Karol G has never been interested in doing things halfway. Not her music, not her relationships, and not her determination to dominate an industry that for years tried to put her in a box. Already one of the biggest stars in Latin America, the Colombian singer became the first woman to top the Billboard 200 with a Spanish-language album, and headlined Coachella earlier this year. Instead of coasting on her popularity with Spanish-speaking audiences, she finally sang in English alongside Bruno Mars on the major hit “Still.” Her sixth album, No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto , is the most confessional thing she’s ever made, a breakup album that proves going all in is her default setting. It makes sense, then, that she wanted to speak with Salma Hayek , whose career has also involved carving out space on her own terms. While Karol G was on her latest world tour, she managed to connect with Hayek to talk business, sharks (both kinds), and what it actually costs to love without holding anything back.
SALMA HAYEK: ¡Hola Karol! ¿Cómo estás? Estoy desmaquillada y en pijama, y sin dormir. [Hi Karol! How are you? I am bare-faced, in my pajamas, and I have not slept.]
KAROL G: Ay, pero me encanta. Porque mira, yo literal me acabo de bañar. [Oh, but I love it. Because look at me, I literally just got out of the shower.]
HAYEK: Pero tú estás joven, chica. Yo estoy vieja. [But girl, you are young. I am old.]
KAROL G: Sí pero te ves bella para la entrevista y yo aquí en estas fachas. [Yes, but you look beautiful for this interview, and I’m a bit of a mess.]
HAYEK: No, hombre, estoy en pijama, pero trabajando desde las ocho. [Oh, come on, I’m in my pajamas but working since 8 a.m.]
HAYEK: Bueno. I’m super happy to be chatting with you. If I ask you something you don’t like, just tell me, “No, ask me something else” in Spanish.
HAYEK: Bueno. Before 2014, when you decided to come to New York to stop music and study marketing and business, was dating easier or harder?
KAROL G: Okay, that’s two questions. First, I didn’t like what I saw in the industry. I started as a backup singer in Colombia, and was like, “I don’t like this for my life,” going to different places to present my music in radio stations and sitting at tables with heads of different companies and every thing. It became a negotiation, and I was like, “I don’t like this shit. I want to do a different thing.” And you asked me if dating was easier, right?
KAROL G: It was easier. Now it’s so hard. [Laughs] Touring and being surrounded by the same people every day, I don’t have time to find someone.
HAYEK: Yes. And also, they feel very intimidated to make a pass at you or try to seduce you because they’re afraid you’re going to say, “No, you’re not good enough.”
KAROL G: Exactly. I see cute guys, but I don’t think they imagine I’m so cute.
HAYEK: Exactly. It’s so hard for me to imagine you studying business and marketing. How long did you do that?
KAROL G: I started music in Universidad de Antioquia in Colombia. I dedicated my life to this for five years, but when I moved to New York, I started seeing music as more business and marketing.
HAYEK: Did studying the business aspect of it empower you to not feel as naive?
KAROL G: Yes, of course. When I went back to Colombia, I was like, “Okay, I need to see this as my com pany.” And I’m the head of it, so I have to start creating strategies to show my music.
HAYEK: It’s important for smart, young girls who have a lot of good ideas to know that studying really helps. Not just being street smart, but exploring and investigating the things that interest you more in depth, in a business sense.
KAROL G: And you have to take it seriously. You’re going to be in an uncomfortable position a million times. And being a woman, you’re going to be at a table with so many sharks.
HAYEK: It happens to me even with simple employees. Deep inside, they don’t like being employed by a Latina and by a woman. They like you and they smile, but they’re still hoping with all their heart that you’re stupid.
HAYEK: They’re always undermin ing you. They’re also not interested in dealing with women with big visions. As a businesswoman, how do you handle mediocrity with elegance? I need to learn this too. You have a show and you depend on 1,000 people understanding what you just asked for and having the same amount of passion you have to make it perfect. How do you keep a cool head when you see only one percent of the world cares as much as you do about every single detail?
KAROL G: When you have a vision and you’re surrounded by people who don’t see what you see, it’s super hard to stand there and say, “You have to follow me.” I don’t know why, but since I started doing music, I saw myself in the craziest scenarios. For example, with my first stadium tour, everyone on the team was against me. Everyone.
KAROL G: It was just having in mind that I could do a stadium. They came with all the things like, “Karol, we’re not ready. You still don’t have the experience. We don’t have this.” And I was like, “Okay. So what do I have to do to get this done? What do I have to do to get this experience?”
