It’s a sunny Might afternoon in Miami’s lush Coral Gables neighborhood, and Camila Cabello greets me at her household’s one-story residence accompanied by a small menagerie: 4 canine — together with her golden retriever, Tarzan, and German shepherd, Thunder — alongside together with her rescued cockatoo, Percy.
Cabello is residence “to recharge” amid a busy few days that included time in California and can quickly take her to New York for the Met Gala. However right now, together with her messy pigtails, Daisy Duke shorts and silver flip-flops, Cabello appears to be like extra like a school woman on break than a serious pop star about to launch her fourth solo album — a fearless creative assertion coming June 28 titled C,XOXO. Her father washes the driveway, her mom provides me cafecito, and her aunt performs with the canine.
Cabello will obtain the International Impression award at Billboard’s Latin Ladies in Music, produced by and airing on Telemundo on June 9.
“Let’s go to lunch — I’ll drive!” Cabello exclaims as she grabs her tote. The 27-year-old obtained her license simply two years in the past and discovered to drive through the pandemic; as we hop into her white Tesla — nicknamed “Tessie” — she admits that getting behind the wheel (with an excellent album or podcast on the stereo) is her favourite type of stress reduction. She takes us to Pura Vida, certainly one of her favourite native well being spots, the place we sit down outdoors with summer time hen bowls. “Woman, it’s this Met Gala developing… I can’t wait to stuff my face after,” she jokes.
Together with her nonetheless pretty new platinum blonde tresses (a contemporary ’do she debuted on social media in February), Cabello largely goes incognito; some passersby appear to acknowledge her however are maybe too shy to method. Only one screams, “Camila, I like you!” — a reminder that whereas Cabello may periodically crash at her dad and mom’ home, she’s nonetheless a worldwide celebrity. However whereas she jokes that her new look has the facet good thing about granting her some anonymity in public, she explains that it has a deeper which means.
“The voice that I discovered with my new album has this large baddie vitality vibe,” she explains animatedly. “A part of that spirit is taking dangers, not giving a f–ok and doing no matter you need. I feel the blonde was me staying true to that feeling. With the hair, it was like, ‘How do I inform folks, visually, that that is my new period?’ Generally you want the physicality to allow them to know, ‘Oh, it is a new factor, a brand new character.’ ”
CD1974 courtesy of Retail Pharmacy prime, SHAY earrings and rings.
Erica Hernández
On March 27, Cabello unleashed the primary style of what C,XOXO may deliver: the Playboi Carti-featuring “I Luv It,” co-produced by Spanish hit-maker El Guincho (Rosalía) and Jasper Harris (Jack Harlow, Doja Cat). “I Luv It” samples Gucci Mane (“Lemonade”), interpolates a 2011 Rihanna loosie (“Cockiness [Love It]”) — and has a hyperpop aesthetic that marked a big departure from the extra standard pop (and extra lately Latin-influenced) sound that made Cabello a family identify, first as a member of Fifth Concord, then as a solo artist.
The surprising observe was additionally important for an additional purpose: It was Cabello’s first Interscope Information launch after leaving Epic Information, her label residence of almost a decade the place she had been since Fifth Concord’s debut and launched her first three solo albums — Camila, Romance and Familia — between 2018 and 2022.
Reactions to “I Luv It” on social media had been combined, and the music debuted and peaked at No. 81 on the Billboard Scorching 100. Nonetheless, the music (and its considerably unhinged vibes) piqued curiosity in Cabello’s subsequent musical chapter. “The unpredictability of it’s so totally different for me,” she says. “It’s such a kick-the-door-down second, sonically, that it makes me really feel sturdy and highly effective. A minimum of for me, on this stage of my life, it will really feel so unfulfilling to simply have a music that was large however felt like one thing that I’ve already achieved earlier than. That brings me no pleasure. I’d relatively have a music that’s bizarre and be new territory to me.”
Whereas the strangeness of “I Luv It” encapsulates Cabello’s new period, it was a unique observe that actually set the tone for the C,XOXO periods. “At first, we performed round with totally different genres, looking for the sonic world the album lives in,” she explains. “ ‘Chanel No. 5’ actually cracked open the album. For me, as a author, that was the voice I wished for the album: coy, cheeky and sort of devious.”
Gucci jacket, SHAY earrings, Harlot Arms rings.
