Camilla Cabello has played a few different girls in her career. As a member of the X Factor\–forged girl group Fifth Harmony, she stood out to the show’s judges as an accessible, all-American pop star—so much so that after four years, she opted to embark on a solo career in 2016. In early releases like “Havana” and “Señorita,” the Cuban-born singer served up a 21st-century Carmen Miranda fantasy, seemingly geared to anglophone consumers.
Cabello dug deeper into her heritage in her 2022 album, Familia. Yet the vulnerable ballads of a dutiful immigrant daughter weren’t only about her own identity but her relationship to Latino culture more broadly. In songs like “Lola,” she contemplated a parallel universe in which her parents never left Cuba and Mexico to pursue greater ambitions.
In the lead-up to her new album, C, XOXO, Cabello broke things off with her longtime flame, Shawn Mendes, and ditched Los Angeles for the city that raised her: Miami. She then called on star producers El Guincho and Jasper Harris to help assemble an edgier sonic vibe for her, inspired by the hip-hop sounds she grew up with. Fusing her tracks with Jersey club (“I Luv It” with Playboi Carti), reggaeton (“Dream Girls”), and Afrobeat (“He Knows” with Lil Nas X), Cabello emerged with an eclectic record that mirrors the melting-pot quality of the Magic City.
Cabello’s Miami is a neon-flecked fever dream that she affectionately nicknames “Caribbean Tokyo.” Directed and shot by Rahul Bhatt, the album’s video trailer follows the metallic-bikini-clad pop star as she cruises the MacArthur Causeway in a muscle car and stalks the beach with friends in matching pink balaclavas. It’s Harmony Korine’s 2012 cult classic Spring Breakers à la Sofia Coppola—a consummate work of Miami sleaze.
“She likes to drive with the windows down / So she can hear what the city’s saying at night,” Cabello intones over hypnagogic whirrs of synth. “She likes its broken English / Its all-over-the-place music taste / She likes seeing the neon colors of the Caribbean / And the backdrop of Teslas and skyscrapers in the first world.”
The lowbrow romance of growing up in Miami is all over C, XOXO. Cabello teased her album by taking over a skate park as well as the South Miami 7-Eleven that my friends and I loitered at after-school in the 2000s. She’s glamorized feminine mundanities particular to the city, like freshly airbrushed baby tees sold at the city’s Youth Fair or bottle blonde locks blunted by the city’s organic blend of heat, humidity, and sea spray. In contrast to the harried, crime-fueled Miami that people know from Hollywood blockbusters like the Bad Boys and Fast & Furious franchises, Cabello lets listeners unwind to ambient party-girl chatter in the interlude “305 ‘Till I Die.”
Yet on C, XOXO, Cabello’s paean to Miami falls short on representing its unique hip-hop legacy. There is a glaring omission of Miami bass, the regional sound, accented by brisk 808 beats, that cemented the city as a hip-hop destination. The only emcees from the 305 to make the cut are J.T. and Yung Miami, the artists formerly known as City Girls. Still, they make a rousing pep squad in “Dade County Dreaming,” a dusky anthem for club-hoppers stumbling down Collins Avenue, clutching their stilettos and sniffing out the next good party. Like a typical late night out at the beach, the chaos unravels into a deeply intoxicated outro, in which Cabello slurs, “Orange skies, I’m never leavin’” over a telenovela-grade piano outro.
This dramatic turn sets the scene for Drake, hip-hop’s villain du jour, to menace the record with his Toronto patois on the bouncy song “Hot Uptown,” followed by his breakdown, “Uuugly.” (At this point in C, XOXO, it became clear to me that this was the hip-hop that Cabello, 27, grew up with; I concede that Trina is for those of us who actually remember the ’90s.)
The lasting impact of a career detour like C, XOXO is best measured not by Cabello’s musical tastes or technical chops but by the sincerity with which she depicts her hometown. Even at their most schmaltzy, her cinematic moments of brooding and subsequent post-party clarity make for her most mature record yet. “For all the girls that are learning to be women now / Know we keep it sexy while we figure it out,” she sings to her fellow 20-somethings, but even more to herself.
At her core, Cabello really is a classic Miami girl: ambling out of a club toward her cab at dawn, heels in hand, wondering who she’ll become next.