Kali Uchis on Tour, Motherhood, Don Toliver & Her Bilingual Music

It’s a few hours before Kali Uchis is set to take the stage for the second of two sold-out nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden in September, and the venue is buzzing. Fans, many dressed in the artist’s merchandise or girly pink outfits, hum with anticipation. For the Colombian American powerhouse, this moment represents the culmination of a decadelong rise — from an indie darling crafting mixtapes in her Virginia bedroom to a superstar reshaping the boundaries of motherhood, biculturalism and fame.

Today, she’s moving audiences of thousands — all while raising her 1-year-old son and balancing life on the road with her partner, rapper Don Toliver. And backstage, the artist born Karly Marina Loaiza exudes the kind of tranquility of someone who’s exactly where she belongs.

Dressed in a plain baby blue spaghetti-strap top, the 31-year-old is having her glam squad ready her, meticulously curling her waist-length extensions and sharpening her cat-eye eyeliner. As they apply last-­minute touch-ups, Uchis emphasizes the importance of grounding themselves prior to the concert. “We all do a prayer together before the show to uplift everyone and remind us that we’re all on the same team,” she says. “That we’re here to make something beautiful, inspire people and have a good time.”

Kali Uchis will sit for a one-on-one interview on Oct. 21 as part of Billboard Latin Music Week. For tickets, go to billboardlatinmusicweek.com.

Uchis has built a reputation as a bilingual and genre-fluid artist who bends musical boundaries with ease. Her voice, languid and honeyed, can glide over sensual R&B, bouncing reggaetón, shimmering pop or nostalgic jazz. While bilingual peers like Cuco, Helado Negro or Omar Apollo remain at theaters and amphitheaters, Uchis is dominating arenas with songs that ignite feelings of intimacy and escapism, where love, resilience and self-discovery often collide. She’s a storyteller who bears her heart with a blend of vulnerability, empowerment and poetic introspection, whether asserting her independence (“Loner”), exuding self-love (“All I Can Say”) or tapping into supernatural longing (2021’s “Telepatía,” her first Hot Latin Songs No. 1 and her first Billboard Hot 100 entry).

“Kali has incredible artistic sensitivity. I was really impressed by how she pays attention to every detail of her voice, her melodies and the way she conveys sensuality and emotion in every word,” Karol G tells Billboard. “Her style is very authentic, and that makes her shine, giving each song a very special touch.”

Uchis’ ambitious and largely sold-out 29-date North American arena run — her first time headlining such venues — elevated her artistry to a new level. According to Billboard Boxscore, she grossed $31.2 million from 322,000 tickets sold during the tour, which included two-night runs at arenas in New York and Chicago and a three-night stint at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif.

“Kali’s vision has always led the way — we built a team to amplify it, leaning into her bilingual and genre-defying identity as her greatest strength and shaping a tour that feels both world-class and authentically hers,” says Jon Lieberberg, who manages Uchis alongside Shakira Kalité.

Under the glow of swirling pink lights, theatrical fog and chiffon drapery, Uchis transformed Madison Square Garden into an otherworldly haven for her fans. The crowd — a mix of young people, couples, LGBTQ+ followers and fans from diverse ethnicities — seemingly knew every lyric as Uchis’ velvety voice floated effortlessly through her bilingual anthems. “Even though it’s called the Sincerely, tour, it’s really a huge celebration of my entire discography,” Uchis says.

Her elaborate show bore that out. After making her grand entrance, Uchis — by turns perched on a swing, wearing a hand-crystallized French Polynesian lilac silk gown and nestled in a larger-than-life teacup, spinning like a doll in a music box — first spotlit tracks from her latest album, 2025’s soulful Sincerely,. Then she pivoted and the energy shifted dramatically: Clad in commanding SEKS black leather with playfully naughty schoolgirl-inspired attire, Uchis confidently delivered material from her 2024 Spanish-language album, Orquídeas, bringing out JT of City Girls to join her on the Dominican dembow-leaning banger “Muñekuita.” Later, Rauw Alejandro made an appearance to give their collaboration “No Hay Ley Parte 2” its live debut.

“Both Kali and I have different musical universes, but at the same time we share a very Latin and feminine essence,” says Karol G, whose Orquídeas collaboration, “Labios Mordidos,” hit No. 10 on Hot Latin Songs and No. 97 on the Hot 100. “When we got together, there was a mixture of sweetness, sensuality and strength … the fact that we are both Colombian and the special connection between us is also reflected in the music.”

