Camila Cabello has been famous since she was 15, when she auditioned for The X Factor in a secret plot to meet Harry Styles. The plan succeeded beyond the Cuban-Mexican Floridian’s dreams when she was drafted into Fifth Harmony, the American successor to Styles’s One Direction. We watched her leave the group and prove she could carry an album (2018’s Camila) by herself; we winced at effusive public displays of affection with her talented, elven ex Shawn Mendes. Every youthful triumph and mishap is a matter of public record.
In her solo career, Cabello has made incredible strides as a singer while minding the flow of the charts with almost nagging care, delivering bubbly dance-pop bops, warm acoustic tunes, and brassy reggaeton and trap jams with pointed pop-circuit tastefulness. The hit train nearly crashed on 2022’s Familia, an admirable attempt to showcase a wider palette; while its Ed Sheeran team-up “Bam Bam†cruised to platinum sales internationally, the bilingual album struggled to find solid footing. Having called it quits with Mendes (again) last year, Cabello, now 27, blew into 2024 noisily signaling change via a platinum dye job and “I Luv It,†a lead single starring Atlanta rapper Playboi Carti that interpolates Gucci Mane’s 2009 hit “Lemonade†(and whose chorus resembles Charli XCX’s “Unlock it†and “I Got It,†and whose video stages a gas-station dance routine reminiscent of RosalÃa’s “Saokoâ€). The catchy collage was a taste of the sounds and themes of Cabello’s fourth studio album C,XOXO, a mercenary exercise in cool-hunting that’s her best to date. But the aggressiveness of the pivot is jarring, and the timing seems cursed.
Speaking to Zane Lowe in March, Cabello described XOXO as representing her “hyper-femme villain arc,†conveying the album’s interest in broadcasting a yearning sensuality and incalculable crassness. She is now surrounded by hip-hop and R&B collaborators, notable because the first two albums only featured one rapper apiece, and each one — Camila’s “Havana†with Young Thug and “My Oh My†with DaBaby from 2019’s Romance — was a huge hit. On XOXO, Lil Nas X and the City Girls appear, and Drake gets two songs back to back. PinkPantheress and BLP Kosher appear in interludes, and Future, Pitbull, and The-Dream are sampled. Cabello is reintroducing herself by leaning into sounds that proved successful in the past and dabbling in alt aesthetics, smartly seeking out Spanish auteur El Guincho for production. She’s largely writing lyrics without calling a cadre of co-writers, guest stars notwithstanding. Guincho, who has worked with RosalÃa, Charli, and Sampha, and rising Los Angeles utility player Jasper Harris (Carti’s “Vamp Anthem,†¥$’s “Vulturesâ€) serve deliciously warped, often sample-based tracks for Cabello to emote about figuring out what she wants. Indecisiveness is a theme both accidentally and on purpose: These odes to on-again, off-again romances work overtime to decide what kind of pop star Camila should be from now on. At its best, XOXO drifts between self-certainty and capriciousness, loving and hurting its way to maturity. But Cabello’s natural instincts to fit in can undermine attempts to stand out.
It’s an ambitious vision board. XOXO is gunning for left-of-the-dial sonics while exerting the careful brashness and raunchiness of pop stars who’ve used urban contemporary hits to complicate their images, like the Mouseketeer trinity of Britney Spears’s Britney, Christina Aguilera’s Stripped, and Justin Timberlake’s Justified, or Zayn Malik’s “Pillowtalk†and Justin Bieber’s Journals. “Chanel No.5†skates over a fluttering piano line, rattling off gorgeous vocal runs tethered to labored turns of phrase — “Subtle and complex like umami / Up to me like omakase / I’m a wild horse and nobody’s got meâ€Â — wedged between the designer flexing of RosalÃa’s “LA COMBI VERSACE†and the performative saber rattling of Taylor Swift’s Reputation era. Swift’s major-key melodies and wordy verses seemed like influences on Camila’s “Into It†and Romance’s “First Manâ€; XOXO’s “Twentysomethings†nails Midnights’ self-deprecating R&B/pop, and the maudlin “B.O.A.T.†and “June Gloom†take after “New Year’s Day.†Elsewhere, the album catches Drake in dancehall and R&B modes: The brisk “Hot Uptown†is a scorcher the duo should’ve hashed out five years ago, and “Uuugly†is an update on the freeform oversharing of his early-career deep cuts like Thank Me Later’s “Cece’s Interlude.†It’s compelling stuff, but ceding five minutes of the album to another artist adds to the sense that Camila is savvily curating pre-existing vibes and bolstering chart placements rather than resolving to follow her own compass. This strategy often works out. “He Knows†stars Lil Nas X, who steals the show by telling a guy where to finish. The song, which samples Ojerime’s “Give It Up 2 Me,†enters a marketplace rife with sample-based hip-house jams: Coi Leray’s “Make My Day,†a flip of Technotronic’s “Pump Up the Jam,†and Nicki Minaj’s Junior-Senior-but-Jersey-club track “Everybody.†Here, the sample drifts in the background fleshing out Camila’s writing without overtaking her choruses.
