Shakira, the graceful one, has been sneaking up on you-the Grammys, the MTV Video Awards, those Pepsi spots. She's a child prodigy who wrote her first song at age eight, a blond-locked Colombian who speaks three languages and loves only in Spanish. She's a perfectionist who spends hours in the studio; she needs to be close to nature but her passion is the crackle of electric guitars. She is in the blush of youth, but she's far older than her 24 years. As her countryman, Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote, "Shakira's music has a personal stamp that doesn't look like anyone else's and no one can sing or dance like her, at whatever age, with such an innocent sensuality, one that seems to be of her own invention."

The swift ascent of Shakira's star is the stuff of Latin American legend. At the age of 13, she signed her first recording contract with Sony Music Colombia and released her first album Magia. (Magic). After graduating from secondary school, Shakira decided to dedicate her life to the music, recording Peligro ("Danger") and Pies Descalzos, ("Barefeet") in the years that followed, which broke her in Latin America , Brazil (over one million sales) and Spain.