It’s been 20 years since Shakira joined forces with Wyclef Jean for “Hips Don’t Lie,” their dance anthem that went on to became a global success. But the Colombian singer says the track nearly didn’t make it onto her 2005 platinum-certified album, Oral Fixation, Vol. 2.
Shakira revealed that she had to fight for her record company just to release it during a Thursday appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
“I remember my album was already distributed, and then this idea came up, and Wyclef and I met, and we started working on this track,” she told host Jimmy Fallon, explaining that the record had already been sent out for sale.
She then shared a wild anecdote about the song’s origins. “And, you know, the funniest thing is that I had a dream, the most random dream about Wyclef,” she began.
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Shakira and Wyclef Jean perform at the 49th Grammy Awards in February 2007
The mother of two stopped to clarify that it wasn’t a “sexual dream” before recalling that after she woke up, her manager surprised her with a call saying Jean wanted to work with her.
“I’m like, ‘No, no. It can’t be. I had a dream about Wyclef last night,'” she said. “‘Why would I dream about Wyclef?'”
Fallon replied that she must have “manifested” the song before Shakira went on to say that after she and Jean started collaborating, “I knew I had a hit.”
In fact, the singer had so much faith in the track that she reached out to Donny Ienner, the head of Epic Records, her record company at the time, and urged him to pull copies of Oral Fixation, Vol. 2. before they landed on shelves so that the album could be repackaged with “Hips Don’t Lie” included.
“‘You’ve got to believe me. You’ve got to trust me. You do that, we have a hit,'” she recalled telling Ienner. “He did it, and we kind of had to repackage the albums. And it changed my story.”
“Hips Don’t Lie” was originally released in February 2006, when it appeared on the reissue of Shakira’s 2005 album, Oral Fixation, Vol. 2. The single became Shakira and Jean’s first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 when it topped the chart on June 17, 2006. It also topped the Hot Latin Songs and Pop Airplay charts, while hitting No. 1 in dozens of other countries around the world.
This is the second time Shakira appeared on The Tonight Show this week — she also visited to celebrate the song’s 20th anniversary with a performance alongside Jean on Wednesday.
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Shakira and Wyclef Jean perform on ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’ on May 6, 2025
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The celebration and double appearance come during the singer’s record-breaking Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour. Shakira kicked off the shows in Brazil in February before performing 11 sold-out concerts in Mexico City. The North American leg of the tour starts May 13 at the Bank of America Stadium in North Carolina.
“It’s incredible,” Shakira told Fallon when asked about having the No. 1 tour in the world for the second month in a row. “I’ve been working on this tour for a year, preparing every single detail, from the visuals to the music. I’ve put together my biggest set list. I’m singing some of my classic songs, from ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ to ‘Whenever, Whatever’ to the most recent ones.”
She added that the tour is “probably the biggest production that’s ever traveled Latin America.”
“It weighs like 93 tons. The screen is huge and it’s 145 people traveling,” Shakira said. “So then you show up and see so many people dancing and singing and crying and getting emotional. It’s a party, but people really, really connect with this music. It’s been like the soundtrack of their lives, for many of my fans.”
Watch Shakira and Wyclef Jean’s Tonight Show performance above.
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