eleventh, I have to say that I was a very rebellious child.

First, I had a time when I had my nose pierced, my tongue pierced, my ears pierced. My face looked like an earring counter. Then I started to dye my hair in all the colors that have come and gone. Even when I wanted to dye my hair blue right now it was because I told my team: “Oh, I want to feel like when I was at school”. I became like the pebble in the teacher's shoe because it incited a lot of practical jokes.

I was born in La Mota, in Medellín. I spent my first years of life there and then we moved to a place called El Velódromo, a quiet neighborhood, very lonely, not with many people going out to the streets and sharing, as they do in other neighborhoods, and I love it. There weren't many plans. I was the typical girl who went to 15-year-old parties, I arrived at nine at night and they picked me up at twelve. I literally ate and left. The only complete fifteen-year-old party that I got was mine. I think that throughout all these years I have experienced many things that I did not experience when I was younger.

Yes, the theme of the party was Tinker Bell and my dress was orange. It was very funny because out of a hundred guests, my mom only let me invite 28 friends. The number will never forget me.

The first urban sounds I heard, more than those of Puerto Rico, were those of The Tales from the Crypt, which were from Panama. Tales from the Crypt was everything! I also listened to La Factoría and from there I began to listen to the first reggaeton songs, like La gasoline. I really liked Latigazo, by Daddy Yankee, and Dembow, by Wisin y Yandel. It was love at first sight. I've loved reggaeton ever since I heard it the first time. Actually, I didn't end up singing this genre because it happened to me or to fit in, or to sing what was happening. Karol G from day one, since my name was Karol G for the first time, I knew that the music was going to be reggaeton, urban music. (Also: The BOCAS interview with Pilar Quintana, the Colombian writer who won the 2021 Alfaguara Novel Award )

When the commercials for the second season of Factor XS started, my dad insisted that I go. He sent a relative to stand in line and he came with the number, the next day he had to go introduce me. I got carried away. I went to the final and went to Bogotá, where I shared with 150 children. I didn't get to the television galas; when there were eleven left and they chose six, I left. The disappointment was huge for my parents. They blamed each other a lot, that if they hadn't worn the right clothes, that maybe they hadn't picked the right song. It was a very nice learning moment. From there I came to Medellin with that desire to be more extroverted.

I was in the hotbed for five years. I studied on Fridays and Saturdays, five to six hours each day. It was a very brutal process because it meant understanding music not just as a hobby. I began to see greatness, profession and art. I studied the history of music and reading musical notes. I tell you that thanks to that knowledge I can sit down today to produce one of my songs. I'm not a professional producer, but thanks to the studies I did, I understand music. That enhanced my abilities.

Having passed [laughs]. When I finished the seedbed, I applied, and you know that at the University of Antioquia the places are limited, not everyone passes the entrance exam. It was very satisfying for me. In a very crazy way because I also applied to the University of Antioquia for a degree in foreign languages. I had many things that I wanted to study: degree, graphic design, at some point international business, but, well, music all the time pulled me.

No. When I started my undergraduate degree, I got a great opportunity to work as a chorus girl for Reykon. He was very strong at the time, touring countless countries. I wanted to give myself an opportunity to understand music from this other position, to really learn what a show was like, how the press was handled. I worked with Reykon for two and a half years, almost three. They were my first stages with an audience and that made me able to visualize myself and say: "Someday there will be an entire audience going to a place for me." That was a very special university for me.

I was the girlfriend of Reykon's producer. He invited me on a trip to San Andrés where they had a show in about fifteen years, on a boat. When we were on the boat I told Reykon: “Come, Andrés —which is his real name—, put me a microphone and let me do the second voices for you. I swear I'm not going to make you look bad." So he put the microphone on me and I was behind him doing harmonies, supporting. About three weeks later they made me a formal proposal: “Hey, Karol, we loved what we did that day. We watched the videos, it sounded so nice that we want you to be part of the team. We would love for you to be the showgirl that will travel with us on the tours.” I didn't even think about it, it was an immediate yes. So I dropped out of college because I was convinced that what I could learn at that time was going to mean a lot in my career development.

Those covers were my vocal technique teacher's exams. I studied for almost six years with Mirabay Montoya, who is one of the great teachers of music in Colombia. It was five days a week, and for exams she played me songs by Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion. I remember that I saw the process of Justin Bieber and I realized that he had been booked for a video he had uploaded singing to YouTube. I said: "It's something I have to try, suddenly my opportunity also comes." Nothing extraordinary ever happened to me with those videos; People saw them, but it was never that a great opportunity came to me from there.

