“[I'm] starting to understand and assimilate and internalize hip-hop music and hip-hop influences, so I’m trying to incorporate them within my own music,” she told MTV News. “Which is a new thing in my life, and I’m completely over the moon. I’m like a kid with a new toy. I’m playing with these new ideas.”

The video for her collaboration with Lil Wayne, “Give It Up to Me,” recently debuted, and while she realizes she’ll never be the next Foxy Brown, Shakira explains that her use of hip-hop is just what music is about today: There are no genre rules anymore.

“I’m never going to be a hard-core hip-hop singer,” she said. “I come from Colombia, but I think music today … it’s about bringing elements that belong to different universes, even though they’re opposed or similar, and making them exist in this big melting pot that the world is today. The world has shrunk and we’re just a big neighborhood, and it’s kind of cool.”