There was a subtle moment about two minutes into nine-year-old Courtney “Coco” Jones’s singing of “The Star Spangled Banner” at a St. Louis Rams game that showcased her long-standing desire to be exalted for her vocal gifts. Wearing a Rams jersey and sparkly, dusty-pink nails, Jones grasped the microphone. She was laser-focused on delivering vocal runs that transformed the national anthem into a soulful ballad. The young singer had just finished the most vocally challenging portion of the song and was nearing the final two lines when the crowd, which had been mostly quiet, erupted in applause. The adoration was brief, but it was just enough.
Jones, who had been looking down at the ground in a moment of intense concentration, heard the audible validation and her eyes darted up at the crowd. She flashed a wide smile, a missing side tooth reminding the audience of her youth even as her voice conveyed a maturity beyond her age. It was as if the young performer was saying to herself, Finally, they woke up and paid attention!
This moment wasn’t a fluke, but a snapshot in a life that’s been committed to entertaining audiences since before she completed elementary school. Says Jones, “I just didn’t like when people weren’t astonished by me.”
Jones has achieved much of the success she always dreamed of, even if it didn’t come as easily as she anticipated as a precocious child. Now, after a long, involuntary career hiatus, Jones, 25, has found her way back into the spotlight. In between a stint as a Disney star and her current reemergence were many years when she nervously watched her social media engagement decline, wondering if she’d be relegated to the long list of talented child stars who have failed to parlay their youthful charm into a long-lasting career.
During this downtime, Jones was forced to grapple with the parts of her career she had no control over. “It felt like I dedicated my whole life to the industry and they [didn’t] give a damn about me,” she recalls. She could work as hard as she wanted on honing her talent, she realized, but she couldn’t make the industry pay attention.
Still, like the crowd at that Rams game when she was nine, people have finally woken up to her talent. In 2020, after a fan’s viral tweet lamented her absence since her childhood success, Jones capitalized on the public’s renewed interest to revive her career. Since 2022, she has starred as Ashley Banks on Peacock’s Bel-Air, signed with Def Jam and WME Agency, and released What I Didn’t Tell You, her first studio EP in a decade. Her platinum single “ICU,” a definitive take on an all-consuming love, has become her biggest hit to date. She recently secured five 2024 Grammy nominations for the EP, including Best New Artist.
Within the past year, Jones’s star has risen, in defiance of long-standing prejudices against dark-skinned Black women in the entertainment and music industries. To be clear, Coco Jones isn’t “lucky” she’s been able to break through; we in the audience are the lucky ones who would otherwise have been denied a generational talent.
On a warm evening in October, Jones and I are tucked away in a dimly lit corner of The Standard Grill, right off the High Line in New York City. Never one to waste good glam, she asked to go for dinner and drinks following a photo shoot earlier in the day.
Jones’s makeup is good, but it’s also very natural, featuring neutral lips and silver highlighter that accentuates the bridge and tip of her nose. Her hair is slicked back and pulled into an intentionally floppy bun. The 5’10” songstress is wearing an ankle-length dress, its rosy marbling clinging to her body.
The minute Jones slips into the booth beside me, I’m greeted by a familiar, comforting warmth. Despite the clamor of New York City outside, breaking bread with her feels like I’m back home in the South, having a girl's night with a friend.
During our time together, I am constantly reminded of two truths: First, that Jones is the product of a lifetime of media training. She is a career performer who is acutely aware of how her every action lands with her audience, whether it be at a music venue full of fans, a boardroom of label honchos, or sitting with one reporter.
Jones is especially excited to be the subject of this profile, she tells me before the waiter even arrives at our table. As we speak, she’s careful to choose her words in a way that might resonate with a young Black girl who aspires to have similar success. As a teenager, Jones says, she read as many profiles of artists like Beyoncé and Rihanna as she could find, hoping to pull tidbits from their respective processes that she could apply to her own work ethic. Says Jones, “When I was homeschooled, I would cheat on them lil’ math tests real quick and then I would [read] interviews.”