Bodysuit and Shoes Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello. Tights Wolford.
HAYEK: But Karol, did you know you had the audience?
KAROL G: It’s a divine thing. When my people asked me, “Why do you want to do it?” I was like, “I don’t know. I just want to.” It’s a feeling I have inside that they’re going to be there in the stadium. If they’re not, we just change the venue and that’s it.
KAROL G: No, it’s not. Actually, it was really risky for my career.
KAROL G: But like I said, it’s a divine thing. God’s plan. I know you get what I say because sometimes the feeling is just a little thing you have, and it’s divine. I had that, and I was trying to follow my intuition.
HAYEK: About the huge shark you had onstage, you just went, “I want a shark in the middle of this.” “Why?” “Because I want a shark in the middle of this.”
KAROL G: I remember that specific day in L.A. I came to the table and said, “I need a huge shark, and I need that shark to look like— ¿como tú dices cómo cromado? [how do you say chrome?]—because that shark needs to look like the ultimate shark, and I’m going to ride it.” Everyone’s like, “What?” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s been my whole life, riding the situations in the hardest way possible.” Sometimes you have to put your self in the position.
HAYEK: That’s why I asked you this question about the shark, because you said you have to sit at a table with a lot of sharks. Right?
HAYEK: So once you got up on the stage, you decided, “You know what? I’m going to ride a shark?”
KAROL G: When I did the shark, someone told me, “Karol, it’s crazy you put the shark onstage, because the first thing that got into my mind was being a little fish in a tank. It’s so nice and it’s so flowy. You spend the day swimming with the other fish. But when the shark comes, everyone starts swimming fast. We all need the shark in our lives to just do it.” And I was like, “Wow, I didn’t see it in that spe cific way.” But I love when people have their own versions of why the shark is on the stage.
HAYEK: I’m a diver; that’s my passion. I dove with hundreds of sharks all my life, so your friend is incorrect. When you see a shark, you don’t swim faster. You have to stay very still. If you swim faster, it thinks you’re a little fish and it eats you. What I like is that the shark comes and you’re very calm and empowered on top of it, doing what you do well. You conquer the shark not by running away, but by centering yourself.
KAROL G: You see? Everyone comes with a different version of the shark. But now that you say it, it fits even better. It’s about how you control yourself to be safe in front of a shark.
HAYEK: Now let’s talk about the other shark. Why did you wait so long to sing in English?
KAROL G: [Laughs] That’s a good one. I very consciously wanted the world to see me as Colombian.
HAYEK: Bravo, you succeeded. Check. Next.
KAROL G: Maybe it’s fear. It’s a com pletely new universe to me.
HAYEK: And you become a new uni verse. You become someone else.
KAROL G: Actually, when I listen to myself in English, my voice changes a little bit. It took time to feel comfortable enough to do it. I want to be good, but I’m not scared to fail. I don’t know if I was ready then, but I’m ready now. I learned how to communicate. I understood that 100 percent of the people who come to my show in the U.S. are Latinos, but for most of them, their first language is English. So it’s a way to give them a song from the artist they love in their first language. I’m so excited to keep exploring.
HAYEK: Hearing you in English, although you might not have as much control of the language, you seem more self-assured, more empowered. There’s less of the voice of the little girl who grew up with your mommy and daddy, chiqueada consentida [spoiled and pampered]. [Laughs]
KAROL G: But you have a point, because when I hear myself in the zone, that is a more mature Carolina.
HAYEK: It’s not your first lan guage, but it’s the first language you chose to conquer. Somebody taught you Spanish. You had no choice. English, you decided to conquer, and I’m sure you’re going to conquer the whole community of English speakers around the world, not just in the United States.
HAYEK: Give me three of your favor ite songs in English.
Bodysuit and Shoes Vaquera. T-shirt Archive of Pat Hackett.
HAYEK: When you are getting anx iety and need to escape, what song do you pick first?
KAROL G: If I want to feel fierce and sexy, I need some nasty songs with bad words.
KAROL G: They are very explicit and they go hard. I don’t know why, but they make me feel fierce.
HAYEK: I’m going to try that because I want to go fierce.
KAROL G: I’m going to get my phone because I have a playlist.
KAROL G: Look, the name of the playlist is “Palco.”
HAYEK: What’s the name of the playlist when you’re in love and you’re missing your lover?
