There are many surprising elements to Camila Cabello‘stransitional fourth LP, “C,XOXO.” After dominating pop radio as a solo act with “Señorita” and “Havana,” Cabello’s new effort has her testing new territories that range from glitchy hyper-pop to trap-imbued club tracks.
One of the most defining factors of the album has been its features: JT and Yung Miami (who have since called it quits as “the City Girls“) on “Dade County Dreaming”; PinkPantheress on “Pink xoxo”; Playboi Carti on the album’s lead single “I Luv It;” andLil Nas X on the sultry “He Knows,” among others. Most striking of all are the pair of Drake features — “Hot Uptown” and “Uuugly” — that arrive in the throes of his loss toKendrick Lamar.
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After the pair unleashed a string of diss tracks on each other, Drake and Lamar’s beef completely took over the zeitgeist, leading Lamar to notch a No. 1 record and a monumental showing in Los Angeles’ Kia Forum arena. Drake’s feature on Cabello’s album is his first since “The Heart Part 6.”
In an interview with The Times, Cabello lightly addressed Drake and Lamar’s contention, defending Drake against the public slander that has followed him for the last few months.
“He is such a delight,” she told the publication. “It’s so frustrating to see people talk about someone you know in a way that is negative. You’re like, ‘Dang, if only you guys could just have dinner or something.’”
Cabello also detailed how the collaboration came to be, saying she got in touch with Drake by sliding into his DMs. “It’s like a weird teenage thing where I feel that nobody cares about me or likes me. And it was fun to be proven wrong,” she said.
Cabello also recently told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe they split the songs into two “because he didn’t really need to give me an outro, but for me, it’s like I don’t want to hear a song like ‘Hot Uptown’ and then have it go into this one minute thing where he is talking his shit, so we decided to just make it another song.”
