Was it in the third or fourth song…? —maybe “BICHOTA,” maybe an earlier reggaetón assault disguised as an empowerment sermon—Karol G stops singing. Or at least it feels like she does, because the crowd has taken over, every syllable hammered back at her like a call to arms. The bass is a living thing, thrumming through the arena floor, the walls, the lungs of every person packed into this neon cocoon. If there’s a single person not moving, they must be frozen in religious ecstasy, unable to process the sheer physicality of this.
The power of a Karol G crowd is unlike anything else. Not polite head-bobbing, not even that communal indie-kid swaying—this is reggaetón in its purest, most guttural form, the entire place a rolling sea of hips and raised arms, some desperate for the perfect TikTok shot, others simply drowning in it.
“TQG” is an exorcism, a gospel, a raised middle finger wrapped in platinum-dipped catharsis. The beat drops like a guillotine, clean and inevitable, and Karol G owns every second of it. Somewhere, a couple is screaming the lyrics into each other’s faces like they’ve spent the last decade wronging one another and this is the only way to purge the damage.
She is a force—a warm, inviting, utterly ruthless force. For every venom-dripped, beat-heavy anthem, there’s a moment of tenderness, a pause in the chaos where she lets the emotion crack through. “MIENTRAS ME CURO DEL CORA” lands softer but no less gut-punching, the kind of song that feels like slow motion in a crowd that won’t stop shifting. Phones shoot up in unison, tiny fireflies against the ocean of movement.
It’s this duality that makes her such an unstoppable live act: the effortless leap from swaggering dominance to devastating intimacy, from party-starting titan to confidante in a world-weary ballad. No transition feels forced because none of them are—Karol G is running on instinct, and the crowd is right there with her.
There are moments when the setlist barely matters. The show isn’t a linear progression; it’s a constant state of arrival, of climax after climax, of a never-ending flow that refuses to settle. “MI EX TENÍA RAZÓN” sidles in, smooth and sinuous, a little cheeky, a little venomous, a reminder that Karol G’s range extends beyond the obvious. The fusion of corrido and reggaetón is hypnotic, an old-school cool sliding in through the back door of a neon-drenched club.
Somewhere in the night, she drops “PROVENZA (REMIX),” and suddenly, the show turns weightless. If everything before was relentless, this is a moment of release, the kind of song that turns an arena into an open-air festival, even in the steel-and-concrete belly of the O2. It’s effortless, drenched in summer, carrying a lightness that isn’t about volume but movement, the rhythm settling deep into bones.
Karol G doesn’t just perform; she architects a feeling, a shared high that lingers long after the last beat has faded. The lights drop, the final notes hang heavy in the air, and yet, it doesn’t feel like an ending. More like an ellipsis. The night hasn’t finished—it’s just waiting to start again in another city, another crowd, another explosion of unfiltered, unapologetic presence.
Words & photos – Richard Isaac
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