Coco & Clair Clair are growing up

The pair met on Twitter through mutual friends and began collaborating in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, creating cloud-rap-esque Soundcloud tracks right after high school. It’s always been much more than easy-listening bedroom pop, with tongue-in-cheek inside jokes and puns laced in each verse, acting as an exclusive club for listeners to be part of the fun. After their debut 2017 release, P.O.S.H., Coco and Clair Clair saw TikTok success from their hit “Pretty” which now sits at over 100 million streams on Spotify alone.

Their previous album, “Sexy”, released in 2022, featured collaborations from internet-darling DEELA, red-hot producer and fellow Atlanta native Popstar Benny, and cult-favourite Marjorie -W.C. Sinclair. The deluxe version came complete with remixes from Club Eat and HOMESHAKE. Now, the extremely online duo are excited to have released Girl, their newest offering to the masses who share the same sentiment they do: that it’s time to have fun again and look great doing it.

Girl is exactly as advertised – a soundtrack for loitering at the mall and looking for cute guys to ignore when they come up to you and ask for your number before going out to get drinks with the girls and laugh about it all. Single release “Kate Spade” perfectly captures the cattiness of this new era for Coco & Clair Clair, with lines like “Hair up hit the splits / Oh he know I got it / Booty game Hydraulics” giving you a boost of confidence and a laugh at the same time.

Coco tells me, “We named it Girl because it felt like it was our girl and it just came to us.” The album is a genuine expression of where they’re at in their lives, they explain – because they didn't have a concrete vision or anything to prove: “We just chose beats that stood out to us or that seemed fun or like started with an idea,” and they just simply wanted to show more of themselves.

A peek into their true lives and the inside of their brains, Girl is the result of a long hangout after a few fruity drinks and a couple of crazy stories packed into an eloquently produced, written, and rehearsed gossip sesh. “This is literally like what just naturally fell out of us. And I feel really good about it,” says Coco. “It appeals to all sorts of people, like frat boys like our music. There's all these sides of our fans. Like the crowds at the shows are so diverse, it's insane.”

Making fun pop tracks always comes at the expense of comments from 17-year-old Chrome Hearts resellers on TikTok. “But I think a lot of the less accurate takes on us happen from people who just hear a simple, pretty little cute beat and immediately decide, ‘Oh, well, then that’s all this is’ or ‘These girls are Paris Hilton wanna-be’s’”, Clair Clair explains.

Album opener “Martini” showcases icy, hard-hitting 808’s and their signature, whispery cloud-rap flow. The Atlanta duo are no strangers to incorporating various elements of rap in their music. Inspired by rappers like Future and Young Thug, the two use their undeniable chemistry to put a feminine spin on the usually male-dominated lifestyle of flashy clubbing, wealth, and success. They even opened for Playboi Carti at a house show before he was widely known for breakout track “Magnolia” from his debut 2017 mixtape. “I feel like we'll always be naturally attracted to those sounds and aesthetics because it's kind of where we started,” Coco says.

“Graceland” sounds like an ode to Lil Uzi Vert’s 2017 hit “20 More Minutes.” Featuring the same airy, cloud rap production and candy-coated melodies. “I feel like [rap music] is the most fun genre of music for us to make. It feels like it comes pretty easily to us, which must be because of our familiarity and comfort with it,” says Coco. The pair's inspirations also extend to the complete opposite end of the spectrum, citing cult-favourite Homeshake and “Here With Me” singer Dido.

Sometimes the audience doesn’t pick up on the references they slip into their verses such as Kendrick Lamar lyrics or a niche TV series: “It’s called a stream of consciousness” Clair Clair jokes. Songs like “Bitches Pt. 2” open with crazy lines like “The Dumb Bitch Economy is Booming” and “Every time you take a group pic they say there's a sneak / She can’t even get her ponytail sleek,” seemingly taken straight out of a Twitter stan group chat where everyone in it has no job and too much time on their hands to send Tokyo Toni reaction pictures. Their signature jabs are always oddly specific, hilarious, and sometimes hit a little too close to home.

Clair Clair says, “This is literally what we act like and talk like and think about” and it’s all about having fun, hyping yourself up, and being confident. Coco and Clair Clair trade roasts on verses back to back like Lil Baby and Gunna on “My Girl”: My neck would give you frostbite / Get that fugly out my eyesight and "You're a wannabe heartthrob / Broke ass with no job /Grown ass thingamabob.” It’s empowering, cute, and clever: the Holy Trinity of Coco & Clair Clair.