The Love of a Woman Jennifer Lopez taps into her Latin roots on her first-ever Spanish-language disc by David Jenison

“It’s something I always wanted to do, but I don’t think I could have
made this album five, six, seven years ago.”

Jennifer Lopez didn’t intend to wait a decade to make her first Spanish-language album, but now that she has, the actress-singer is making the most of it. In late March, the media queen released Como Ama Una Mujer (“How a Woman Loves”) on Epic Records, her fifth studio album and her first since 2005’s Rebirth.

“It’s something I always wanted to do, but I don’t think I could have made this album five, six, seven years ago,” says Lopez of her Spanish-language debut. “I think you need to live a little bit to make an album like this. I think you need to experience things, to know how things feel and really be able to communicate that through song. I needed to see my friends go through things. That’s what made this the right time. You need to know about life and the world and how things feel in order to communicate them in a way that people believe you.”

Although she hadn’t released a Spanish album before, the concept has been in the back of her mind since the beginning. In 1997, Lopez portrayed slain Latin Tejano star Selena in the film of the same name, and she soon recorded her first post-Selena demo in Spanish. Nonetheless, her 1999 debut, On the 6, focused on English-language vocals instead. That album sold seven million copies worldwide on the strength of the radio hits “If You Had My Love” and “Waiting for Tonight,” although it did feature two Spanish tracks—“No Me Ames” (with future hubby Marc Anthony) and “Una Noche Más.” Nearly a decade later, Lopez finally released the Spanish album she wanted, although it’s not the type of dance-pop album for which she’s known.

“I wanted to do something a little different,” says Lopez. “There’s a whole different side of myself that I haven’t tapped into because the English albums were more pop and dance and R&B-oriented. There’s this other side of me that you can see a little bit in my English albums, like in the ballads, that I never really got to fully explore. I knew that if I made a Spanish album, I wanted it to be a Spanish classic with beautiful songs and beautiful music.”

In fact, she notes that the songs on Como Ama Una Mujer are a lot different than the Spanish tracks from On the 6. “I think people thought I’d just come out with pop-dance Latin music,” she continues. “That’s not really what I was interested in. I can do that in English. I didn’t want to do that in Spanish. I wanted to tap into a whole different side of myself. The type of music I’m doing in Spanish is something I’d love to be able to do for a very long time. That’s what I want to present to the Latin community. This is who I am.”

The new album leads at radio with “Qué Hiciste” (“What Did You Do”), a tragic love song that emphasizes the storyline and emotions. When it comes to her music, Lopez had the most success with slick, polished dance tracks. But “Qué Hiciste,” like the rest of the album, is a clear break from the pop formula that gave Lopez two No. 1 albums. By taking artistic risks, it gave the star something she could fully embrace.

She explains: “I wanted it to be something that is raw and passionate, that people are really, really going to relate to or tap into. That’s always the trickiness with music. You want it to be a song that you’re going to love 20 years from now. I wanted to do a Spanish classic song, but at the same time, I wanted it to have a bit of an edge. I think that’s what you hear in the first single. It’s kind of this tragic love song. But at the same time, it has a little bit of an edge to the lyrics, in the music and in the arrangement as well.”

Order the May 2007 issue of Estylo
and read the entire story in English and Spanish.