“I think that’s what people love about Kali, that she represents so many different people and communities. She is a testament that a person can be many different things and be themselves,” says Wasserman senior vp Cristina Baxter, who has worked with Uchis since 2015. “Whether you connect with her because of shared heritage or not, the ultimate connection is with the idea that she’s a multifaceted person and artist. She’s not going to be told who she is, and she’s going to live authentically herself.”

The yearlong hiatus Uchis took after Orquídeas — declining to tour behind it so she could focus on raising her and Toliver’s son after he was born — informed how she approached this tour. “The reasoning behind doing so much of my discography on this tour is I feel like this is the tour to do it,” she says. “I took my little break to have my baby and be with him every day, all year. But now, let me just go ahead and do as much as I can and give justice to these songs that so many people didn’t get to see.”

About halfway through our interview, Uchis’ phone buzzes. She FaceTimes her son, who’s on his way to the LEGO Store with a family member. “¡Hola, mi amor! ¿Qué quieres comprar?” she coos, then chuckles when a family member chooses a toy recommended for older children, ages 3 and up. “Está bien, está bien,” she assures in Spanish. I ask if her child speaks both languages, and she replies with pride, “He does! He understands and speaks both fully.”

English and Spanish define Uchis’ world — and her career, where she has carved out a space as the rare Latin artist who thrives across linguistic boundaries, reflects this. A strong performer on the Latin and all-genre charts, her most recent albums Orquídeas and Sincerely, both hit No. 2 on the Billboard 200; the former’s debut was the highest for a Spanish-language set by a woman last year, and it ruled the Top Latin Albums and Latin Pop Albums charts. It even became the first Spanish-language set by a woman to debut atop the Vinyl Albums chart. Uchis has also scored nine entries on the Hot 100, including her viral 2021 hit “Telepatía” (No. 25) and her Peso Pluma-­assisted smash, “Igual Que un Ángel” (No. 22). Her 18 career entries on Hot Latin Songs include “Telepatía,” an eight-week No. 1.

For Uchis, though, this tour’s importance transcended such numbers. “We haven’t done a tour since the Red Moon in Venus tour [in 2023],” she says. “I had a tough experience in part two [of the tour] because I was pregnant and I was not ready to announce it. It was complicated trying to perform, trying to hide my pregnancy and not being ready to talk about it.” This tour, however, has been “like a return to myself again. I have my body back and have this renewed, refreshed feeling. I have learned so much from the touring that I’ve done [previously]. This definitely feels still like me, but such an evolved version.”

And while Uchis was making up for lost time on this tour — performing both Orquídeas and Sincerely, material for audiences for the first time — the run was also an opportunity for her to treat fans to live renditions of her earliest repertoire, alongside the bilingual hits that have made her a global sensation. She reached back as far as her 2015 EP, Por Vida, and gave several songs from across her catalog their live debuts. “This is my first real [solo] arena tour,” says Uchis, who opened arenas for Tyler, The Creator in 2022. “It felt like the right thing to do was to honor this full-circle moment of, ‘Let me put myself on. Let me show you a little bit of something about me from back when I started and bring it all the way to here.’ ”

Amid it all, Uchis had another challenge: traveling on a demanding national tour with a toddler. “Luckily, my man is really supportive,” she says of Toliver. The couple, who traveled together alongside their child on a tour bus, approached the outing not just as a professional endeavor but as a family adventure. “I have a good support system right now,” Uchis explains. “Everyone knows that I have to be focused on the show, but I’m also looking at it as a family road trip.” But, she notes, “My son wants to play with me all day” — and those days often started early and ended as late as 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. after shows. “Getting rest has been hard,” she admits, but with help from her partner and loved ones who traveled with her on the tour bus, she could sneak in a nap before sound check — an hour or two if she’s lucky.

“Until my son is 3 years old, for me, it’s a big priority being in his everyday life, even when I’m working,” she says. “On a normal, everyday basis, I’m with him constantly. But obviously, this is a seven-week tour, so it’s the first time where he has to know, ‘OK, Mommy actually has to go to work.’ ”

Uchis’ management went to great lengths to tailor the logistics of the tour to her circumstances. “We intentionally shaped the pace, routing, travel and daily workflow of the tour,” Lieberberg says, explaining that the structure was designed to make it “possible for Kali to show up fully for her audience and fully for her family.” For example, one key part of the plan was routing that allowed for travel by bus instead of constant flights.