But when Jones lets down her guard and moves beyond standard talking points, it’s easy to forget that the singer has spent her whole life preparing to live in the spotlight. She is actively learning that authenticity is her biggest selling point. This is the second truth: She has spent the past eight years in Los Angeles, but Jones comes from a humble, tight-knit Black family in the South, where “Welcome to Possum Town” signs greeted visitors.
The eldest daughter of four siblings, Jones grew up in Lebanon, Tennessee. She jokes that she and her cousins were the only Black people in the city, which is about 30 miles from Nashville. She says her parents were not extremely strict — though dating was prohibited — and raised the family to live by the motto, “Joneses don’t say ‘can’t.’”
According to family lore, Jones was singing before she could talk. Her mother, Javonda Jones, swears she can recall a time when her six-month-old daughter hummed along to a Barney song in perfect pitch. Often tasked with singing at church, a young Jones once delivered an Easter Sunday rendition of “My Redeemer Lives'' that was so moving, she looked up to see her tough-as-nails basketball coach “bawling.” She’d long heard that her voice was “anointed,” but seeing Mr. Mike crying convinced the young girl that it might be true. “Shoot,” Javonda says with a laugh, “everybody would cry when Courtney would sing at church.”
If Coco Jones developed a love of singing from her mother, a session vocalist, she inherited her fierce competitiveness from her father, Mike Jones, a former linebacker for several NFL teams — including the Rams. Coco compares the feeling of performing onstage as a kid to the giddiness she experienced when she scored in male-dominated games of flag football, posing in the end zone to celebrate her triumph. “I would make a crazy play. I would break ankles. I’d go right around them and the crowd would be gagged,” she says. “One time I did this talent competition and I felt the same energy from the crowd, where they were gagged, and I was like, Whoa! I can make them gag like that off of my voice?”
Fueled by the affirmation she received from friends and family, Jones moved through her childhood with unshakable assurance. She performed in talent shows and participated in mass auditions, singing Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools.” The rare times when her performances didn’t end in rousing applause only made her work harder.
“I could feel when a crowd wasn’t engaged with me. I could feel when a casting person wasn’t impressed with me, and I hated it,” Jones says flatly. “I needed to eat for me, because I’m like, ‘Y’all, I’m really that girl, and if you’re not seeing it, I must be doing something wrong.’”
Even as a young girl, much of her confidence seemed as innate as her ability to find the right note when casually harmonizing with her mother to songs on car rides. Jones had always exuded confidence without teetering into arrogance. Still, like any human, her belief in herself also hinged on external validation.
As a natural entertainer, Jones learned at an early age to study her audience. She learned what dazzled them and did as much of that as possible. During one audition when she was around 11 years old, she remembers being laser-focused on an executive in the room. Determined to impress him, she sang the lines from the one-page script she’d been given — before approaching the man with an independent album she’d created. “I was like, ‘Here’s my album,’” she says. “‘Call me. You’ll see.’”
The bold move paid off. About a year later, Jones was invited to participate in Radio Disney’s The Next Big Thing competition. Officially on the radar of Disney’s decision-makers, she was subsequently cast to star in the 2012 musical film Let It Shine as teen superstar Roxie, alongside Tyler James Williams, Trevor Jackson, and Brandon Mychal Smith.
She aspired to be like the multihyphenate Disney OG Raven-Symoné, so she’d spent her childhood writing down lines from That’s So Raven episodes in order to practice them and eventually recite them from memory. Now she had her own lines to memorize for Let It Shine.
On the set, she became enamored with the glamorous side of starring in a movie — Jones affectionately remembers the crew hand-delivering her hot chocolate with peppermint straws — but not at the expense of her craft. According to her mother, Jones studied the script so hard, she’d often mouth the lines of her costars. When it came time to wrap filming, she was so heartbroken, she sobbed.
That same year, Jones began appearing on the Disney Channel’s Good Luck Charlie as the hyperactive athlete Kelsey, a recurring character. She signed to Disney’s record label, Hollywood Records, and released the EP Made Of in 2013, which includes a song written by a young Victoria Monét. There were even preliminary talks of Jones starring in her own Disney Channel series.