KAROL G: All the songs from Cigarettes After Sex.
KAROL G: I have to tell you some thing crazy. One of my first loves in music was Eminem.
HAYEK: Me too. My husband’s going to kill me. My song for when I need to go fierce is “Lose Yourself.”
KAROL G: I love how unapologetic he is in that song. I didn’t even know what he was saying. For me, it was all about the vibe.
HAYEK: People laugh at me because I’m doing a movie with Adam Sandler right now, and he’s playing music all the time from our gen eration, but I sing them like this [warbled voice], because I didn’t speak English at that time. I know kind of what they sound like, but I had no idea what I was saying, and it didn’t matter.
KAROL G: When I learned what he was saying, I was like, “Okay, now I understand why I like him so much.”
HAYEK: Who was your musician girl crush growing up?
KAROL G: I swear to god, when I saw her movie, I saw my life in it.
HAYEK: Don’t say that, not completely. [Laughs]
KAROL G: No, not in all the ways, but I saw myself in so many ways, like her as a kid, creating her world in a man’s world.
HAYEK: I’m sure they ask you this a million times, but why Bruno Mars? I love him, but how did that come along?
KAROL G: I follow an artist named Isabel LaRosa.
KAROL G: She works with her brother. We got together in January and I told her I really wanted to start doing something in English, and that I would love to write with them. I told her I am the worst writer in English because I don’t know how to say what I feel. I told her a little bit about my personal life and how I was feeling, and then she came with “Still.” I was so in love with it, but it needed someone with a lot of romanticism, drama. So when I talked to John Janick at Interscope, he came up with the idea of Bruno Mars. I was like, “Bruno is not going to do this song with me. He’s the number one artist on Spotify. He’s been doing so many women collaborations and he’s on tour. That’s not going to happen.” He was like, “Actually, I remember he told me the other day that he loves your music and he saw you at Coachella.” So he sent him the song and he said yes. A week later, I was in London, I met him, and we recorded the song.
Jacket, Shorts, Bag, and Bag Charms Coach.
KAROL G: No. I got to London and the first thing I did was go from the airport to Wembley Stadium to see his show.
KAROL G: I met him after the show. It was 1 a.m. in the studio and I was like, “Hi, Bruno Mars.” It was kind of a fantasía . I was like, “Why did you say yes?” He was like, “Your performance on [The Tonight Show Starring] Jimmy Fallon was my thing for a long time. I refer enced that so many times.” We had chemistry.
HAYEK: What did you wear to meet him for the first time?
KAROL G: In those situations, I try to be—
KAROL G: I don’t like to try super hard. I put on jeans with these Latina tops we love.
HAYEK: But baby, how long did it take you to look like you didn’t try too hard? Sometimes it takes longer. “What color am I going to do my nails so that it doesn’t look like I’m trying too hard?” [Laughs]
KAROL G: Doing “no makeup” makeup takes time. I’m going to look like I wasn’t trying too hard, but actually it took me three hours. [Laughs]
HAYEK: I’m going to tell you who is the queen of that, I’m sure she’s not going to be upset. Penélope [Cruz], my god. We would go to dinner, and she would change 10 times. I’d say, “I don’t know why you’re chang ing. At the end of the day, you’re going to wear jeans, a t-shirt, and a leather jacket.” And guess what she would wear after trying 1,000 things?
KAROL G: What do you do when you want to look effortless? Or do you really not try too hard?
HAYEK: I don’t try too hard because I suffer when I do that. You try less hard once you’re happily mar ried. Because now when I really try hard, he goes, “Wow.” If you’re too beautiful every day, you wake up one day looking terrible, and he goes, “Whoa, what happened to her?” But if you don’t make the effort every day, he gets used to the not-best version. And then when you get ready, you teach them to love you for who you are, not for how you look.
HAYEK: But I’ll tell you what I like. It used to be jeans. Now I like flowy black silk pants. You can never go wrong with those, really low.
KAROL G: That’s hot. When I go out in something, it’s because I feel it.
HAYEK: Remember, you are at a place where you make the fashion, the fashion doesn’t make you.
KAROL G: It took me time to learn that it was whatever I felt good in.
HAYEK: Also, we have similar body types. Of course, I wish. I’m 60, but a similar type of curvy body. It’s not the simplest body to dress. I have to have 10 different sizes because I fluctuate a lot. Sometimes I think I know what I’m going to wear and when I go to wear it, I get super depressed because it’s not looking like the last time I wore it, or like it looked in my head.