One day, talking to my vocal technique teacher like a doll, bothering me, I don't know why I got a voice. She told me: "Wow! Are you capable of doing those voices?" She had direct contact with the person who is in charge of doing all the commercials for Play Doh, Hasbro, for the Barbies. There is a person in Colombia, which is the one that takes the commercials in English and does them in Spanish for all of Latin America. She took me and he told me to do voices. I had never done it, but I tried to do what he told me and, wow! I did that for about two years. You see? We did everything, even television commercials [laughs]. I was the voice of Polly Pocket, of Barbie, of little girls playing with dolls. At the end, I remember saying: "They're the new pets to collect, from Hasbro” [laughs]. (Also: The confessions of Carolina Ponce de León in BOCAS)

I had very indecent proposals along the way, from people for whom you become something negotiable; It was a situation that hurt me a lot. It was very nice to have my dad supporting me in those moments. I told him: "Dad, that person is with strange things that make me feel uncomfortable and I think that's not it." My dad believed in me and we made the decision to do it the slow way. We didn't have the contacts or know the industry, but because of certain people we met along the way we started doing concerts in schools, shows with radio stations, presentations at municipal parties. J Balvin was a key character in my career; He was a person who, without being selfish, introduced me to many people and introduced my project to many people as well. It was the slow path, but the most worthy.

Someone told my mom that in the record companies there was a person called A&R (artists and repertoire), who was in charge of getting new artists. When she found out about that, she started calling different record companies from Colombia. I remember that we made some physical albums and she traveled to Miami and New York for the first time, then she got a face-to-face meeting. My dad, my mom and I came to Universal, in Miami, we sat down and listened to my album. That A&R told us: “Look, here is a CD of a woman who sings reggaeton. That's not going to happen, but what if you're a songwriter for other artists within the label? And my dad took it very badly. He took the folder he had, closed it and said: “My daughter is not anyone's composer. Now they won't want to take her artwork to enrich other artists. We are going". Seven years later, seven years later! We received the formal response from Universal that they wanted to sign me as an artist and I've been with this label for four years now.

I came to the studio of Ovy (Ovy On The Drums), the producer I worked with six years ago, and he had made a beat with a melody that sounded like the song from Thousand Hours. I told him that I didn't dare to do something like such an anthem, but that we were going to try to make a new song. I told my dad about the idea, but we had no contacts. Between calling and calling, my dad managed to get direct contact with Calamaro's manager and it was incredible because three or four weeks later, Calamaro played at the Estéreo Picnic in Bogotá. We went there. We started at home thinking about what to do with a song and ended up sitting across the table with the same artist, getting the song legally licensed. Another check from my dad; too hard as he achieved everything.

The team was my dad and me. So I was Karol G's secretary. When he called the places he said: "Hello, look, you're talking to Karol G's secretary" [laughs]. I remember that in my secretary email I received a message where they spoke to Karol G's secretary, that they wanted to have a meeting because there was a formal proposal from Universal, who wanted to have Karol G as an artist of the company. At that moment I panicked because my dad and I were alone, we didn't understand the business very well. So I left him alone, I didn't even answer the mail. I started looking for a manager. I found three people who gave me an amazing vibe and who knew the industry; It was a group of managers, one came from Universal, the other from Warner and the other from Sony. The fact was that I signed with them and there we answered the email from Universal. Like, "Okay, we've never seen this email before, what do I do?" [laughs]. They sent a person from Miami to Medellin and I remember that when we sat down I said to him: "What made you come back and make me an offer after seven years of telling me no?" And he told me that they had a studio to see, of all the new artists, that nobody knows yet, which ones have the most international projection. That study gives them ten names in the world and Karol G appeared on that list. At that time I was very impressed that they did that kind of thing. There we started there and here with the proposals, with the negotiation and we signed.

I was the first woman with whom all of them sang. They were a very important part in the development of my career because at that time there were few opportunities for people to hear a singer of the genre. It was very important for me that her fanatic, for example, of Ozuna, said: "Wow! If Ozuna is singing with her, then I want to listen to her." I felt like their spoiled one because I had no other opportunities, neither on radio nor on television, to express myself, but my colleagues gave me that opportunity and that made my work evolve faster.

Of course, it is that, you know what?, along the way I have realized that it is not that there are no women, but that there is a lack of opportunity where they can show themselves. In the industry, and not only in music, but in all professions, women have to fight a little more to have credibility, something that shouldn't be. We are just as talented, we have the same capabilities, sometimes we are even organized, more strategic. Along the way I began to meet women with such talent that I said: “But, how is that? Are there female producers? Are there female engineers? Are there awesome female guitarists? I mean, so much talent to show, but why doesn't anyone show it? Well, in this team it will be like that”. So, in my work team the majority are women. If I can give the opportunity for other women to show their ability, I will do it. In my new album one of the tasks that I set for myself is that I want to collaborate with female singers, but not with the ones that people expect, but with those women who are great and what they need is a little more space. So I have Nathy Peluso, Mariah Angeliq, and Kali Uchis did the vocals on my album's visual intro.

Thanks for reading. We would like to recommend another of our BOCAS interviews: That musical bomb called Anitta.

BY: KAREN PARRADO BELTRÁNPHOTOS: CÉSAR BALCÁZARRISTA BOCAS EDITION 104. MARCH - APRIL 2021.

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