The spark for Karol G’s genre-spanning tribute to Latin culture, Tropicoqueta, released Friday (June 20), came from an epiphany far from home — in a packed arena in Europe, surrounded by the warmth of fans who reflected her roots.

Standing on a stage during the European leg of her record-breaking world tour, Mañana Será Bonito, watching thousands of Latin fans who had traveled far and wide to see her, the Colombian superstar realized that her next album wouldn’t be about chasing broader fame or crossing over into English-language music — as she had briefly considered — but about celebrating the soul of everything that makes them feel at home.

“It was really beautiful because people brought their signs, and in a way, it was super important to them that someone was bringing a little piece of home all the way over there,” she tells Billboard Español at New York’s Republic Studios. The artist is radiating warmth as she shows off a deep tan and a fresh, summery look that’s totally in sync with the tropical vibes of her new project.

For Karol G, those fans gave her clarity, inspiring the album’s main mission: to bring that “little piece of home” to every corner of the world through the music that defines who she is and where she comes from.

This revelation came at a pivotal moment in the hitmaker’s career. Her previous album, 2023’s Mañana Será Bonito, made history as the first all-Spanish-language album by a woman to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Its record-breaking streak, paired with a massive stadium tour, marked an undeniable high point in her journey. Yet amid her search for the next step, she chose not to aim outward but inward — to honor the music and culture she has always carried within her.

The 20-track opus is inspired by the sounds and stories of Latin music icons who shaped her passion for artistry. “This album is an homage to all those Latin music genres I grew up listening to,” she says, listing music heroines like Rocío Dúrcal, La India, Amanda Miguel, Myriam Hernández, Elenita Vargas, Thalia and Selena Quintanilla among her childhood inspirations.

Tropicoqueta, produced by Edgar Barrera, takes listeners across a musical map of Latin America, weaving together Colombian vallenato, Argentinian cumbia villera, Cuban mambo, Dominican dembow and regional Mexican music, with live instrumentation at its core. “I’m super Colombian, I love Colombia, but more than feeling Colombian, I feel super Latina, like I’m from everywhere. When I go to Chile, I don’t know why, but I feel like I’m from there. And if I go to Peru, people make me feel like I’m from there, too.”

She adds, “The album is a journey to every place; a little nod of gratitude for when I travel around the world.”

Below Karol G breaks down five essential tracks from her fifth studio album, Tropicoqueta.

“Ivonny Bonita”

When I was in the making of Mañana Será Bonito, I was going through a difficult situation in my life. I was very disappointed in myself for many reasons. I felt like I just wasn’t capable. I was sinking into this huge sadness, allowing myself to spiral down, and I couldn’t pull myself out of it. Then I remembered being with my friends in the Bahamas, and a Wizkid song was playing, where it says something about an “Ivonny, my baby.” That name sounded amazing to me, powerful and mystical. If I was told that my boyfriend was with a Daniela, fine. But if they told me he was with an Ivonny, I’d jump in head first to find out who Ivonny was!

That day I told my friends: “Call me Ivonny.” If Carolina can’t, Ivonny will. I even called myself Ivonny in Zoom calls. And unintentionally, I adopted an alter ego. That gave me a little bit of freedom. Then I realized that [the song “Essence” with Tems] didn’t say Ivonny. It said, “You don’t need no other body” [laughs]. I think it was meant to be. Time passed and Ivonny ceased to exist, but I had to thank her for everything she had been at that time for me. This song is the message I’ve always wanted women to get from everything I do.

“Latina Foreva”

Part of the message of the song was to talk about a little bit of everything Latinas are: that we are the soul of the party, our curves, that a party with Latinas is not the same as a party without. Well, I consider myself a Latina who is a little outrageous, but I think it’s part of our energy: we are happy, joyful, and we always have a fun attitude. That song celebrates that. The video is incredible. We shot it in a snowy mountain. It was minus 11 degrees [Celcius], as if we were at a beach. Latinas bring the heat, the warmth, everywhere we go. There are Latinas that go to the beach in heels, and I thought that was amazing. Latinas like to be on point in style. We like to be always super cute, super organized. If we have a party, we think about the outfit. We love that.

“Coleccionando Heridas” With Marco Antonio Solís

I love the old-fashioned way. I love the little details; I write handwritten letters and take any opportunity to leave a small gesture. I’m a romantic. I feel like people nowadays love differently — I think everything is a bit more fleeting. I feel like people have less emotional responsibility. I don’t know. When we were working on this song, I said, “I think I was born to collect wounds.” I’m always ready to love, and I feel like my heart will always be willing to love no matter what happens. I’ll turn the page, and I’ll try to find love again. Some experts say that love belonged to another era, and that’s why I said, “We need to bring an artist from that time to bring [that essence].” What a feeling. I’ve had favorites over time, and right now it’s this song. I listen to it, and I love it. It’s very special.

