Camila Cabello shares what happened when she DM'd Drake for feedback

When Camila Cabello was working on her latest album, C,XOXO, she decided to take Drake up on an offer he made years earlier and ask for his feedback.

The pop star met the Canadian rapper at a party around the time her hit song Havana was blowing up. Drake told her he loved the track and couldn't wait to see what she did in the future — so she thought she'd show him.

"I DM'd him and I was like, 'I've been listening to you a lot throughout this project and throughout the writing of this album,'" Cabello tells Q's Tom Power. "'I would love to play you some of the music that I have and pick your brain, ask you what you think.'"

Drake and Cabello went for dinner in her hometown of Miami where she played her songs for him and he played some of For All the Dogs for her. He then asked her if he could send her some ideas to "contribute" to her album.

"Contribute right on over," she recalls telling him. "That would be so fun!" Drake's contributions turned into two tracks for C,XOXO: Hot Uptown and Uuugly.

Trusting herself as a songwriter

Cabello is the primary songwriter on C,XOXO. This is a departure from her three prior solo albums, where she had other writers help her. The 27-year-old says that she was scared she'd have "nothing to say" on her previous albums and wanted other writers there as a "safety net" to create good songs. Yet this album felt different.

"It was the most confident I've ever been in my skills as a songwriter," she says. "This time around, I was like, 'I trust that I have great ideas, I trust that I can make great songs, write great songs for myself, and I trust my taste."

While writing the album, Cabello devoted herself to what she calls a "year of yes," where she took in all kinds of media. She read Sally Rooney books, watched movies and, of course, listened to a lot of Drake.

She also stepped back from the spotlight. Cabello has been famous since age 15, when she joined the girl group Fifth Harmony. Over the past year, she focused less on touring and more on walking her dog and going to the gym with her friends.

"I make the best songs that way," she says. "People start making worse art the more disconnected they are to their humanity. That's my hot take."

Cabello wrote songs with lyrics like: "You're so tall, you just made me feel even more little, babe." She wanted to tap into the "messy" experiences that women in their 20s experience.

"If I became super, super famous and never left my hotel room and was just doing promo all the time, how interesting are those songs going to be?" she says.

The full interview with Camila Cabello is available on our YouTube channel and our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Camila Cabello produced by Vanessa Greco.