The structure has at least one major fan: “[My son] loves traveling,” Uchis says with a huge smile. “He loves seeing new things. He loves being on the tour bus.”

Even as she builds a new chapter with her family, Uchis remains tethered to the artist she used to be. “I really built my way here through all these years,” she says.

Uchis was born in Alexandria, Va., and raised between the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and Pereira, Colombia. That bicultural upbringing heavily shaped her artistry. She learned to read and write in Spanish before English, a foundation that later allowed her to record in both languages seamlessly. Growing up, music was a constant presence in her “chaotic, full house,” where cousins, uncles and aunts filled the space with life — and noise.

“Music was always there. It was just part of my life from the beginning,” she recalls. “Even when there was silence, I would hear music in my head. I think that’s why I started writing songs when I was really little. I was always inspired to try things, whether it was learning instruments, making clothes or performing for the kids in the neighborhood. I was just a very creative little girl.”

That same self-sufficiency emerged when she started making music in high school. Uchis taught herself the basics of video directing and album cover photography, experimenting with visual and sonic identities long before she had formal industry backing. She caught the attention of major players like Snoop Dogg, Diplo and Tyler, The Creator after the release of her 2012 debut mixtape, Drunken Babble, on social media — and prompted her move to Los Angeles, where she began preparing for a career that would let her stay true to herself while reaching bigger audiences.

“I had an instant reaction to her music the first time I heard it over 10 years ago,” Wasserman’s Baxter recalls. “When I heard snippets of Drunken Babble several years before we started working together, I felt immediately like I wanted to work with her. There was no one like her. I still say there’s no one like her. She has such a singular, authentic voice.”

Uchis’ ascension to arenas, Baxter says, “is really a testament to all of the work that she’s put into her career and the relationship that she’s developed with her fans.”

Lieberberg adds, “Over the past decade, she’s built a global audience that deeply identifies with her unique voice and perspective. The success of her recent releases proved she was ready for that next stage.”

And her status today as one of America’s most bankable female Latin headliners is a remarkable turn for someone who admits how little she understood commercial expectations less than a decade ago. “When someone said to me something about my first-week sales of [my 2018 debut] Isolation, I was like, ‘What? I didn’t know that was a thing,’ ” she recalls. “I was just so naive about the music industry. I didn’t try to do anything to support the sales.” For her, Isolation’s power had nothing to do with metrics: “I traveled the world making this album and collaborating with all these amazing people like Gorillaz, Tame Impala, Bootsy Collins. I put together so many legends for my debut album. That was all that I cared about.”

“She’s a very unique and well-rounded artist with the ability to create music that connects on a global level without losing her roots,” Karol G says. “I admire her greatly because she stays true to herself, and to me, she is a figure who inspires you to believe in yourself and your own art without fear.”

This, combined with Uchis’ refusal to compromise her bilingual identity — exemplified by 2020’s Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios), her first album entirely in Spanish, and her decision to alternate between languages on subsequent albums — has propelled her journey. The industry may have been hesitant about a rising star who operated in two languages, but her fans weren’t.

“People kept telling me to stick to English, that it was easier to sell music that way,” Uchis recalls. “I’m not going to just keep making music in one language because it’s easier to sell. I’m going to do both because I can do both. I always felt that [not] utilizing everything that God gave me into my art is the same as spitting in God’s face. Why would God have made me bilingual? Why would God have made me with this duality if I wasn’t meant to project it into my art and use it to inspire other people and to create with all of this that I have?”

But Uchis never expected to crack the bilingual code this effectively. “I had a lot of doors closed in my face, and I had a lot of opportunities missed because I feel like nobody ever thought that this would get to this point,” she says. “A word that people used a lot was ‘unique.’ At the time, those aesthetics weren’t really popular. I want to say that the things that I did were always very much ahead of their time. I don’t think that people were ready for what I was doing.”

Now Uchis has arenas of fans around the world proving just how wrong those ­detractors were.

This story appears in the Oct. 11, 2025, issue of Billboard.