Soon she performed on MTV Unplugged, the channel’s first Spanish-language broadcast. It was then when Shakira realized she needed to improve her English to write songs and make good shows. In view of the single’s success, Gloria Estefan offered to translate the song into English. The single Ojos Asi was highly popular and the album spent 11 weeks at number 1 on Billboard's Latin album chart in America, sold over more than 4 million copies and became multi-platinum in America and platinum in Spain. The move paid off in no time when her follow-up album Donde Estan los Ladrones? (1998) became an even bigger worldwide hit than its predecessors. – Gloria Estefan’s husband as her manager and producer. In 1997 Shakira has left El Oasis and returned to recording. Her third work Pies Descalzos (1995), perfectly combining the rhythm of rock’n’roll and oriental motives, reached #1 in charts of eight countries and went platinum in the US. Unsatisfied with the second album, Shakira changed direction and joined the cast of the Colombian soap opera El Oasis playing the part of Luisa Maria. The second disc, Peligro (1993), was also a commercial failure. Despite the fact that her songs were aired by numerous radio stations of Colombia and brought her fame, only 1,200 copies of the record were sold. Her debut album Magia was released when she was 13. Since then she was winning all the musical contests in Barraquilla.
At the age of 11 she won her first musical contest. The most of her talents were revealed when she was a child – when she was 4 years old she wrote her first poem and when she was 10 she engaged in oriental dancing. Among her favorite musical bands were Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, The Police and The Cure. When a child, she used to listen to Colombian and Lebanese music along with English-language songs. Her Lebanese father and Colombian mother gave her the name which can be translated from Arabic as «full of elegance and God’s grace». Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, known professionally as Shakira, was born on Februin Barranquilla, Colombia.