Everything leading up to the release of Kimberly Loaiza’s album X Amor on Thursday seemed to be going great: She broke the Guinness World Record for Spanish-language YouTuber with the most subscriptions, she celebrated her 26th birthday surrounded by her two kids and besties, and she was finally giving her fans her first album.
Both records — the Guinness one and her LP — had been in the making for years, after she built a massive following in Latin America since 2016. On YouTube, she boasts 43.7 million subscribers and almost twice as many followers on TikTok. “I’ve been working so hard for this moment,” Loaiza told Rolling Stone a day before X Amor dropped. “It’s a dream come true.”
But in the days since releasing X Amor, things have been far from idyllic as Loaiza was accused of plagiarizing Karol G’s music and sabotaging Mexican pop star Kenia Os. And on Monday night, she announced her decision to leave music and the internet altogether to focus on parenting in a YouTube video titled “My Last Video.” (In the 15-minute video, she also admitted to lying about her partner’s infidelity as a “strategy” to promote her music, but more on that later.)
Listeners first accused Loaiza of copying Karol G when they heard Loaiza’s “Pal Carajo” and lyrics on “@“. She addressed the controversy on X shortly after, saying she “did not copy” the Colombian singer, but admitted that she was inspired by other female artists. “I didn’t use anyone else’s lyrics, so stop looking for problems where there aren’t any,” she wrote in a tweet.
And on Monday, fans of Kenia Os and Danna Paola started a boycott against Loaiza’s music after a screenshot went viral of Os seemingly accusing Loaiza and her partner JD Pantoja of sabotaging her tour by pressuring a venue owner in Os’ native Mazatlán to not allow her to perform there. The couple and Os had a falling out several years prior, leading to a seeming rivalry between the influencer-singers ever since. Loaiza’s team declined to comment on the controversy to Rolling Stone, and neither Os nor Loaiza have addressed the situation publicly.
In her video Monday, Loaiza claims that she had made the decision to quit content-creating two years prior — and that she’ll step away from the internet permanently, only posting occasionally “like anybody else.” She later clarified that in 2024, she’ll still drop a makeup line, go on tour, and release a deluxe edition of X Amor with six additional songs. “I released the album because I had promised it to my fans for many years and I didn’t want to leave without keeping that promise,” she said in the 15-minute video.
Rolling Stone spoke to Loaiza before the controversy broke out and before the release of X Amor. Many of the lyrics seemed to be about her supposed breakup with JD Pantoja, her partner of over a decade. In October, the content-creating duo exchanged cryptic tweets that implied that Pantoja cheated. She also deleted all of her photos with him.
But in Monday’s video where she announced her retirement, she also admitted to lying about her partner’s cheating to promote her music.
“I knew that lending myself to the strategy surrounding JD’s infidelity would take away credibility to my word and the validity of my decision [to quit music],” she said in the video. “I got carried away and I shouldn’t have participated.”
That hoax infidelity was the centerpiece to many of the songs on X Amor, where she seemingly heals from breakup wounds with fiery one-liners. On “Vete,” she declares that “even if you die, I won’t go to your funeral,” and then on cumbia-infused “Los Besos Que Te Di” she admits that “if you leave, I could die.”
“I really identify with so many lyrics in my album, but there are others that the experiences of the people around me,” she told Rolling Stone last week. “I have gone through it with my friends who end up upset, sad, desesperada, and disappointed after the end of a relationship. I understand how hard it is.”
The back-and-forth — and admission of lying about Pantoja’s cheating — has now left some fans questioning whether to believe Loaiza’s decision to retire.
“It’s not anger, it’s disappointment, and that’s worse,” tweeted @KimLoaizaCharts, a fan account with 80,000 followers. “The ones who ended up looking as clowns were us for believing in her circus.”
Last week, the singer also spoke about her lengthy journey to dropping the project after debuting in 2019.
“It has been such a tough road, with so many ups and downs and emotions,” she said. “But in the end, if you know how to use [your platform] and you do it from your heart, you can achieve so many things. That’s how I feel.”
Here’s what Loaiza had to say about five songs on X Amor last week:
Los Besos Que Te Di
One time I got together with Ovy on the Drums at his house in Medellín for a sort of writing camp and we did a couple of songs, but that was my favorite. That was the song where I said, “Wow, this is the song.” It really represents me. It’s a very Tex-Mex, cumbia sound and when I heard it I thought it was beautiful. Of the three songs I recorded that day, that was the one I kept. The lyrics are about a couple that is in a relationship that has become more of a habit, that is monotonous. The couple knows that they have hurt each other but because they don’t want to be alone, they don’t let each other go. They don’t want to break up but neither want to work on their relationship. And the sound… it does remind me of Mexico, it reminds me of the queen, Selena Quintanilla. When I heard the song it reminded me of her and I made this song with so much love.
Tiempo Perdido
This song is completely different to anything I’ve done before because it has a more rock-oriented sound. The lyrics are about a girl who’s in love and the person that she used to love stops looking for her, and doesn’t show interest in her, and she gets very hurt about that. She reminisces on all the good times in her relationship and realizes that it’s over and she could never ask what went wrong because they both made so many mistakes.
@ feat. Andy Rivera
This song is about a person who tries to forget someone, and they realize they moved on because they no longer remember their @. It’s like ‘I already move on, I forgot everything that I even forgot your @.’ I love this song because the lyrics are about overcoming those difficult feelings after a breakup. The @ reference also connects to how I started on social media. Even though I started on social media, it was my dream to do music and it doesn’t matter if I begin my career doing something else. It’s sometimes they want to discredit me because I started up as a YouTuber and I think it has nothing to do with my career now.
Kitty feat. Lit Killah
I feel like Lit Killah did an amazing job on this song. I had this track done over two years and when I listened to it I felt like something was missing on that track and I said “It needs someone featured, somebody could be on this song to make it better.” Someone suggested Lit Killah, I listened to his work and I loved it. I sent him over the song and I got it back I was like “This is incredible! It’s insane!” When I listened to the song, I was astonished.
Pa’l Carajo feat. Julianno Sosa
This song features Julianno Sosa, a Chilean singer who is very talented. We were chatting on Instagram and he gave me his WhatsApp and I sent him the song to see if he liked it. This song has a little bit of hate in it like what you feel when you’re leaving a relationship and that person left you hurting, you don’t want to see them again and you only want that person to go pa’l carajo because they hurt you like that when you see that person you almost throw up from the damage they did to you. And so this song has a little anger in it but it’s amazing.