According to reports, the press learned that Nelly Furtado’s new single is the fabulous Explode. The video was shot at Central Tech High School in Toronto and it was directed by Nelly Furtado herself.

Few details are available regarding the concept of the video, but I do know that there is a theme of a high school prom, which fits well with the fact that the song Explode came from a poem called Teenage Waste that Nelly wrote while she was a teenager.

Much of the video is also animated.

With his already immense profile swelling by the day, it was important that Paul Oakenfold came up with a seriously good record, and he did it in the shape of ‘Bunkka’.

Unsurprisingly, a plethora of guest voices litter the set, including Canadian songbird Nelly Furtado and the original Bristolian music man, Tricky, who both lend their distinctive vocal styles to the third single off the album entitled ‘The Harder They Come’.

The track is very well done and is very refreshing. ‘The Harder They Come’ should be out in stores already.

Nelly Furtado, will be featured on the Swollen Members song ‘Breath’.

In addition, the beautiful singer has also been tapped to appear in the video to be shot in coming weeks.

The video will be directed by Todd McFarlane, who is creator of the comic book Spawn, and has received awards for his credits for Pearl Jam and Korn.

Jurassic 5 DJ/producer Nu-Mark chatted with a webzine recently on why they brought in Nelly Furtado to put the chorus on ‘Thin Line’.

“What’s really cool about Nelly is that she’s the kind of girl that you’d see out at say, Rocksteady Park in New York break dancing” Nu-Mark said.

“So she kind of fits in with our whole little mould. She’s a B-girl, you know, and she rhymes. And she has a really cool voice.”

“That amazing voice of hers reminds me of a mixture of a 13-year-old kid with a woman’s voice. She has a unique voice and it doesn’t sound like a straight-up R&B singer or a straight-up pop singer. It fits perfectly.”

Nelly Furtado joined Juanes on stage on the 16th of October during the Latin rocker’s Los Angeles show at the Mayan Theatre.

The Canadian-Portuguese pop star and the Colombian singer-guitarist sang a duet of ‘Fotografia’ from his current Universal album, ‘Un Dia Normal’. The beautiful and svelte vocalistress appears on the album as well, and the pair had also performed together at the Latin Grammy Awards, where Juanes won best rock song for ‘A Dios Le Pid’.

Juanes told a webzine that taking the stage with Nelly Furtado the first time at the Latin Grammy Awards was a memorable experience. “You know, I was so happy when I was performing. She’s so beautiful like a Miss India contestant or something and she’s so talented and she sings amazingly. So, for me it was like such a beautiful experience” he said.

Juanes also disclosed that the pair might be collaborating on a song for Nelly Furtado’s next album, currently in production.

CDNow.com spoke with Jurassic 5 on their collaboration with Nelly Furtado in ‘Thin Line’, a track on the group’s forthcoming album, christened ‘Power in Numbers’, due out in good music shops on the 8th of October.

“We heard it through the grapevine that she was feeling us” J5’s Zaakir said. “It just really sounds like it’s really from each other’s soul.”

He admits that he was wary of working with the Miss India-pretty Canadian pop star though. “I didn’t think actually she would be the one for the track” he said.

“And then when we tested her out, I was just like, ‘She was perfect for it.’ So, I kind of ate my words on it.”

Nelly Furtado, who can sing in Hindi, Portugese and of course in English, needs only to flash her penetrating eyes at the camera and she’s instantly glamorous. Nelly’s current style is casual chic.

The singer traces her fashion stance back to her hip-hop teenage years. “Everyone would make their own clothes or make their own hats” Nelly explained, speaking to a reporter in a magazine article due out in October 2002, about her high school days. “I’m so thankful for my creative upbringing, and how creative my friends were”.

But Nelly is a self-professed chameleon, and she’ll ride the wave of self-expression wherever it takes her! “I want my fans to be used to change, because it’s such an important element to life” she reveals. “You can’t just cling on to something because it’s familiar”.

And finally, here’s a little something for you to tell and impress your friends. Nelly exclusively revealed that before she was famous, she and her friends once dressed as TLC for Halloween! How cute!

Nelly Furtado who first broke into the mainstreams telling everybody that she’s so much like a bird (I’m Like A Bird) has already composed much of her next LP that she hopes to finish by the fall.

Nelly, whose last hit was ‘S**t On The Radio’, recently recorded a song with The Roots, which will likely appear on their next album, and soon she’ll enter the studio with Colombian folk/alternative artist Juanes to sing a song called ‘Fotografias’ for his next album. Plus she may re-arrange her schedule to work with alternative rap group Jurassic 5 and may even collaborate with Carlos Santana on his next release.”I’ve always had an open mentality with music. Music is inanimate and beautiful. You can make anything happen as long as you’re passionate and you don’t close your mind,” said the striking and beautiful Canadian vocalist.

For months now, she’s been writing for the disc, which she says will be musically “more advanced” than ‘Whoa, Nelly!’ “It’s still going to be alternative pop music but it’s going to have a world edge to it,” she said. “It’s going to be international-sounding, and I’m going to try raising the bar. Basically, we’re just going to continue to do what we did last time, which is to not care about the outside world and just care about what we want to hear.”

In other related news, Nelly, who in the past has been touted as the thinking man’s Christina Aguilera, just loves living the single life and is convinced that Mr Right does not exist which is why she never fails to say that she has truckloads of friends. “I don’t have a steady boyfriend. I don’t need one and it’s empowering for me to say it. Girls focus too much on this idea of Prince Charming. It’s so negative, especially when you are really young.”

Visit Nelly’s Official website at: www.nellyfurtado.com