KAROL G: My body can be super sleek today, but the next day my body’s bigger, my arms are bigger.
HAYEK: I can change two bra sizes within a couple of days.
KAROL G: Okay, but I want my bra to change like that. [Laughs]
Jacket and Pants Eckhaus Latta. Belt Gucci. Shoes Alias Costume.
HAYEK: Be careful what you wish for because it can still happen. Sometimes they just keep growing when you have babies. We’ll talk later.
HAYEK: You start having back problems, you never look slim. It’s hard to look chic when you have boobs like this. But anyway, this interview is not about my boobs, for once.
KAROL G: So are you coming to one of my shows or not?
HAYEK: I would love to. When are you going to Paris?
KAROL G: Next year in June. It’s really crazy cómo tú perreas todavía [how you still twerk] the way you do.
KAROL G: Please. It’s kind of unfair that you were saying, “Be careful what you wish for,” because tú perreas increíble [you twerk incred ibly], your boobs are amazing, your butt, incredible.
HAYEK: I have two amazing daugh ters. They keep me young. I go club bing with them. This is very bad, I shouldn’t be saying this. They do the perreo [twerk] in the kitchen while I’m cooking. They’re fabu lous. Is there a place you feel like you lived in another lifetime, or you have some kind of magnetism to?
KAROL G: The energy there is like what we came into the world for, just to live and have easy days and enjoy people. There’s magic in Hawaii.
KAROL G: It changed my life and my perspective. When I go to Paris and London, it’s like I’m in another world. I cannot sleep at all there. If I’m going to be five days there, there’s going to be five days com pletely awake. It’s not a bad thing. I just cannot connect with time there. It’s crazy.
HAYEK: Which place makes you the most reckless? Is it Paris? London? Is it Medellín?
KAROL G: It happens to me every where. Actually, when I go to Medellín, I get lazy.
KAROL G: Me miman mucho. Mi mamá me da mucha comida. Me mima, me visita mi familia, y me pongo consentida y no quiero hacer nada, no me quiero arreglar, no qui ero nada . [My mom cooks me a lot of food. She spoils me, my family visits me, I get pampered, I don’t want to get dressed, and I don’t want to do anything.]
HAYEK: To the point that you don’t even want to speak English if we talk about Medellín.
KAROL G: I cannot speak about Medellín in English, but in December I go back because we go hard with Christmas. We go out, we drink.
KAROL G: In my mind I cook well, but being honest, it’s not my thing. I do buñuelos [Colombian donuts] and really good breakfasts, but that’s it.
HAYEK: What would be your description of your perfect life?
Bra Calvin Klein Collection. Shorts Palace Costume. Bracelet Skank Chic. Belt Gucci. Bag Charm (worn on shorts) Coach.
KAROL G: It looks like a traveling family.
KAROL G: Exactly. I’m a nomad. I’m so into traveling and being in so many places all the time, but maybe I would love to do that in the future with the family.
HAYEK: I’m going to ask you a very strange question.
HAYEK: What was the first song that propelled you to the next level?
KAROL G: There were two or three different songs in different moments that took me from there to here. I have a song, “Mi Cama.” When I launched that song, I was doing really cute, romantic songs, but in “Mi Cama,” I was celebrating that my bed sounds and shakes.
KAROL G: My father, no, but my mom, yes. My father was always supporting me in all ways. He was like, “Bebé, why are you say ing that? Why do you use these words?” And I was like, “Pa, you have to just déjate llevar [let yourself go]. You just feel it.”
KAROL G: You have to see my dad now. He sings the songs with the bad words. He’s like, “Bebé, wow, what a punchline. Crazy.” When I launched “Mi Cama,” the world, at least the Latina world, was shak ing, because Karol G was saying that her bed makes sounds. It was such a bad thing and the song exploded.
HAYEK: But did they make you feel guilty for writing the song?
KAROL G: No, because I knew I was changing the narrative, like now I’m going to give you a song to talk about.
KAROL G: I used to be very strong about the idea of having a family. Now, I don’t know. I would love to have kids.
HAYEK: Don’t explain. You don’t owe us an explanation. Are you in love with love?
KAROL G: Very in love with love. Love is my—
HAYEK: Drug. How many times in your short life have you been in love?
HAYEK: It makes you a very good poet. It makes you a very good singer, because you interpret with a lot of feeling.
KAROL G: Yeah, I love so much, but when I love someone, I go all the way until I crash. For me, it’s not half.