Erica Hernández
On “Chanel No. 5,” Cabello sings between trippy piano interludes, her falsetto distorted, about being a “cute woman with a sick thoughts.” At one level she even raps — she has lately taken inspiration from “c–ty, cocky woman rap” like Flo Milli and Child Tate, she explains.
“We realized we hit this key transition within the course of,” says Harris, who co-produced the album, of the observe. “That’s the primary music we knew was very C,XOXO, and creating each music ahead, we might ask if it felt as true as ‘Chanel.’ It was our north star.” (“Chanel No. 5” can be launched pre-album drop as a fan observe.)
Cabello, El Guincho and Harris devoted most of 2023 to engaged on the album — in New York, Los Angeles and the Bahamas however primarily Miami — and alongside the best way, she had one other artistic epiphany: Her earlier units all had a why, a when and a who at their middle, however by no means a the place. C,XOXO would: It’s a love letter to Miami.
Cabello wasn’t all the time a Miami woman, however her journey right here — a metropolis stuffed with sounds and tradition enriched by immigrants — was a giant a part of what in the end made her one.
Born in Havana, Cuba, she moved to Mexico Metropolis together with her dad and mom at age 6 and in the end arrived in Miami together with her mom (her father joined nearly two years later). Her mother, who had been an architect in Cuba, labored within the shoe division at Marshalls; her dad washed automobiles at Dolphin Mall. Immediately, they run a profitable contracting firm known as Soka Development (named after Camila and her youthful sister, Sofia).
In ninth grade, Cabello auditioned for The X Issue, the place she finally joined contestants Ally Brooke, Normani, Lauren Jauregui and Dinah Jane to type Fifth Concord. With Cabello within the fold, the woman group — one of the vital commercially profitable ever — went platinum with its first two albums, in 2015 and 2016, and notched a prime 5 Scorching 100 hit with the Ty Dolla $ign-featuring “Work From Residence.”
Erica Hernández
Amid Fifth Concord’s success, Cabello began exploring alternatives outdoors the group. In 2015, she teamed with Shawn Mendes for “I Know What You Did Final Summer season,” which cracked the highest 20 of the Scorching 100; the next 12 months, she launched “Unhealthy Issues” with Machine Gun Kelly, which went to No. 4. In December 2016, Fifth Concord introduced Cabello’s departure from the group on social media. “After 4 and a half years of being collectively, we’ve been knowledgeable by way of her representatives that Camila has determined to go away Fifth Concord,” the opposite 4 members acknowledged. “We want her nicely.”
Cabello rapidly flourished on her personal: Her first three solo albums all reached the highest 10 of the Billboard 200, and he or she has logged 21 Scorching 100 entries as a solo artist, plus picked up two Latin Grammys. All of the whereas, she continued notching star collaborations, like “Hey Ma,” an early-2017 teamup with Pitbull and J Balvin from the Destiny of the Livid soundtrack. However her solo profession actually took off in August of that 12 months with the Younger Thug-featuring “Havana,” which climbed to No. 1 on the Scorching 100 the next January. Her second Scorching 100 chart-topper adopted two years later: the steamy duet “Señorita” alongside Mendes, with whom she was in a much-photographed, two-year relationship.
Nonetheless, Cabello hasn’t but delivered her lasting, full-length assertion — the one which strongly defines her artistic ethos and is totally her personal. Her newest album, 2022’s Familia, scored a prime 40 hit with the Ed Sheeran-featuring “Bam Bam,” nevertheless it was Cabello’s lowest-charting solo challenge. (Her function movie Cinderella the earlier 12 months — a splashy starring function that would’ve additional boosted her profile — obtained, at greatest, middling critiques.) In September 2022, Cabello left Epic to signal with Interscope — residence to younger stars like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo, who’ve change into a number of the greatest names in pop music by unapologetically establishing sturdy musical identities. With C,XOXO, Cabello is poised to probably do the identical.
“This was the primary time she had the possibility to determine on her personal document label,” says Cabello’s longtime supervisor, Roger Gold of Gold Music Administration. “[Epic was] fantastic and tremendous supportive, however there’s a distinction between being signed to a label with out your personal choice course of and making choices after which actually getting to do this for the primary time. It was a giant deal for her to search out individuals who deeply wished to work together with her, revered her and understood her. [Interscope] really makes us really feel like we’re the one artist on the label typically.”
