Karol G is a Colombian-born reggaeton/pop singer who became a household name in Latin America before taking the US by storm. In 2023, she made history when her fourth studio album, Mañana Será Bonito, became the first Spanish-language album by a female artist to debut at #1 on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart.
Mañana Será Bonito, which is Spanish for Tomorrow Will Be Pretty, grew out of Karol G's breakup with her fiance and "Culpables" collaborator Anuel AA. By the time she released the album, she was romantically linked to Feid, a fellow singer-songwriter from her hometown of Medellin, Colombia.
Her full name is Carolina Giraldo Navarro. Her friends dubbed her Carolina G in high school because of her love for the hip-hop group G-Unit, which led to her adopting Karol G as a stage name.
But Karol G isn't her only alternate moniker. Her fans also know her as Bichota, inspired by
her 2020 song of the same name. The singer co-opted the word "bichote," relating to a big shot drug lord or mobster in Puerto Rican culture, and spun it into a symbol of female empowerment.
She has a tattoo of three famous faces on her right forearm: Rihanna's, Selena Quintanilla's, and her own. Selena, in particular, was a huge influence on Karol G. She paid tribute to the late Tejano star with "
Mi Ex Tenía Razón," a 2023 single reminiscent of the cumbia style that Quintanilla was known for.
Karol G tried out for the Colombian version of The X Factor when she was 14 and became one of the Top 10 semifinalists after three rounds of auditions. Unfortunately, she was eliminated before the final competition.
In 2008, she tried to get a record deal with Universal Music Latino, but they weren't confident that a female reggaeton singer could become a big star. Instead, they offered her a gig as an in-house songwriter, but Karol G refused. She had her sights set on becoming a performer so, with the help of her father, she hit the road as an independent artist. In 2016, two years after her dancehall single "
Ricos Besos" swept through Colombia, Universal changed their tune and signed her to the label. Her debut album,
Unstoppable, followed shortly after, boasting her breakthrough Bad Bunny collab "Ahora Me Llama."
She won her first US Grammy Award when Mañana Será Bonito was named Best Musica Urbana Album in 2024. The release also won Album of the Year and Best Urban Music Album at the Latin Grammy Awards a year earlier.
Karol G earned five Guinness World Records, starting with the most Billboard Latin Music Awards nominations by a female artist in a single year, with 15 noms ahead of the 2022 ceremony. In 2023, Guinness recognized
Mañana Será Bonito as the most streamed album by a female Latin artist in a single week (and in a 24-hour period) on Spotify, as well as Karol G for being the first female artist to reach #1 on the Billboard 200 with a Spanish-language album. That same year, "
TQG," her collaboration with Shakira, earned the accolade for the highest-charting Spanish-language song (at #7) on the Billboard Hot 100 by a female artist.
She met her longtime producer Ovy on the Drums when he was brought in to assist on her 2013 single with Nicky Jam, "Amor De Dos." When he overheard the singer talking about how she needed a DJ to accompany her on gigs, he offered to step in. After they grew comfortable with each other, Ovy suggested they collaborate on a song, which ended up being "Ricos Besos."
Karol G made the move to Interscope Records in June 2023. That same month she issued "Watati," featuring Panamanian reggaeton artist Aldo Ranks, as a promo single for Barbie The Album, the soundtrack for the Barbie movie.
In 2024, Karol G had a recurring role on the Netflix miniseries Griselda, starring Sofia Vergara as real-life Colombian drug lord Griselda Blanco. The singer played Carla, a sex worker who helps the title character smuggle drugs into the US.
Karol G is adamant that her songs stay true to her image, even going so far as to turn down an opportunity to sing on the 2018 single "
Sin Pijama" because of its reference to smoking weed, which she doesn't do. It ended up being recorded by Becky G and Natti Natasha. Karol admitted her conservative upbringing played into her refusal, and she became more open-minded as she matured - she even references weed on her 2023 tune "
Provenza."
In the early days of her career, Karol G and her father formed a two-person hustle machine. She'd pick up the phone, change her voice, invent a new name, and say she was calling "from Karol G's team" to book her own gigs. The deception didn't stop at phone calls; she even staged fake meetings where she'd play both herself and her fictional manager. "We changed the voice, and we changed the names too," she told The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon with a laugh.
Before reggaetón fame, Karol G made ends meet as a voice actor for Spanish-language versions of Hasbro toy ads. She voiced characters in commercials for Play-Doh and Bratz dolls, doing both the excited little girl and the voice that says the brand slogan at the end.
