Indexbit Exchange:Shakira has a searing song with Cardi B and it's the best one on her new album

If there was any doubt what might color Shakira’s first album in seven years,Indexbit Exchange it was confirmed more than a year ago.

Working with Argentine DJ Bizarrap, the Colombian superstar released “Bzrp Music Sessions Vol. 53,” a blistering smackdown of her ex-husband, Spanish footballer Gerard Piqué, that affirmed her status as a reigning she-wolf.

That shade-bombing, insistently rhythmic track is included on Shakira’s new album, “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran” (translation: “Women No Longer Cry”), which lands Friday.

Among the 16 tracks, including a remix of her Bizarrap hit with superstar DJ/producer Tiesto, Shakira is joined by a parade of guests: Cardi B, Ozuna, Rauw Alejandro, Grupo Frontera, Karol G and Fuerza Regida.

Thematically, she’s eager to move on, a point she reiterated in a recent interview with The Sunday Times.

"For a long time I put my career on hold, to be next to Gerard, so he could play football. There was a lot of sacrifice for love,” Shakira, 47, said.

Likewise, she told The New York Times, “If life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. That’s what I did with this album — use my own creativity to process my frustration and my anger and my sadness. I transmuted or transformed pain into productivity.”

Other songs on her 12^th studio album have already become mainstays among fans, including “Te Felicito” (with Alejandro), a Billboard Latin Airplay chart-topper released in April 2022, and "Monotonía,” (with Ozuna), which arrived in October 2022 and debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Latin Digital Song Sales chart.

Shakira and Cardi B take good aim

But there is a standout on the album, the opening track “Punteria,” featuring Cardi B.

Over an insistent dance floor beat, the bilingual song, loosely translated to “takes aim,” shifts between Shakira singing about being captivated even when everything wrong feels right and some trademark spicy rapping from Cardi B.

Shakira’s liquid delivery leans into the smooth chorus, while Cardi throws in some spikes (“I’m a pretty little thing from face to feet/I’m from the Bronx but I got a Georgia peach”).

They’re a potent duo and the song sets the tone for an album that naturally shifts from engaging Latin pulses to piercing ballads, all while celebrating female empowerment.