“Ese Hombre es Malo”

I was in Medellín with Edgar Barrera, working on other things. He went out to answer a phone call and when he came in, he was laughing as if he had been told the joke of his life. Edgar’s personality is super serious, and I’m pretty outrageous. I was really curious because I had never seen him laughing so hard. I said, “What happened?” And he says, “I got a call from a friend of mine who is a cabrón. I said, “So what?” He was still laughing and said, “The wife just left him”. So I asked, “But what’s the joke?” He said that he’d been told that the wife had left him because he had woman in every port. His wife had been OK with it to a certain extent — she’d say, “You can have your girlfriends, as long as you don’t bring them home and I never find out about it,” like that was her boundary. But then one of the women started leaving little things in his clothes and belongings for his wife to find. She started piecing it all together, and one day she said, “This is crossing the line. This is as far as we go.”

“That’s the lyrical theme of this song,” I said. The song has 57 musicians, a mix between mariachi and a symphony. We recorded it in Guadalajara. It’s one of the strongest songs on this album — because of how it was created, how it’s written and the musicians on it. Rocío Dúrcal, even though she was Spanish, embraced Mexican culture so well, and Mexico welcomed her with open arms. I’m such a huge fan of Juan Gabriel’s En el Palacio de Bellas Artes. I love all of his music. But the piece he created specifically for Bellas Artes has always inspired me. One of the things on my list for this album was to create a song with an arrangement at that level and with that level of grandeur.

“Tropicoqueta”

At parties, the DJ always calls out, “OK, it’s time for ‘la hora loca’ [crazy hour],” and everybody has to get up. That’s like the call to action. They hand out party hats, sunglasses, little props, and everyone comes together in the middle to start dancing to songs with choreography. We dance to “La Mayonesa,” “La Macarena,” “El Tiburón”… We all dance like we’re pretending to be sharks.

So I said, “If I’m going to have a super Latin album that pays homage to everything we are as Latinos — it needs to go deep into our Colombian culture too.” And I thought, “I need to create a song that people will play during ‘la hora loca.’” The idea is to have the song include instructions that people can follow — so they can do the choreography, step by step, just like that.

Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis will receive the Vanguard Award at The Guitar Center Music Foundation’s fourth annual Gala and Benefit Concert, which will take place on Sept. 11 at The Maybourne Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. The pair, who have written and produced dozens of hits for such artists as Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey, have won five Grammy Awards, including producer of the year (non-classical) in 1987. They will be honored for their support of music education.

The gala will also honor sound mixer John McBride with the Lifetime Achievement Award. McBride is the owner of Blackbird Studio, just outside of Nashville, which he opened in 2002, and institutional director of The Blackbird Academy, which he opened in 2013. John is married to, and works with, country star Martina McBride, a four-time winner of the CMA Award for female vocalist of the year.

The gala aims to raise awareness and funds for the foundation’s mission to support musicians and music education. In addition, the event will honor firefighters and first responders who battled the Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year. Additional efforts will be made to fund the Guitar Center Music Foundation Disaster Relief Program which aids musicians impacted by the L.A. wildfires to assist in replacing instruments and gear, and offers resources.

Adam Blackstone will serve as musical supervisor for the event. Blackstone won a Primetime Emmy in 2022 as music director of The Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show Starring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, 50 Cent. He won a Grammy earlier this year for his work on Alicia Keys’ Hell’s Kitchen, which was voted best musical theater album.

The event is produced by the Guitar Center Music Foundation board of directors with Angelia Shepperd from ABS Collective, and with technical production by Nick Urbom from Big Push Media Group.

For more information on the organization, visit the Guitar Center Foundation’s site. To buy tickets, which start at $500, go here.

Shakira announced on Thursday (June 19) two new dates for the second leg of her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour in Mexico.

The first will take place on Sept. 18 at Mexico City’s Estadio GNP Seguros. The second will mark her first-ever performance in the state of Veracruz, where she will perform at the Estadio Luis Pirata Fuente on Sept. 24. With the new dates, Shakira further breaks her own record of shows in Mexico on a single tour — now reaching a total of 28 on this trek.

“With the announcement of this new date, the Colombian singer solidifies herself as the artist with the most concerts at the iconic Estadio GNP Seguros,” promoter OCESA said in a press release.

