Coco Jones On Bel-Air Season 2, Short Kings, and “Delusional” Advice From SZA

TV: Who did you have in mind while you were making this project? Who is it for?

CJ: Definitely my fans. I think they’ve been waiting so long, and even when I had nothing really to talk about, I feel like they still rode for me… I didn’t have a show at the time, I didn’t really have music out. I had nothing to promote at the time because I just was figuring out what I was going to do. I feel like I’ve always had some sort of [lyrical] subject matter, but the version of myself now, because I went through all of those stages of silence, I have a lot to say.

TV: And what is that?

CJ: I belong. I belong here. I belong on your radio stations, I belong on your playlists, I belong on those stages singing my heart out. I live for it, I thrive for it, and I’ll give everything that I’ve got for it. That’s what I’m trying to say.

TV: In the past, you’ve been transparent with fans about the amount of false starts in your career due in large part to industry execs selling you dreams. But it feels like right now, Coco Jones has finally arrived — or rather, people are finally getting with the program. How does that make you feel?

CJ: In a way, it makes me feel like I can exhale a little bit. Just because I felt these things, and so now that the world’s seeing it, I feel like, “I wasn’t crazy. I thought I wasn’t. Okay, great.”

TV: What’s some of the best advice that you’ve gotten from other artists?

CJ: I actually got some really great advice from SZA. Basically she told me that I kind of need to have a sense of delusion. Things are going to look crazy at times, and that’s going to try and attempt to make me feel like things aren’t going to work out. But it’s like having this sense of: this is my world. I don’t care what I see outside of my world. I know where I’m going. I know what I’m going to be doing. And to others, it may seem a little crazy.

TV: What is the most important lesson that you think you’ve learned from reinventing yourself over the years?

CJ: Just don’t give up. I mean, simply that. If I would’ve given up, I’d be pissed when I saw Bel-Air come out and some other girl was playing [Hilary], come on. It’s really just like, you didn’t give up today and that’s good. Tomorrow, do the same thing.

TV: Were you close to giving up around the time that you were auditioning for Bel-Air?

CJ: Around that time, I had actually kind of been buzzing on TikTok doing my “if I was on this song” covers. Then on Twitter people were talking about me like, “Man, whatever happened to Coco?” It was a very viral tweet, and I remember I even DM’d the girl who posted it, and I was like, “Thank you so much for even saying this.” So no, I wasn’t close to giving up at that stage, but maybe before then, like right around when the pandemic was starting. I was like, what am I doing here?