Camila Cabello called herself “a weirdo” when she announced her fourth solo album, and “I Luv It,” its Playboy Carti-assisted, Gucci Mane-sampling fever-dream lead single, certainly fits the bill. Zip-tie synths accompany Cabello’s breathless delivery of semi-surrealistic lines like “I go soprano/ Baby go down low/ And when he leads/ I gotta follow,” while the spat-out chorus seemed designed for maximum cortex-adherence.
The aggro, manic “I Luv It” had people wondering if the former X Factor contestant was entering her hyperpop era. While C, XOXO, which Cabello worked on with El Guincho (Rosalía) and Jasper Harris (Doja Cat), has its explode-the-world moments, the album overall feels like a gradual comedown off the opening track’s Florida-borne high as Cabello is forced by circumstance to figure things out—to the point where the shimmery “Twentysomethings,” which veers between balladry and braggadocio, pivots on her admitting, “don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”
Along the way, she indulges in pure pleasure (the loopy, giggly “Chanel No 5,” the Lil Nas X backseat romp “He Knows”); she celebrates her successes (the braggy City Girls collab “Dade County Dreaming”) and her friends (the joyously groovy “Dream-Girls”); she gets in her feelings about exes (“June Gloom,” which manages to balance syrupy funk and sulky brooding). Drake is also present on two stormy tracks about a doomed couple; he even threatens to “pull out the credit card statements” in his defense, which is an exceedingly Drake-like way of handling conflict that also proves Cabello’s protestations, on the giddily argumentative “Hot Uptown,” that he isn’t worthy of her time.
C, XOXO doesn’t quite establish Cabello as a “weirdo,” but its neon-hued chaos does indicate that she’s been allowed to run with her ideas more fully (she wrote all its lyrics and toplines, a career first that lets her stretch and warp her voice). It’s a feisty, hungry album that feels fearless even as it grapples with the unknown—the late-20s paradox turned into candy-coated pop.
We’re changing our rating system for album reviews. You can read about it here.
Jay-Z performing at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis in Paris.
Jay-Z Deserves the Super Bowl Halftime Gig
Where’s the love? Jay-Z asked that question 25 years ago, in the chorus of one of many songs in his catalog that still move audiences today. If he performs “Heart of the City” as part of his Super Bowl halftime show next February, those indignant bars are sure to be a highlight: “First the Fat Boys break up, now every day I wake up, somebody got a problem with Hov…” It would be an appropriate choice, too — because then as now, any time Jay-Z notches a new achievement, people find a way to complain.
The jokes and nonsense started almost as soon as the first rumors trickled out that Jay, whose company Roc Nation has executive-produced the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019, might be choosing himself to headline next year’s show. “Jay-Z just Dick Cheney’d himself for the Super Bowl,” Puck‘s Matthew Belloni quipped on X last week, alluding to the time that the late prince of darkness, who’d been asked to run the vice-presidential search committee for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, put himself on the ticket. (Super hip and current reference, and not at all apples-and-oranges.) Others pointed to TMZ reports that pop stars like Harry Styles and Justin Bieber had been asked first. “How are they the frontrunners, and he end up in the front?” Cam’Ron, who’s delighted in trolling Jay for many years, wondered aloud on his podcast. “Out of all the people on the roster, they couldn’t pick nobody else?” asked Cam’Ron‘s co-host, Ma$e.
These critiques miss the point, which is that Jay-Z is one of the best choices for a high-profile gig like this. He’s a superstar with a comparable level of name recognition to any other A-lister in music. He has a deep stack of classic songs going back decades. And he’s a highly skillful live performer who knows his way around a stadium stage, as he’s spent this year reminding people on his Jay-Z 30 tour. He tore down Yankee Stadium three nights in a row this summer; just last week, he rocked SoFi Stadium, which happens to be the same place where the 2027 Super Bowl is being held. He held the crowd’s attention with ease at all of those shows, and though there were plenty of glittery guests — that’s a given at a Jay show, and it will surely be true at the Super Bowl, too — he did it mostly through the force of his own magnetic energy. Let’s state the obvious here: Jay-Z is really, really good at rapping. We’re talking about one of the slickest, sharpest talkers in the history of words, someone who made it to the top through a sustained act of myth-making, then kept going. Are we seriously asking whether he can handle a 15-minute televised performance?
And yeah, there’s a touch of self-congratulation in the way he appointed himself. So what? Praising his own gifts is arguably Jay-Z’s greatest talent of all. He made a fine art out of self-applause. He told his story again and again, retracing the steps from Marcy Projects to the corner suite, and he made us believe. It would almost be insulting to the audience if he didn’t give himself the gig at some point.
Pop culture observers in recent years surely remember the backlash to Super Bowl headliners like Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny — all of it at least culturally conservative, and much of it frankly just racist. The blowback to Jay’s announcement is mostly coming from other quarters, at least for now (let’s just wait to see what the right-wing swamps make of this one). But it’s disappointing in a different way. Jay-Z has spent his career expounding hip-hop as a mainstream commercial force. He’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man. But he’s also an artist. He’s made huge amounts of money, and gotten himself into the rarefied rooms where he even has the ability to give himself a gig like this, by spinning his experiences into compelling narrative art, one verse at a time. Let’s not lose sight of how impressive his life’s work really is. Jay-Z is not some random C-suite bro, and he’s definitely not Dick Cheney. He’s one of the greatest rappers of all time, by any measure. He’s earned that Super Bowl spot.