But the talks stopped. She was dropped from the record label. Everything she thought was certain, all the fame and success, suddenly didn’t feel so guaranteed.
Jones has always been careful with her words when discussing this time in her life, mostly out of fear that she’ll say the wrong thing and it will have a negative impact on her career. She’s never been one to burn a professional bridge, either. Her parents taught her to have decorum, even after a relationship soured or she felt mistreated. Still, the singer tells me, she doesn’t feel like executives quite knew what to do with the unusually tall, dark-skinned teenager with the soulful voice.
“I was starting to write [music] and starting to feel like I wanted to say no. I wanted to say, ‘I don't like this. I don't talk like that,’” Jones recalls. “I was like, ‘Am I allowed to say I don't like this song?’ I was figuring myself out. They were trying to figure out what to do with this young Black girl.”
At the time, being dropped from the label felt abrupt to Jones; in hindsight, though, she says it felt inevitable, describing her creative relationship with the children’s network as a “push and pull.” “I didn’t want to have to play a role when it came to music,” she says, “but it felt like they wanted me to play a role.”
Jones says she emotionally blocked out memories of being dropped by Hollywood Records as a teenager, but her mom can’t forget how devastating the time was. “I didn't know what to do or which way to go, and I did not want to break her heart,” says Javonda, who worked as her daughter’s manager throughout the early years of her career. “I was not going to let that get in her head. I had to tell her the truth, but I went to those corners and I cried.”
Jones’s experience isn’t uncommon. Fellow multihyphenate Keke Palmer has often reflected on the difficulties of being a child star and the need to fund her own projects after struggling to get support from fickle industry execs. Both young Black women are only now experiencing the success they’d been promised time and again, decades after their entry into the Disney machine.
The conviction Jones has possessed since childhood should also be attributed to her parents. They fiercely protected her from internalizing any negativity she faced in the competitive, unpredictable, and often unfair entertainment business. “What I would always do is just plant that seed,” says Javonda. “‘They’re crazy, not you. They don’t know what to do with you, Co. Girl, you can sang off yo’ tail and they do not know what to do with you. They’ve done everything they can. This gift is too big for them.’”
In 2015, a homeschooled Jones graduated from high school a year early (cheating “real bad” aside) and moved to Los Angeles, without her family, to continue to pursue her dreams. Convinced she was too concerned with perfection to give a truly compelling performance, she enrolled in acting classes.
For the first time in Jones’s life, Javonda wasn’t around to shield her daughter, then 17, from the constant sting of rejection. This chapter in Los Angeles pulled back the veil on the business side of the industry, including the ways in which racism still played a role in her level of success. Says Jones, “I felt like I had been so protected, I had really only been educated about hustling and working hard and determination, but colorism and judgment and prejudice… I had not been properly educated on that. I was caught off guard. I feel like I woke up. It felt like I was in a dream before.”
Her first few years in Los Angeles were spent having awkward auditions for roles that didn’t feel like the right fit. Jones, barely 18, felt she was given scripts for parts that were either too young and “corny” or more mature than she was ready for. “I was trying to fit into so many different boxes,” she recalls. “[I was] changing my hair and trying new styles. Girl, I tried colored contacts,” she adds, noting that the lenses were a “hypnotic,” unnatural green. “I was trying to get booked.”
It was even more frustrating that Jones would achieve small wins just as she was prepared to give up entirely. She’d temporarily relocate to New York to appear on Broadway in A Bronx Tale or book a small role in L.A. and feel optimistic. These opportunities were then followed by a dry spell, prompting an honest talk with her mom about finances. She worried that, for the first time in her life, she’d have to get a traditional nine-to-five job. She was living off her childhood earnings, which were dwindling. “My money was getting funny, girl,” she says. “It started getting hilarious.”
Jones says she spent many afternoons crying in her apartment with reruns of Grey’s Anatomy playing in the background. During this time, she leaned deeper into her relationship with God, learning to detach herself from the outcomes of her auditions. “The stakes were too high for me,” she explains. “[Securing a job] made me feel valuable, and I’m like, ‘This is not going to work. I can’t let whether I get this job or not determine my worth as a human being.’ That’s when I really got into Christ. Like, what else can make me feel valuable? Because these jobs ain’t safe enough.”