“She’s the sort of artist who doesn’t compromise,” says Michelle An, Interscope Geffen A&M president and head of artistic technique. “It seemed like Camila wished a label group that actually will get into the weeds of all the pieces. What are the large appears to be like with the [digital service provider] companions? What’s the technique with radio? How are we implementing it internationally? She’s the boss of the boardroom, and she will inform us how she feels and the way she desires to market. She’s actually embracing the truth that she has a giant group that operates like a boutique.”
No Sesso costume, SHAY earrings.
Erica Hernández
That stage of label help, Gold says, allowed Cabello to deal with C,XOXO because the sort of artistic departure she had by no means explored earlier than. “She’s feeling very assured in her womanhood, proudly owning her personal energy,” he says, “and feeling like that is her time to bravely say the issues she desires to say.” It might have been a sonic jolt and, to some followers, an outlier, however “I Luv It” was no crimson herring.
On C,XOXO, Cabello’s musical hallmarks stay — her hypnotic falsetto, her weak ballads, her heartfelt songwriting — however in a wholly totally different sonic context that now blends hip-hop, Afrobeats, R&B, reggaetón and digital music. They’re the sounds of Miami itself, vividly evoking the scenes of town: driving previous the golf equipment on Collins Avenue in Miami Seaside or by means of bustling, artsy Wynwood on a busy weekend.
“A lot of the inspiration for this album was driving, listening to music, rolling the home windows down and listening to what folks within the metropolis are listening to,” Cabello says. “The voice she was utilizing as a author felt very very like town itself,” El Guincho provides. “I believed it was a really attention-grabbing angle to have Camila signify her metropolis strongly in a pop album context, that are normally very displaced and decentralized.”
As a result of the album was made nearly totally in Miami, Cabello says she seemed on the metropolis “with binoculars and extra-close consideration. Sonically, it feels prefer it’s a Miami artwork piece.” For her palette, Cabello drew on a various group of collaborators so as to add distinctive colours, together with Carti, Lil Nas X, The-Dream, fellow Floridians Metropolis Ladies and BLP Kosher — and, most notably, Drake. That much-discussed (and paparazzi-snapped) jet ski journey Drake and Cabello took within the Turks and Caicos Islands final 12 months? They had been ending up a observe collectively.
“He’s the f–king GOAT, so it felt like taking pictures for the celebs,” Cabello recollects of initially approaching the Canadian rapper by sliding into his Instagram DMs. “I confirmed him the album once I felt snug sufficient and he actually appreciated it. [The feature] got here out of a nontransactional place. He had this concept of a music known as ‘Scorching Uptown,’ and it simply felt like I used to be within the metropolis. I used to be in Miami.”
ABLONDI costume
Erica Hernández
The flirtatious, Caribbean-infused observe (which till their Turks meetup was, in accordance with Harris, the one album minimize created with a distant collaborator) isn’t Drake’s solely C,XOXO look. On the almost two-minute-long interlude “Uuugly,” sequenced instantly after “Scorching Uptown,” he sings over comfortable synth beats and Cabello’s ghostly backing vocals. In keeping with Harris, the interlude was Drake’s concept: “He wished to do yet one more factor for the album.”
“Why does he have his personal music? As a result of selfishly, I simply need to hear Drake alone album,” Cabello says with fun. “I like that for me — it’s like that rebellious temper. Who says I can’t try this? It’s Drake speaking his sh-t.”
One other ballsy transfer for Cabello: That is the primary time she has written all her lyrics and lyrical melodies for an album, taking full duty for the concepts and ideas behind them. “She’s quick, curious, has nice instincts for melody, is robust together with her opinions but additionally open for them to be challenged. She’s just about a freestyler with nice first takes,” El Guincho says. The producer “actually believed in me to tackle the writing,” Cabello says. “That felt good and vital to me. It makes me really feel totally different when the entire physique of labor is purer, my ideas and my style in phrases. I feel that’s why it sounds so cohesive, as a result of it actually appears like me.”
Immediately, at Pura Vida, Cabello pulls out her cellphone and opens a Pinterest board she created final fall. It has film stills from Spring Breakers, women carrying balaclava masks, lengthy manicured nails, BMX bikes, images of town at night time — all conjuring the quintessential DGAF Miami woman vitality that Cabello telegraphs on the duvet of C,XOXO, which options the sweaty-haired star with closely mascaraed, just-out-the-club lashes, licking an electrical blue lollipop, her tongue stained with its fluorescent shade.