“My beautiful Mexico! 12 shows at Estadio GNP! Thank you, thank you, and thank you again for continuing to break records with me. See you soon. I love you!!” Shakira wrote in an Instagram post, where she appears posing with a plaque of recognition from OCESA for her new milestone.

The second leg of her 2025 trek in Mexico kicks off on Aug. 11 at the Estadio Caliente in Tijuana, Baja California, and continues on Aug. 14 at the Estadio Héroes de Nacozari in Hermosillo, Sonora; Aug. 17 at the Estadio UACH in Chihuahua, and Aug. 20 at the Estadio Corona in Torreón, Coahuila.

After making history with seven consecutive sold-out shows at the Estadio GNP Seguros, the Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour will return to Mexico City to complete another series of five shows on Aug. 26, 27, 29, and 30, and Sept. 18, for a total of 12 performances. This will make Shakira the first artist to achieve such a number of concerts at the venue (formerly known as Foro Sol).

The superstar, who has been adding dates to the tour as tickets continue to sell out, will also match Grupo Firme’s record of eight shows at Estadio GNP Seguros. The band is scheduled to perform their eighth show there on June 28.

The success of Shakira’s monumental tour has led the “Hips Don’t Lie” singer to top Billboard‘s monthly Top Tours ranking for the first time, generating $32.9 million with 282,000 tickets sold in February, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. The following month, she again led the chart and broke records by earning $70.6 million from 11 reported shows — more than any artist has ever generated in a single March since the ranking’s launch in 2019.

Shakira’s tour has left an indelible mark on Latin America, drawing more than one million fans, according to OCESA. Also this year, the Barranquilla-born star was ranked No. 1 among Billboard’s Best 50 Female Latin Pop Artists of All Time.

In 1995, the Argentine rock trio Soda Stereo returned to the studio after a three-year hiatus to record a brand-new album, Sueño Stereo (Stereo Dream), its seventh and final project. At the time, no one knew this would be the band’s farewell record. Its predecessor, Dynamo, was its most experimental and eclectic work, showcasing a complete turnaround of its new wave style over the previous decade. Sueño Stereo continued this exploration — an alternative album with a noticeable British influence, full of electronic sounds and violins, cellos and violas on many tracks.

The 1990s brought a completely different flow from the ’80s new wave that made Soda Stereo famous. As the alternative rock movement gained popularity in the U.S. and Europe, listeners also increased in Latin America, and Soda Stereo embraced it and made the genre its own. After 10 years of working nonstop, releasing album after album and touring Latin America, the band decided to experiment and created an utterly progressive rock album that fans and other artists still praise 30 years later. 

“Latin American rock DNA is partly based on a tremendous sense of inferiority because it always copied everything that was happening in England and the United States,” Ernesto Lechner, a music journalist from Argentina who has lived in the U.S. since the 1990s, tells Billboard. “Soda Stereo changed that.”

Soda Stereo revolutionized Latin rock history with their new sounds and exploration of diverse musical genres. That style would become the stamp of the lead singer Gustavo Cerati’s artistry, which he would perfect in his first solo album, Bocanada (1999), after Soda Stereo disbanded in 1997. Sueño Stereo, released on June 25, 1995, became the band’s magnum opus.

“Sueño Stereo, for me is, without a doubt, without discussion, Soda’s best album,” Lechner adds. “It’s a glorious record. A psychedelic rock album — electronic rock with moments of ambient music, a very sophisticated thing. It was like a full circle.”

“Is like the final masterpiece, very refined and perfect,” Valeria Agis, editor of Argentine newspaper La Nación, tells Billboard of the set, which in 2012 was ranked fourth by Rolling Stone in its 10 greatest Latin rock albums of all time.

Sueño Stereo’s journey begins with the alternative rock of “Ella Usó Mi Cabeza Como un Revólver,” a melancholy, complex track that presented a string arrangement of viola, violin and cello. A significant change also came with “Disco Eterno” and “Zoom,” two neo-psychedelic pop-rock songs on the set that became classics in the band’s repertoire. 

Further into the album, The Beatles’ influence became apparent with the Britpop tracks “Paseando Por Roma” and “Ojo de la Tormenta.” The set concludes with a surprising shift in the last three songs, instrumentals in which the psychedelic sounds mash up with electronic ones.   

For Soda’s bassist Zeta Bosio, it was the album that allowed him to keep going. A year before the release, his 2-year-old son Tobías had died in a car accident. “That was the album that brought me back to life a little, back to reality,” he tells Billboard. But it was also the album that brought the band back together as a family, allowing them to “become an organism where we could feel what the other was going to do.”

Drummer Charly Alberti felt it too. The album “presents us already at a really high musical level, the three of us,” he adds. “Things would come together really organically.”

