Reinventing Karol G

Covid slowed her down, but the Colombian reggaeton star bounces back with new sounds

Last March, the Colombian singer Karol G was just weeks away from finalizing an album she’d been working on for months. Then, sitting at home in Miami one afternoon, she realized something was missing: “I said, ‘No. I need to start over.’ ”

When the pandemic hit, it gave her time to do just that. Karol, 30, studied what she loved about her favorite pop acts — Beyoncé’s airtight production, Rihanna’s natural delivery, Lady Gaga’s wild aesthetics — and tried producing for the first time. But Covid also presented new challenges. “I felt like I had lost my moment,” she says. Then, over the summer, she and her assistant came down with Covid-19.

One way she got through it all was by watching the videos friends sent her of quarantined people around the world singing her 2019 smash “Tusa” from their balconies. Karol was so moved when she saw the first one that she cried. “I was like, ‘I’m Karol G, the one with the superhit!’ ” she says. “I need to bring this attitude into everything I do from now on!”

After recovering, she finished an all-new album on which she embraces fresh genres and sounds like never before. The first single, “Location,” features her boyfriend, the Puerto Rican rapper Anuel AA, and J Balvin singing over a country-inspired riff. “I’m not making all these fusions so that my music reaches a ton of people,” she says. “I love all types of music. That’s what I want to express.”