Coco Jones

R&B singer Coco Jones is a Disney alum who has shined on the small screen while capturing the airwaves and earning a Grammy for her hit “ICU.” In a landscape where digital-sounding and emotionally unavailable alternative R&B had a chokehold on the genre, the ballad is refreshingly analog and endearingly earnest. On the cusp of summer 2024, it cinched the Number One spot on Billboard’s Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart, representing its dominance on urban radio. Then, fellow former House of Mouser Justin Timberlake joined Jones on a chill-inducing remix of the track.

As a young teen, Jones starred in the Disney Channel original movie Let It Shine alongside Abbott Elementary’s Tyler James Williams. It was a rare and popular Black coming-of-age story on the network. Disney’s music operation, Hollywood Records, signed Jones at 15 but subsequently dropped her at 16. “I think creatively, I just had a lot more soul at that time, and I didn’t know what to do with it,” Jones told Rolling Stone. “I don’t think they knew what to do with it either.” In 2022, though, she signed with the legendary hip-hop label Def Jam and released her fifth EP and first to catch fire, What I Didn’t Tell You. Jones is also well known for re-creating the role of Hilary Banks on Peacock’s Bel-Air. 

Jones told Rolling Stone she’s dreaming big. “I would love to have international world tours. I’m watching Beyoncé and Renaissance, and it’s just like — that is the highest level of ‘you’re that girl.’ I look at Rihanna and Savage X Fenty and I’m like, period. You’re that girl. To have it be bigger than music, to have it be business, to have my name be respected so heavily all over the world is how I imagine these 10 years will progress. I’m working towards creative control because I earned it.” — Manakprr Conteh