Camila Cabello Explains Where People Get Her Wrong & Her 'Villain Arc,' Reveals How She Got Playboi Carter on 'I Luv It'

On getting Playboi Carti on the track:

“I DMed him. Well, I feel like my mentality, I feel like throughout this process has been, first of all, closed mouths don’t get fed. And a lot of people are like, don’t even… He’s like, he’s mysterious and whatever. And I was just like, you know what? I’m just going to DM him. I said, “Hey, butterfly.” And then he said, “CC,” and then I said, “Carti.” It was really cute. It was very genuine. And then we talked about Miami because he spends a lot of time in Miami and Atlanta, and yeah, I think we just started talking, and I think he really loved the kind of visual stuff that I was leaning into. I was just like, “Hey, come by. Let’s hang out. Let me play you some music.” And I played him this song…and we have similar ways of working, and for me, my writing process is just kind of freestyling, and then we work from that. But yeah, he just went in the booth and we were just so excited and we just like… it was just sick.”

On where she thinks people get her wrong:

“I don’t think people got it wrong, I just think that now they need to catch up to who I am now. I feel like in this process, what you’re hearing is kind of an undiluted version of my creative process now. I think before, and I love working with co-writers and I think it’s really fun, but this time around I was like, I think the kind of projects that I want to make only works when there’s no other co-writers, and when it’s kind of just me honing in on the craft and really putting it on me, putting the writing part, the songwriting part on me, and really putting in that work every day of expanding my references and writing lyrics and ideas down every day. And I made this album with Guincho who, to me has such a fresh perspective on pop music. I knew I wanted to make it with a producer that was like that.”

“And so I reached out to him and immediately was like, oh, he gets me. And the things that he liked the most from me, I just did this remix of a song where it was just like really quick, it was just me on the mic, freestyled it, whatever, edited it, and then we put it out and he was like, “That’s my favourite thing I feel like you’ve ever done. It really sounds like the person I’m having a conversation with.” And I was like, oh, that’s somebody that’s not really trying to play it safe and getting all the hired guns and the safety net of other co-writers. He wants this to be raw and just me, and that’s what he’s excited by. And then he would send me beats and stuff, and a lot of the stuff that I was gravitating towards was stuff he’d worked on with Jasper Harris. And so then it was really just the three of us making this music, and they made me grow so much as an artist and as a writer and constantly challenged me, and put me onto new things and new references. I think I am just now at the age where I’m like, whether this sink or swim, I want this to just be me.”