Camila Cabello & Playboi Carti: “I LUV IT”

The pop star lab has their work cut out for them this time. Their mission: Convince the world that Camila Cabello is pretty cool and also kind of a goofball. They put in their overtime hours and came up with “I Luv It,” a deranged concoction (produced by El Guincho and Jasper Harris) where Camila chants frothy nothings over a beat that splices a somewhat basic club pop bounce with a fucked up use of a pitch-shifted sample of Gucci Mane’s “Lemonade.” It fails its mission, but also, it’s the only Camila Cabello song that I’ve come across that has made me feel anything other than complete apathy. And while quite a few of the mega, mega pop stars are begging to be taken so seriously, it’s nice to just hear some good ol’ fashioned expensive nonsense.

That nonsense really takes off once Playboi Carti enters the gas station. That’s where his scenes in the music video are shot, his preferred location of late. But instead of smoking and doing elaborate handshakes and unofficial GRWM videos with his boys, he’s mostly posing and smizing for the camera while Camila does choreography that looks as if she’s being electrocuted and sitting crossed-legged on top of the freezer that holds the Klondike bars and Italian ices. (They seem like they have never in their lives had a conversation.) His verse is much in the style of the Future-infused deep-voiced rambling of his 2024 singles and features. Carti regularly is wrongly accused of rapping gibberish, but toward the end of this verse he actually does. Meanwhile, in the background, Camila just gently sways along, as it starts to feel like one of them is playing a prank on the other but I can’t tell who. Maybe it’s on us, which would be the coolest thing Camila Cabello could possibly do.