Having only freshly released her fourth album, Mañana Será Bonito, Karol G’s “TQG” featuring Shakira already marks the fifth single from the record. Granted, Karol G got a bit of a head start before the album’s official announcement was made, with singles like “Provenza” and “Gatúbela” coming out in the spring and summer of 2022. Nonetheless, “TQG” somehow feels like the first “real” single from the album. Shakira might have more than a little something to do with that, especially considering how much she’s been in the spotlight of late thanks to her Gerard Piqué-slamming track, “Shakira: BZRP Music Sessions #53.” The reemergence of Shakira’s signature “sass” (and ass) has only helped contribute to the clapback vibe of “TQG”—an acronym for “Te Quedó Grande.” This loosely translating to: “Too much for you to handle.”
On Beyoncé’s 2016 track, “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” she similarly boasted of being “too much” for the man who jilted her (a.k.a Jay-Z), flexing, “Blindly in love, I fucks with you/‘Til I realize I’m just too much for you/I’m just too much for you.” Where once it was the ultimate curse for a woman to be called “too much” (a not so veiled code for: “too much to deal with because she actually shows her emotions and intellectual complexities”), it’s now owned as a badge of honor (hence the new adage, “If I’m too much for you, then go find less”). For no woman wants to attract the kind of man who can’t “handle” a little “emotionalism” (this being a word certain men use to describe a woman’s expression of any feeling whatsoever). This is the type of man that Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) once characterized as being averse to “Katie girls”—a The Way We Were reference to those non-gays in the audience who don’t get it. And yes, Mr. Big (Chris Noth) is just that sort of breed (though it didn’t stop Carrie from continuing to lust after him). Preferring instead the “simple girls” that Pink so often loves to talk shit about despite such rhetoric no longer being considered chic.
Both Shakira and Karol G are ostensible Katie girls as well. Yet, unlike Beyoncé (an undercover simple girl), neither of these women are willing to forgive their erstwhile significant other for their transgressions, with Shakira once again referring to Gerard Piqué when she sings, “Seeing you with the new girl hurt me, but I’m now set on me/I’ve forgotten what we lived together, and that’s what you’re offended by/And even my life got better, you are no longer welcome here.” As for Karol G, her poisonous ex inspiration is Anuel AA (side note: Shakira collaborated with him on 2020’s “Me Gusta” before Karol G knew how it was going to turn out…but how’s that for full-circle retribution?). Despite being engaged to Karol G for two years, he ended up marrying a fellow rapper named Yailin La Más Viral—even had a baby with her before deciding to ditch her, too. So when Karol G declares, “You left saying you got over me/And you got yourself a new girlfriend/What she doesn’t know is that you’re still looking at all my stories,” one can really tell who the “muse” behind the lyric is.
Karol and Shakira then goad their exes in concert via the chorus, “Baby, what happened?/Thought you were very in love?/What are you doing looking for me, honey/If you know that I don’t repeat mistakes/Tell your new bae that I don’t compete for men.” A sentiment that sounds similar to when men say, “I don’t have to pay for sex.” The confident bravado of the song is mirrored by its Pedro Artola-directed video, in which, while channeling Loud-era Rihanna with her red hair, Karol G takes up the mantle for Ri in “Can’t Remember to Forget You,” which also featured Shakira. In stark contrast to the lament and yearning of that single (released almost ten years ago now), “TQG” is a sign of the times for women who are no longer naïve or trusting enough to put up with multiple affronts from men. They’d rather turn such pain into profit, as Shakira mentions on her Bizarrap session with the line, “Women no longer cry/Women get paid.”
Karol G confirms that with her verse, “I don’t have time for something that doesn’t do anything for me/I changed my route/Making money like sport/Filling my bank account with shows, the car park, the passport/I’m harder, the press reviews say.” Or perhaps “more wizened” is the better choice of words. Therefore not so prone to buying into the usual male bullshit, featuring such greatest hits as, “You know I love you, baby,” “It was only one time,” “It didn’t mean anything,” etc.
With the video opening on images of Karol G projected on screens throughout the globe (including the many screens present on an airplane), she does a freefall off a building as Artola cuts to Shakira in an icy blue bodycon dress amid a snowy backdrop. After all, men have such a knack for turning women “cold” with their behavior. Karol G then appears on the scene in a contrasting red number that coordinates with her hair before the two transition to the opposite environmental milieu: fire burning all around them. For that’s the trail they’ve left in their wake after being burned by the men who did them wrong, only to scorch those men’s earth in recompense.
As Karol G takes a page from the Shakira aphorism, “Hips don’t lie,” they dance suggestively in unison (even throwing in a portion of the beloved “Anitta dance” from “Envolver”), as though taunting any and every ex who made the mistake of thinking he could do better. The setting then shifts to a snowy one again as the rage in each woman subsides in favor of a cool, calm collectedness that her ex can no longer penetrate.
That calmness being further emphasized by the The Truman Show-inspired blue sky-painted wall they hit at the end, complete with stairs leading to an open door (the possibilities presently wide open now that the whole world is their oyster without some cloying, complaining bloke to diminish their worth and make them feel guilty for it). And yes, someone—a slavish man—is watching them on TV in their bathtub in the final scene. For what else can any man do but watch as women continue to prove their superior value over and over again?
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