In such moments, she also confided in her best friend, Jaylen Barron. The two met as teenagers after they both appeared in episodes of Good Luck Charlie. Says Barron, “I remember telling her, ‘Girl, if you had it once, you’re going to get it again.’”
It was during another dry spell, in 2020, that a fan tweeted asking what had become of the former child star. This prompted Jones to go live on YouTube, explaining the highs and lows of her career journey. Rusty and out of practice when it came to media training, she let down her guard. The result? Candid, hilarious, and now viral confessions like: “Yes, I did that. And you would do it, too, for a check. I was an employee and I was going to get employee of the month.”
To capitalize on the increased attention, she posted covers of songs like SZA’s “Hit Different” and quickly caught the eye of a new acting manager, for the first time since she was 15. By the end of 2021, she had landed the role of Hilary Banks in Bel-Air. By early 2022, she was signed by Def Jam.
Jones remains surprised that, despite all her previous hard work, it was a fan’s tweet and a YouTube live that propelled her to where she is today. “It was confusing. I was like, ‘Why now?’ And it’s not even through acting. It’s not even through a role.”
“Another round around the block, please,” Jones says in a British accent, with a mischievous laugh. We’ve been talking for hours, the waiter has cleared our dinner plates, but she’s convinced me to order one more drink with her. Even with all that hard work, Coco Jones is always committed to having a good time.
“I will push past exhaustion to live my life,” she says. “I’m tired but everybody’s outside? Girl, I got to go. Not because I need to be where everybody’s at, but because I want to feel free. I want to feel like nobody makes me tired enough that I don’t get to live my personal life. No, I’m outside too.”
Barron confirms this. So does Jones’s other best friend, media personality Terrell Grice. “Let me tell you, Coco knows how to get down,” says the creator of the YouTube series The Terrell Show and Jones’s costar on their web series, T & Coco. “We don't go to the club and just step in and step out.”
Perhaps this is why Jones was initially hesitant about the release of “ICU” as a single. “I thought it aged me,” she says. She wanted to make “pretty girl club music” that reflected her reality. “I was like, ‘Y’all, please, I want to do choreo. I cannot dance to this.’ I wrote about one heartbreak, but I’m like, ‘Girl, I really enjoy a lot of aspects of my life. I don’t want to have to harp on that.’”
That fear isn’t baseless. Listeners have long been drawn to devastated sirens, an attraction that’s doubly true for Black soul singers. Even as notions of a “soft life” permeate social media, fans still demand the blues in rhythm & blues, whether it’s from legacy artists like Mary J. Blige or newcomers like Summer Walker and SZA.
Jones also worried that initial praise for the song from family and friends would create for her an expectation of success that wouldn’t materialize. “I had a feeling it was something special, but I swear, I had made special songs my whole life,” she says. “I was like, ‘Maybe this will be another time where I give it everything and they don’t care.’”
It’s not a knock on Jones’s previous work to say that “ICU” is different. It is special. The single, which pulls elements from soul, gospel, and blues, is a timeless R&B piano ballad on which the melodic accessibility is rivaled only by Jones’s anguished vocal performance. The song is significant because of the very vulnerability Jones feared might “age” her.
Despite her early reservations about the single, Jones’s fellow Tennessean Justin Timberlake liked the song so much, he agreed to hop on the remix in July. “He said my creative choices really blew him away and he wanted to support me, however that looked,” Jones says of meeting Timberlake during a studio session in Los Angeles after hearing his verse.
With the unstoppable tidal wave of R&B artists like Ari Lennox, Monét, Lucky Daye, Yebba, and, now, Coco Jones breaking into the mainstream, the argument that “R&B is dead” has fallen flat. “ICU” puts the final nail in its coffin. The single’s success — the song peaked at number 16 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and number 62 on the Billboard Hot 100 — disproves the bad-faith idea that modern audiences don’t crave depth and soul.
