Coco Jones Pays Tribute to Black Women: ‘We Thrive Through the Most Unfair Odds’

Coco Jones’s debut album, Why Not More?, dropped last Friday, inviting listeners into a seductive yet smart, 14-track journey through the emotional chaos of love. It’s the type of R&B fanfare Team Coco has come to expect, having already danced with the musical songbird through her certified-platinum 2022 EP What I Didn’t Tell You, which earned her a Best R&B Performance Grammy for the single “ICU.” Three years later, the 27-year-old is ready for more, as her album title suggests, especially when it comes to playing with genres. From the reggae-inspired title track featuring YG Marley, to her hip-hop single “Most Beautiful Design” produced by London On Da Track and featuring Future, Jones’s musical range is on full display. But she remains humble as she reflects on her latest work. The moment she first listened to the project all the way through, while prepping for her album release party, it felt “surreal,” she says.

“ It’s really tangibly in the world, and not just on my notes app,” Jones told ELLE.com during a quick break from her intense tour rehearsal schedule (her first show is on May 6 in Philadelphia), “It was just very, very freeing.”

Why Not More?’s vulnerable storytelling is the perfect life-soundtrack for the modern-day emotional baddie: It captures being caught up in the throes of romantic angst, healing, sensuality, and BDE. (She boasts on the first track, “Keep It Quiet,” “I pop shit too. I got a big ego.”) The album also touches on the hell of situationships and how toxic patterns can hide real pain. “It’s all kind of a mask to not get hurt, and the fear of being vulnerable and then looking stupid,” she adds. Jones says her lyrics—like “even though a tough girl needs loving” on “Thang4U” or “you always outside take you ass back home” on the Lenny Williams-inspired “Here We Go (Uh Oh)”—reflect the multifaceted reality of being a woman: knowing when to move with softness, and when to hit with grit.

“ You gotta know where you’re at, and which side of yourself makes sense,” she says. “I can’t be popping off with my best friends. … But at work, you gotta know who I am, and don’t play with it. It’s just the environment that requires you to tap into your boss shit. Then, there are times where you need to be more soft.”

From Jones’s perspective, personal power isn’t just reserved for corner offices and label meetings, but also in how you allow yourself to be treated in relationships. “ I think one of the biggest moments where you boss up is in your boundaries,” she explains. “I’m not just gonna take anything, You are not gonna be able to treat me any type of way. You might have to remind somebody who you is.”

On the album, the wedding-song themed anthem “The Other Side of Love” conjures up more of the singer’s tender side, as the track waltzes through themes of selflessness, patience, and the communication required to make love long-lasting. The four-year-old track is actually the oldest song of the album, Jones reveals.

“It was definitely one of the first songs I ever made when I got signed to High Standards/ Def Jam. And I guess the other side of love is the growth that happens through it. If you really love somebody, there’s so much forgiveness involved.”

Jones’s milestone album release comes after years of putting the work in—from being a beloved Disney kid to a breaking out on Peacock’s Bel-Air (she reprises the classic role of Hilary Banks). Her self-assuredness and steely confidence were not won overnight. In fact, the Tennessee native said her childhood exposure to the cruel realities of Hollywood made her develop a thick skin early on. When asked whether she resonates with Keke Palmer’s experiences of being pigeonholed as “the Black girl of Nickelodeon,” Jones replies, “ I think that for me, I felt a little bit more of the colorism of it all. … There was like, a beauty value system, and I was on the lower tier.”

She adds, “ I’m not gonna act like it wasn’t challenging, but I think the thing that I love most about Black women is that we thrive through the most unfair odds. We’re kind of magic in a way. The things that we accomplish in the midst of unfairness; it’s jaw-dropping.”

Jones says weathering through life’s unfair moments made her “stronger” and helped her build an “impenetrable confidence” that now radiates through every area of her life. And with tracks like those in Why Not More?, she’s helping her listeners do the same. This chapter of her career and life story reads something like a romance novel for dark-skinned girls, and we’re eating up every page—and every song.