Call it the “Hips Don’t Lie” effect.

Last year, Epic Records held a contest offering fans a chance to help create a video for Colombian pop diva Shakira’s yodel-tastic single of the same name featuring Wyclef Jean. Label executives’ expectations were low — they were spending only $5,000 to create and promote a quickie clip, after all.

But the impact of that effort sent shock waves through the music industry.

The contest yielded some 500 submissions of fans lip-syncing and booty-shaking in extremis that were spliced together by a professional editor to create a single video. Posted at Yahoo.com’s music portal in March 2006, it quickly became the site’s most popular clip. When it did drop out of the No. 1 slot several weeks later, it was second only to Shakira’s own video for the same song. The pair of “Hips” were eventually streamed more than 50 million times, making “Hips Don’t Lie” easily the Nielsen BDS most-streamed video of the year, just about tripling the number generated by second-place finisher Beyoncé’s “Check on It.” Shakira’s song went on to become a No. 1 hit in 20 countries, selling 1.7 million copies. And as an unintended result, “Hips Don’t Lie (Fans-Only Version)” seems to have sparked a brave new era of fan-artist interconnectivity.

Egypt is the home planet of belly dancing, so when Shakira, the Colombian-born pop star with the centrifugal hips, came to Cairo on March 28 to give a concert, there was some anticipation she might do a, hmmmm, belly flop.

On the contrary, she conquered the audience and experts for whom belly dancing is as commonplace as dust in Cairo.

“She knows how to shake,” said Rakia Hassan, a dance teacher and former member of an Egyptian troupe that toured the world. “I was skeptical, but she does something truly good for this art. A lot of people around the world have signed up for belly dancing because of her.”

Belly dancing isn’t exactly what Shakira does. She augments the typical alternate slow grinding motions and fast shimmying with dashes across the stage in bare feet, tosses of her ample curly hair in all directions and impressive performances of jackknife hip thrusts.

It was a new Goddess that moved the pyramids of Giza in Cairo two days ago … Shakira sang, danced & mesmerized over 100.000 people at her concert on Wednesday.

She didn’t only sing her songs, but she also surprised the audiences with an Arabic song, she chose to start her concert with Fairuz’s song ‘Atini Annay wa Ghanni’ & she also belly danced to the song of the fabulous Um Kulthum ‘Inta Omri’.

Shakira rocked the Pyramids with her famous songs La Tortura, Illegal, Estoy Aqui & Hips don’t Lie among others.

On the day of the concert, Shakira got a special guided tour of the Pyramids with Dr. Zahi Hawwas. She was astonished & overwhelmed.
This was Shakira’s 101 concert after which she flew directly to India to start preparing for her 102 concert of the tour.