"Caribbean Tokyo": Trailer for Camila Cabello's New Album Is Very Miami

If you've seen someone with bleach-blonde hair with her roots growing out à la mid-'90s Gwen Stefani running around Miami lately, it's probably pop star Camila Cabello. She's been popping up at highly visible events like Miami Heat games and the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix. This is not just because Cabello is having a fun time — I mean, she is, but she's also out there reminding everyone she exists because girlie has a new album cycle on the way.

Oh, sorry, in Gen-Z lingo: she's giving us a new era — yas queen, mothering, slay, or whatever else you kids say.

Cabello will release her fourth album, C,XOXO, on June 28. It's her first album after departing Sony Music-owned Epic Records and signing to Universal Music Group's Interscope Records. She first teased the project with the single "I Luv It," featuring Playboi Carti. Released in March, it marked a radical departure for Cabello, who has been more of your traditional pop vocalist, into something more avant-pop that's more akin to acts like Rosalía and Charli XCX.

Her primary collaborators on C,XOXO are producers El Guincho, who is best known for producing Rosalía's albums Motomami and El Mal Querer, and Jasper Harris, who has worked with Kendrick Lamar, Post Malone, and Lil Nas X.
In addition to her new sound, Cabello is also exploring an aesthetic that feels more 2010s Tumblr "it" girl — a radical departure from her more manufactured pop star look. Her hometown of Miami also plays a big part in her current visual tableau, and nowhere is that clearer than in the trailer she released on Thursday for C,XOXO.

"She likes to drive with the windows down so she can hear what the city is saying," Cabello narrates in the trailer. "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 and the First World — Caribbean Tokyo."

If it's not clear to you, she's talking about Miami, which she's repeatedly said in interviews was her primary source of inspiration on C,XOXO. (Also, as someone who's been to Tokyo, I feel like Miami has a long way to go before it can earn comparisons to the Japanese megacity — but that's just me.)

"It's such a common story for kids from Miami. It's like you have one foot in the door of your parents' homeland and your family's culture, and then this really interesting combination of another foot in the room of America and American culture — and Miami makes that a very unique subculture," Cabello told The Forty-Five's Celia Almeida in an interview explaining her musical evolution, with Almeida describing C,XOXO as an "homage to the music those same kids blast in their cars on joy rides to the beach with their friends when they hit their teens and early 20s."

Today, Cabello released her second single off C,XOXO, "He Knows," featuring Lil Nas X. There were rumors that Cabello's next single was supposed to be her collaboration with Drake, but its release was scrapped due to his beef with Kendrick Lamar.