Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll (born February 2, 1977), known simply as Shakira is a ten-time Grammy Award-winning Colombian singer-songwriter, musician and record producer who has sold nearly fifty million copies of her albums worldwide. She has been in the music industry since 1991 and she wrote her first song at age 8. In 2001, she broke through into the English-speaking market with the release of her first album in that language, Laundry Service, which has sold 4 million copies in the United States and 15 million copies worldwide. Shakira is half lebanese, one quarter Spanish, and one quarter Italian. She was born to a Colombian mother of Catalan and Italian descent, Nidia del Carmen Ripoll Torrado, and a lebanese father, William Mebarak Chadid, in Barranquilla, Colombia, where she says she grew up among the Lebanese and Italian communities.
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