HAYEK: Does it happen fast or do you take your time?
KAROL G: It takes a while, but when I click, it goes all the way. When I have intimacy with someone, it’s because I’m so deeply in love. Now I’m enjoying my time by myself, and I don’t know if I want to be in love with someone soon. It’s not in my plans. I’m loving myself right now so much, and I’m loving tour ing and my friends. What do you think about love?
HAYEK: It’s a gift from god. It’s the most beautiful thing that can happen to you in any way. Mea culpa, I’m also addicted to love, and it’s interesting how through the different decades of your life, you have a different relationship with love.
HAYEK: When you are a very passionate, young Latina and a breakup is so painful, you think you can never survive. “This is it, I will never love anyone else like this.” The pain is physical. It’s on your skin. It’s in your stomach. You can’t breathe. Eventually, I realized the capacity to love that intensely does not come from the object of our affection. We gave that person that power, that love. The goal is to be able to observe your capacity for love and learn to not be afraid to feel it, because you always own it and keep it. You don’t give it away. What if you could feel that intensely and just hold it, not need ing to possess the other person that ignited it?
KAROL G: Exactly. If I’m going to be with someone, it’s with the vision that that’s the person I’m going to die with. If it’s not that, I don’t want it. I don’t want a fast thing. Love is about going all the way, and I’m thinking it’s going to be forever. That’s my thing. The crazy thing is, every time I’m like, “I’m not going to get to this point anymore. Next time I’m going to be super careful.”
HAYEK: But you’ve got to love your self all the way too, so that when you walk away, you still have that love inside of you.
KAROL G: Yeah, that’s a lesson I learned before. And it took me, as you said, a moment in my life that you feel in your heart, the actual organ.
HAYEK: I know, it’s awful. And you know, not everybody’s like us. Not everybody is so melodramatic and intense. Some people don’t ever experience what we’re talking about, that intensity of pain for missing someone.
KAROL G: That’s why I say I’m good this way, because I know myself and I know how it’s going to be if I find someone. So maybe not for now. [Laughs]
HAYEK: But enjoy the little flirta tions. Back to when you said, “I wonder if he would know I think he’s cute and I like him.” He doesn’t, because he sees you as a goddess now. You’re going to have to deal with the intimidation of your success. I really recommend a dog.
HAYEK: They love you uncondition ally, they’re not intimidated, and they don’t care.
KAROL G: What do you think a man feels with a successful woman?
HAYEK: It’s terrifying for them. It’s really hard to find one that stays. I’m not going to lie to you. Be care ful what you ask me. I will always answer with the truth. [Laughs]
HAYEK: This is the good news. You are now moving in a realm that opens the door for you to meet other artists who are as talented and successful as you. Of course, that comes with another set of problems. They might not be intimidated by you, but there’s a lot of narcissis tic personalities in your business. The best is to find somebody who is very happy and self-confident in what they do, but what they do is not close to what you do. That’s what I did. Got myself a business man, and he had nothing to do with this business.
KAROL G: What are my chances, from one to finding someone?
KAROL G: Oh, you think so? That’s good news.
HAYEK: 3,000 percent, not 3,000 men. [Laughs] There’s only going to be three or four in the entire world, but they will fall madly in love with you. There’s not many, but when you find the right guy, it’s because he sees you, because if he really sees you, he will love you. You are traveling the world. It’s good to explore. Think of it as an exploration of yourself through others.
KAROL G: I’m going to embrace that from now on.
HAYEK: This interview has been so much fun.
KAROL G: I’m so happy now. I have to ask you to go out for dinner or something.
HAYEK: You said this year has been a “fuck-it” year.
HAYEK: My god, I need a “fuck-it” year so badly. Maybe that’s the next song in English. “Fuck It.”
KAROL G: ¡Ay, sí! Me encanta. Te lo juro . [Oh yeah! I love it. I swear to you.]
HAYEK: “You cannot eat that pizza.” Fuck it. “You cannot drink that tequila.” Fuck it. “You cannot shake your ass that way.” Fuck it.
Makeup: Frankie Boyd using LʼOréal Paris.
Set Design: Nicholas Des Jardins at Streeters.
Tailor: Macy Idzakovich at The Zaks Group.
Photography Assistants: Etienne Pelissier and Malcolm Sales.
Fashion Interns: Belle Halt and Iyanu Oluwafemi.
Source: Fashion
