Shakira’s Billboard Cover, Mariah’s Iconic BBMA Moment, MAMA Awards in Tokyo & More | Billboard News

Shakira is Billboard’s newest cover star! There’s a new No. 1 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart: FamousSally and YB’s “Wassup Gwayy.” We take a look back at the moment Mariah Carey received the Billboard Icon Award in 2019. The 2023 MAMA Awards are headed back to Tokyo and Billboard News has all the exclusive details. And more!

Tetris Kelly:
Shakira is our latest Billboard cover star. There’s a new leader on the Tiktok Billboard Top 50. We’ve got some exclusive MAMAs information. Billboard stops by a Save the Music LA event. And we look back at a major Mariah Carey moment.

I’m Tetris Kelly for Billboard News. It’s Thursday, September 21st. We’ve got a brand new cover star. It’s Shakira’s time and her hits don’t lie.

Shakira:
Latin music wasn’t really at its peak like it is right now. And in the U.S., in many radio [stations] at first, really didn’t want to play “Hips Don’t Lie” because it sounded too Latin for them. It’s understandable because it had Colombian cumbia in the middle of a song. There’s nothing pop about it, the rest of the song was. I had so much faith in this song. My album Oral Fixation was already out, it had already been published, but I really believed that the song was gonna make it big. And against all odds, I called the head of the label I remember, Donny Ienner I think was in charge back in the day, and I convinced him to recall the physical copies and collect them all and include the song in the album.

“Loba,” “She Wolf” was me flirting with EDM. It did a lot of things for me in the U.K. and the U.S. It was the first single of my eighth studio album, and I recorded it in the Bahamas.

I remember that actually, I wasn’t too sure about me writing the lyrics in English and I reached out to Sia and I asked her to write the lyrics in English for me. And I also reached out to Seth MacFarlane.

Watch the full video above!