Odds are you’ve heard by now: the biggest headline to come out of Karol G’s first of two nights at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium may have arrived late in the show, when Judeline, rusowsky, and Tainy suddenly appeared alongside the Colombian superstar. Yep, Thursday marked the first glorious occasion when all four partners in crime came together on stage for a live rendition of “Bby Wow,” that global hit you keep bumping into at the gym or the bar.
But more on that in a minute.
Because the real story of Karol G’s “Viajando Por El Mundo Tropitour” (get tickets here) was considerably bigger and, perhaps surprisingly for a stadium show of this scale, more intimate than its biggest surprise guest appearance.
Since breaking into the reggaeton industry in 2017 with her massive hit “Ahora Me Llama” featuring Bad Bunny, Karol G has solidified her status as undisputed queen of perreo. Her ever-empowering anthems often encourage women to leave men behind while embracing their most “Bichota” self. But on Thursday night, the Colombian singer-songwriter showed a more nuanced, vulnerable side that further cemented her as a multifaceted superstar.
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It’s a development that mirrors her latest album, No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto. As we noted in our review of the record, the Colombian has now reached the rare level of superstardom that allows her to do pretty much whatever she wants creatively. On the record, she used that freedom to create an album stitched together by heartbreak with the likes of Drake and Bruno Mars playing sidekicks. At MetLife, she built an entire world around the many sides of herself.
At first glance, the premise of “Viajando Por El Mundo” (translating to “Traveling Around the World”) is simple. With that title, one might expect a colorful stage and a rundown of songs celebrating different genres and cultures around the world, focusing, of course, on Karol G’s native Colombia. While, to some extent, the show delivered just that, the Medellín native went one step further, bringing a pyrotechnic-filled two-hour show that highlighted who she is not only as a Latina, but also as a woman and as a person who, as her latest album’s title suggests, feels too damn much.
At its essence, “Viajando Por El Mundo” is a love letter to Carolina Giraldo Navarro, the real person behind the superstar.
The show opened with some of the biggest hits from her Tropicoqueta album: “Latina Foreva” and “Un Gatito Me Llamó.” Behind her, the enormous stage showcased an orange-themed tropical jungle, with its queen, Karol G, at its center as a troupe of dancers gravitated around her.
Then, over the next two hours, the singer took audiences on a tour of Latin America, featuring an all-female mariachi band singing “Ese Hombre Es Malo,” Brazilian garota-inspired costumes to accompany “Tropicoqueta,” Dominican bachata for a reimagined version of “Si Antes Te Hubiera Conocido,” and, of course, Puerto Rico-style reggaeton throughout. It was a production befitting the massive pop star she’s become since she last appeared at MetLife in 2023.
“If Karol has taught us anything tonight, it’s that one can travel throughout the world, but your raíces are always in your heart,” a pre-recorded vignette of Mexican-American actor Edward James Olmos roared, emphasizing a message of unity. “Raise your flags and be proud, because it’s time to celebrate where we come from, the sounds that grew up with us and made us who we are. Enjoy, and long live Latino America.”
And that’s exactly how the Colombian singer celebrated Latinidad, through a series of deliberate choices that carried additional weight not only as they landed in Hispanic Heritage Month, but also against the backdrop of the current political climate in the United States.
Karol often emphasized how proud she is to be Latina, repeatedly mentioning flags she saw from the audience representing different countries in the region. Earlier in the night, however, opener Elena Rose made the evening’s political context considerably more explicit. The Venezuelan singer shared that her photographer had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as he traveled for the show. You could hear a pin drop as she shared the story with an audience all too familiar with the consequences of the country’s ongoing immigration crackdown. Then Rose roared: “There’s nothing more beautiful than being Latino!”
But beneath the intricate dance numbers, sequin costumes, and pyrotechnics, “Viajando Por El Mundo” revealed something more: an honest celebration of self by a singer able to bring together the different parts of her persona.
For several parts of the show, Karol took her audience out of the jungle and into her broken heart. Before the set formally began and the stadium transitioned from an orange summer to a deep blue winter, a video of Karol played, where she explained that suffering is part of humanity, and that if heartbreak goes hand in hand with living, she will proudly continue “coleccionando heridas” (collecting wounds).
And then, finally, that “Bby Wow” moment.
Amid the heartbreak of her latest album, the blue stage once again lit up as Karol celebrated one of its biggest hits, bringing out producer Tainy on a makeshift DJ table alongside collaborators Judeline and rusowsky to perform the song together live for the first time. In no time, the East Rutherford stadium transformed into an Ibiza nightclub, with fireworks shooting into the sky, Tainy bringing a new beat to the hit, and the audience chanting every word of the sad perreo song. The staging made the collaboration feel appropriately international, too: Tainy’s table displayed the flags of Colombia, Spain, and Puerto Rico as the four artists shared the stage.
It was the kind of surprise destined to become the headline from the night. But within the larger arc of “Viajando Por El Mundo,” it also made perfect sense: another collision of cultures, genres, and emotions inside a show built around Karol G embracing all of them at once.
As Karol continues to establish herself as one of the biggest Spanish-speaking artists of her generation, “Viajando Por El Mundo” suggests that getting bigger hasn’t necessarily meant becoming less personal. If anything, she has used the scale of a stadium show to make a case for the opposite. For all the fireworks, costume changes, surprise guests, and trips around Latin America, the person at the center of it all remains Carolina: a Latina woman proud of her choices, her heritage, and, as her latest album puts it, her tendency to simply “feel too much.”
