By the summer of ’99, radio was ruled by the likes of “ Livin’ La Vida Loca,” “ Bailamos,” “ I Need To Know,” and “ Shake Your Bon Bon.” Jennifer Lopez, who had risen to fame in part by portraying a Tejano pop superstar in Selena, became a hitmaker herself with “ If You Had My Love” and “ Waiting For Tonight.” (Regrettably, this era also yielded “ Mambo No. The former boy band singer’s performance of salsa-tinged World Cup theme “The Cup Of Life” at the 1999 Grammys sparked Stateside interest in Latin pop, inspiring Martin and fellow Spanish-language stars Enrique Iglesias and Marc Anthony to quickly record and release albums in English. That kind of thing was all the rage around the turn of the millennium, thanks in large part to Ricky Martin. They were bridges between (pop) cultures, exports from the Latin hit machine given just the right makeover to cross over beyond Hispanic audiences. But singles such as “ Wherever, Whenever” and “ Objection (Tango)” still had an unmistakable Latin flair to them. Shakira was much easier to understand when she switched to English for 2001’s Laundry Service, the album that broke her in the States. To me, those songs were no different than an episode of Destinos - some inscrutable foreign artifact to pass the time until next period. Sometimes, in an effort to expose us to the culture we were studying, she would play us some of the pop megastar’s Spanish-language hits and awkwardly sway along at her desk. She and her husband, she often informed us, were huge Shakira fans, as was all of Latin America. Shakira first entered my consciousness around the turn of the millennium courtesy of my high school Spanish teacher, a friendly young white American woman married to a man from Colombia.