“She had particular recollections of Miami and rising up there,” An says. “She described driving by means of the tunnels, with [their] very particular yellow lighting that you just don’t see wherever else. She described a particular hue of blue on the seashores and was targeted on blue hour. The blonde hair was additionally a giant deal. The celebration tradition. She spent plenty of time making an attempt to get us to know the visible world of Miami.”
Erica Hernández
As she honed the album’s voice and imaginative and prescient, Cabello began dressing in another way, all the time carrying lip gloss, absolutely embracing her daring new persona. “It was vital for me on this album to really feel that approach,” she explains. “Pop music is so uncomplicated — it’s very one-toned. In a bizarre approach, this album exhibits these chaotic, typically poisonous eventualities, and I feel we as people are like that — we’re messy, sophisticated, tremendous twisted.”
“There’s lots of people that need you to be formulaic on this enterprise,” Gold says. “There’s stress basically to not rock the boat an excessive amount of: If one thing isn’t damaged, don’t repair it. Camila isn’t that sort of artist.”
With C,XOXO completed, Cabello has a while to unwind and give attention to herself. She lastly began watching Breaking Unhealthy; she’s presently into chilly plunges; and he or she’s maximizing the time that she spends in chancletas (flip-flops).
“It’s once I really feel the freest. I simply need my toes to be free,” she confesses with a smirk. “I hate heels, I hate sneakers, I simply need to be in chancletas on a regular basis. That is really the primary time that I’ve gone to an interview in chancletas, and I really feel that this album has given me the permission to do this.”
C,XOXO additionally allowed her to embrace her private relationships. Merely having the ability to hang around together with her mates at residence enriched the artistic course of, she says: “That vitality of being with your folks and that woman gang vibe felt so sick to me.”
That vibe significantly comes by means of on “Dade County Dreaming,” the ultimate observe she recorded for C,XOXO. Impressed by its namesake county, the collaboration with Miami hip-hop duo Metropolis Ladies (who Cabello related with by means of her sound engineer) captures the essence of each the album and who Cabello is right now: a metropolis woman herself, having enjoyable and residing life. The hard-hitting observe — with its ’90s freestyle undertones, haunting piano traces and geographic identify drops — was, Cabello says, “the lacking piece on the album [because] Metropolis Ladies signify Miami so exhausting.”
Erica Hernández
Simply weeks forward of releasing C,XOXO, Cabello tells me she doesn’t have any expectations. “Many issues can occur, and they’re out of my management,” she says. However she’s able to face the suggestions with the readability and maturity she has cultivated within the 12 years since her Fifth Concord debut.
“[When I was starting out], I want I knew that not all people goes to love me, and it has nothing to do with me,” she admits. “That affected me loads at first. Whenever you’re that younger all you need is acceptance and love, and you’ll’t perceive when folks don’t such as you. You are taking it so personally, and it makes you are feeling such as you’re doing one thing improper. When you become old, you understand that individuals’s reactions don’t have anything to do with you, and also you don’t must take it so personally and be affected by it. I’m far more at peace with it right now.”
On an odd day, she’ll go to the seashore, learn a guide, invite her mates to her condominium in Sunny Isles for dinner, sip a Bacardi and glowing water, placed on a cute outfit and go dancing at Swan, a classy Euro-style spot within the luxurious Miami Design District, or Soiled Rabbit, an edgy Wynwood dance membership. After an evening out, she’ll make a compulsory cease on the 24-hour Pinecrest Bakery for some croquetas. Even when she’s drained, she pushes herself to exit and gained’t maintain again from dancing with a cute man if she feels a vibe. “I’m residing the Intercourse and the Metropolis life, however Miami,” she says with fun. However actually, it’s the C,XOXO life.
“To me, it’s about going out extra, going to extra events and simply being a bit extra fearless and rebellious,” she muses. “Earlier than, I’d exit and never care about what I seemed like. If I felt sort of ugly, it was no matter — however now, I all the time need to really feel fairly for myself. It’s about actually having fun with life, and I all the time suppose to myself, that’s what sensuality is all about. It’s a sensory factor: having fun with the meals you eat, having fun with placing on just a few outfits within the mirror, having fun with the senses of being alive. It’s about taking in that baddie vitality.”
This story will seem within the June 1, 2024, situation of Billboard.