Like Keke Palmer, Jones’s rise is happening alongside Monét, her previous collaborator. The pair, who were both part of Spotify’s R&B First Nights concert series earlier this year, often run into each other and reminisce about how far they’ve come. “It's hilarious,” Jones says. “When it's your time, it's your time.”
Beyond “ICU,” Jones’s 2022 EP, What I Didn’t Tell You, champions age-old genre conventions without feeling dated. The project is a well-rounded look at the Gen Z performer whose sultry, buttery-soft vocals convey as much range as her lyrics. She’s just as braggadocious on “Crazy for Me” and “Caliber” as she is lovestruck on “Double Back” and “Fallin.” What I Didn’t Tell You not only places her at the forefront of R&B, it garnered her five Grammy nominations, including Best R&B Performance, Best R&B song, and Best R&B Album. (Jones is also nominated for Best New Artist next to Monét.)
Months before she was recognized by the Recording Academy, Jones’ hard work on What I Didn’t Tell You was celebrated amongst the Black community when she won Best New Artist at the BET Awards this summer. “It’s been a long journey,” she said during her acceptance speech, fighting back tears as her mom did the same in the audience. “For all of my Black girls: We do have to fight a little harder to get what we deserve, but don’t stop fighting. Even when it doesn’t make sense and you’re not sure how you’re going to get out of those circumstances, keep pushing, because we are deserving of great things, y’all.”
The inspiring part of Jones’s story isn’t found solely in the highs; it’s also buried in the lows, during which her faith and confidence faltered but never shattered. There is strength in owning your talent even when vacillating audiences are not giving you the attention it warrants.
There is inherent power in the image of a dark-skinned Black woman refusing to let the repeated rejection she’s faced in Hollywood deter her from the success she’s claimed for herself. There is beauty in finally achieving your dreams after relinquishing the desire for “perfection” and, instead, leaning into authenticity.
Jones’s busy touring and press schedule have made it difficult to carve out studio time, so it’s unclear when her debut album will be released, and with the actor’s strike just ending, production on season three of Bel-Air is also on standby. Fortunately, though, Coco Jones is no stranger to playing the waiting game — and winning.
Photo Credits
Photographer: Chinazam Ojukwu
Lighting Tech: Emmanuel Porquin
Digital Tech: Casanova Cabrera
Lighting Assistant: Art by Cameron
Photo Assistant: Ozuozu Studio
Photo Assistant: Hunter Peterson
Movement Director: Gabby Morris
Photo Retouching: Matthew So
Stylist: Mel Reneé
Stylist Assistant: Pascia Obami-yao Sangoubadi
Tailor: Lindsay Amir
Hair Stylist: Davontae Washington at OPUS Beauty using KISS Colors & Care
Makeup Artist: Raisa Flowers at E.D.M.A
Manicurist: Keeks at 10 Piece Nails
Producer: Leah Mara
Production Assistant: Dakota Caulfield
Production Assistant: Joshua Hendersen-Jardim
Production Assistant: Noelle Dolan
Location: United Palace Theater
Art & Design Director: Emily Zirimis
Designer: Liz Coulbourn
Visual Editor: Bea Oyster
Sr. Fashion Editor: Tchesmeni Leonard
Associate Fashion Editor: Kat Thomas
Assistant Fashion Editor: Tascha Berkowitz
Editorial Credits
Editor in Chief: Versha Sharma
Executive Editor: Dani Kwateng
Features Director: Brittney Mcnamara
Contributing Editor: Alyssa Hardy
Senior Culture Editor: P. Claire Dodson
Entertainment News Editor: Kaitlyn McNab
Associate Entertainment Director: Eugene Shevertalov
Audience Development Director: Chantal Waldholz
Senior Social Media Manager: Honestine Fraser
Social Media Manager: Jillian Selzer
Copy Editors: Dawn Rebecky, Leslie Lipton
Video Credits
Director: Ali Farooqui
Director: Catherine Mhloyi
Producer: Frank Cosgriff
DP: Mar Alfonso
Gaffer: Meicen Meng
Audio: Sean Paulson
PA: Ziyne Abdo
Editor: Rebeca Centeno
