Poo Bear

Lore & Background

In the creative ecosystem surrounding Shakira's mid-2010s and late-2010s work, Poo Bear occupied a particular niche: the writer who could sit in a session and move fluidly between a reggaetón bounce, a soulful R&B progression, and a synth-driven pop hook without any of the transitions feeling jarring. Shakira's music at that time demanded exactly that kind of multilingual fluency—she was performing in Spanish and English, collaborating with urban artists and pop icons, and her albums needed writers who thought in multiple registers simultaneously.

Poo Bear's approach, as reflected in the tracks he touched, leans toward melodic economy: fewer notes, more space, a vocal melody that rewards repetition. That philosophy meshes naturally with Shakira's own songwriting, which often builds a simple, chantable top line over increasingly complex rhythmic beds. The result in their shared credits is a sound that feels both intimate and arena-sized, personal and danceable.

For the fan community, Poo Bear is the kind of name that appears in the fine print of liner notes and sparks a "wait, he was on this too?" moment. He is not a front-facing collaborator in the way a featured artist is, but his fingerprints on the harmonic and structural choices of a track are often unmistakable to attentive listeners.

In Their Own Story

The studio smelled like cold coffee and warm tape. It was 1 a.m. in a Midtown room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a Manhattan that had gone quiet, and the only light came from the glow of a mixing console and the amber standby LEDs on a rack of outboard gear. Shakira sat cross-legged on a couch, a notebook open on her knee, humming a phrase in Spanish that kept catching on the same three notes. Poo Bear, in a faded hoodie and a pair of headphones draped around his neck, nodded slowly and tapped a lazy rhythm on the desk—two, three, two—until the phrase suddenly unlocked into a pattern that made her laugh and say, "Ah, sí, that's the one." He hit record. Neither of them spoke for the next eleven minutes. When the take ended, the city outside was still dark, but the track in the machine had a pulse, a breath, a life of its own. They'd build the rest in the morning.

Reader's Guide

Poo Bear (Jordan Huens) is a New York-based songwriter and producer whose career spans two decades of pop and R&B. In the context of Shakira's discography, he functions as a structural collaborator—shaping the melodic architecture, harmonic progressions, and rhythmic frameworks of tracks that carry her voice into the broader Anglo-Latin pop landscape.

His contribution is best understood as one of translation and refinement. Shakira arrives in a session with a rhythmic idea, a lyrical fragment, or a vocal melody; Poo Bear's role is to find the chordal and textural scaffolding that lets that idea breathe at full volume. The result is a sound that feels organic to her while remaining accessible to listeners who may not follow the Latin urban scene.

Their professional relationship is that of peer-to-peer collaborators rather than artist-and-hired-writer. Both bring strong melodic instincts, and the tracks that carry both their names tend to favor economy over excess: a clean vocal line, a distinctive rhythmic pocket, and a hook designed to stick after one listen. This philosophy aligns with the era of Shakira's work in which she was actively courting both the Billboard Hot 100 and Latin Airplay charts simultaneously, needing songs that could live in both worlds without apology.

For listeners building a deeper appreciation of Shakira's catalog, Poo Bear's name in the credits is a signal to listen for the spaces between the notes—the breath, the pause, the half-step turn that makes a chorus feel inevitable.

Did You Know?

• Poo Bear's real name, Jordan Huens, is rarely used in public credits; the stage name has become his professional identity across the industry.
• His songwriting style is often described as 'melodic minimalism'—building entire songs around a small number of notes and letting rhythm and production carry the rest, a philosophy that pairs naturally with Shakira's voc
• He is based in New York City, placing him in a different creative timezone and cultural context from many of Shakira's other collaborators in Miami or Madrid, which adds a distinct R&B-inflected texture to the tracks he
• In the pop and R&B world, Poo Bear is known for writing for a wide roster of artists across genres, making his occasional presence on a Shakira track a notable cross-pollination between the urban R&B and Latin pop scenes