Within 15 days of its release, Sueño Stereo went platinum, making it an instant hit in Argentina and all over Latin America. Still, two years later, the band decided to end its 15-year journey together with the farewell tour El Último Concierto (The Last Concert), which culminated in a final show at the Estadio Monumental in Buenos Aires — a performance that left us not only with the live album and DVD of the same name, but also with Cerati’s iconic phrase “Gracias totales” (which literally means “total thanks” but does not translate perfectly into English).

Cerati took the time to focus on his personal projects. In 1999 he released Bocanada, the album he considered his official solo debut, although he had previously released two sets during Soda Stereo’s hiatus before Sueño Stereo. In this context, Bocanada, which means breath or puff, is used metaphorically to symbolize a “new breath of creativity,” as Cerati noted that the songs were coming to him very easily. 

In 2007, Soda Stereo reunited for the Me Verás Volver Tour (You Will See Me Return), which took them all over Latin America and some U.S. states, including Florida and California. The trek began and finished at River Plate, Buenos Aires’ biggest stadium with a capacity of 70,000, where they performed six sold-out nights — five more than in 1997. 

Soda Stereo was planning a few additional shows, even one in Spain, a market they never got to conquer. According to Bosio, the doors were open to doing more with the band. “The music was still intact. It was like we were entering a new stage of maturity and starting to understand things in a different way,” he says. “[But] being Soda Stereo always came with a lot of pressure. Especially for Gustavo, who was the main songwriter.”

In 2010, Cerati suffered a stroke after finishing a concert in Caracas, Venezuela, while promoting his last solo album, Fuerza Natural. He remained in a coma until his death on Sept. 4, 2014, at the age of 55. 

But it was Sueño Stereo that prepared the ground for what came later. Sueño Stereo didn’t mark the end; it was the beginning of a new sound that still echoes 30 years later. 

“One of our goals for this album was to take a subtractive approach,” said Cerati, as quoted in the book Cerati en Primera Persona (Cerati in First Person) by Maitena Aboitiz. “It was like saying: ‘Let’s pull back a bit’ — not to keep a low profile, but because we didn’t need to repeat the same thing over and over.”

Solo, Cerati had the freedom to do whatever he wanted, in his own words. With Soda, the exploration that began with Dynamo and that the band perfected with Sueño Stereo reached its highest point. The outcome was one of their most important pieces and one of rock’s greatest bodies of work, influencing artists all over Latin America and the world for years to come. 

Drake is getting candid about his recent gambling misfortunes.

On Wednesday (June 18), the 38-year-old rap superstar took to social media to reveal the millions he’s lost through sports betting over the past month.

“Gotta share the other side of gambling…,” Drake wrote on his Instagram Story alongside a screenshot of his hefty losses. “Losses are so fried right now I hope I can post a big win for you all soon cause I’m the only one that has never seen a max these guys max once a week.”

According to the post, the Toronto MC placed nearly $125 million in bets over the past month, resulting in about $8 million in losses. While Drake didn’t detail which specific wagers led to the downturn, recent NBA and NHL playoff games have dominated the sports betting scene.

Earlier this month, he revealed a $750,000 bet on a cricket match, backing the Royal Challengers Bengaluru to beat the Punjab Kings. The post, which tagged gambling platform Stake — with whom Drake has an endorsement deal — is just one of many high-stakes wagers he’s publicly shared.

This isn’t the first time the OVO boss has taken a major hit. Earlier this year, Drake bet $1.25 million on the Toronto Maple Leafs to win game seven and advance to the Eastern Conference Finals — only for the NHL team to fall to the Florida Panthers.

“I am a flawed sports better,” he recently admitted in a mock interview on Instagram this while promoting his partnership with Stake. “I will not deny that. That’s not my gift. I’ll let everybody roll with it. I’m sure if you’re a Drake curse believer, there will be plenty more content in the future to confirm your theories because my slips do not cash out. But one day I’m gonna have a parlay that’s insane.”

Despite the recent losses, Drake isn’t backing down. In another IG Story post on Wednesday, he revealed an $800,000 bet on game six of the 2025 NBA Finals. With the Oklahoma City Thunder leading the series over the Indiana Pacers, Drizzy placed $600,000 on a Thunder win and another $200,000 on them winning by a 6–10 point margin. If both bets hit, his total payout would be an estimated $1.7 million.

In music news, Drake is rumored to be working on a new album, reportedly titled Iceman, which many fans expect to drop before the end of 2025. While the rap star hasn’t confirmed or denied any details about the project, fellow artist Smiley recently hinted that Drake has been putting in serious work on something new.