XOXO is that friend you haven’t seen in some time making absolutely certain you know they’re keeping up with current events. But no one could predict the tumultuous year its guests have had. “Dade County Dreaming,†a spirited nod to Miami strip-club music past and present, is looking like the final song that will feature both City Girls. (JT and Yung Miami spent months feuding before the latter confirmed the end of the group in June.) The war with Kendrick Lamar, which exploded over the spring, makes “Hot Uptown†and “Uuugly†the first new songs from the OVO Sound co-founder after Lamar doubled down on calling him a “certified pedophile†in a Los Angeles arena on Juneteenth. Mass curiosity about Drake’s next move will work in Cabello’s favor, but some see the return of dancehall Drake as an act of retreat in spite of the thermonuclear hit potential of “Uptown.†“DREAM-GIRLS†outlines what feels like a central theme about constant change being a function of growth over a breezy urbano take on “Shawty Is Da Shit†by The-Dream. The month of release, the veteran singer-songwriter and producer was sued by a woman who says she met him when she was 23 and alleges horrific sexual assault and trafficking. Playboi Carti, star of XOXO’s lead single, was arrested for allegedly choking his pregnant girlfriend back in February 2023. Crowding Cabello’s dazzling vocal performances and verses about agency and empowerment with men’s concerning track records paints a picture of a dalliance in R&B cool and southern-rap defiance unintentionally overachieving in its signified rulebreaking. Cruising through the rollout without addressing much controversy challenges XOXO’s feigned edginess. Doja Cat would’ve just told everyone to fuck off.
Despite its air of pastiche and deeply chaotic rollout, XOXO documents chameleonic talents. Camila disappears into a performance, jumping around octaves and shifting tone and delivery. She dips into the Auto-Tuned warble of Future’s “Married to the Game†at the top of “Chanel No.5,†matches the creampuff delicacy of PinkPantheress’s voice on “pink xoxo,†then complements Lil Nax X’s croon on “He Knows.†XOXO is just trying to offer something fun for the summertime, a bubbly batch of beats from producers who deserve to be making more pop music, and a restructuring of Camila’s gifts around songs that are tighter as a collection than the rest of the solo catalogue. Racing through the runs in “Hot Uptown,†you stop counting how many times you’ve heard a version of the track. Auto-Tuned Swiftisms soaring over a piece of Pitbull’s “Hotel Room Service†in “B.O.A.T.†entice despite feeling like the Reputation star commandeering Future’s vocal-processing chain on “End Game.â€
XOXO is, just like the career that birthed it, a blast until it isn’t, a joy until a shaky idea knocks it off course, eventually subsumed by a slick rebound. It’s difficult to buy into the authenticity of this alt-pop and hip-hop revamp but just as much so to get very hung up on it. XOXO isn’t innovating, but that has never been Camila’s ministry. She continues to deliver fierce vocals and tender tunes about getting your shit together with the occasional side of questionable judgment. And while there’s the sense that XOXO would even try death metal if that’s what was popping on Billboard charts in 2024, the shiftless, calculated core of the 20-something experience is getting in wherever you fit in.