Camila Cabello on Friday released her fourth studio album, C,XOXO, which she likens to a coming-of-age story.
"It felt like this exploration of girlhood into womanhood," she said in an interview.
And that journey yielded tracks that are dramatically different from hits like "Havana" and "Seiħorita."
"I feel like the inauthentic thing to do would be to give the public what you know is gonna work for you, or what they're already expecting from you," she said. "That's the easy way to keep going like, 'Oh, you like 'Havana,' I'll give you five more of those.'"
"But, it's so much more risky and comes from a place of artistic integrity to be like, 'Well, I'm actually going to depart from the thing that everybody knows and likes about me in order to try things and experiment and evolve as an artist,'"she added.
That artistic integrity led her to contact Drake for constructive criticism, which culminated in a collaboration on this album.
Lil Nas X also makes an appearance in "He Knows," the record's fourth song.
"The artists of my dreams are on my album," Cabello said on Facebook.
In a separate post that she shared ahead of C,XOXO'S release, Cabello described her latest project as "a side of me I like living in."
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"C,XOXO is pink and blue ski masks, never being without lip gloss, coming alive during blue hour, long nails and eyeliner sharp enough to kill a man, crying with your makeup on and texting pics to your friends," Cabello said. "It's bikinis under t-shirts, it's sticky hair at dinner after the beach, it's tan lines and white wine with your girls..."