Singer and actress Coco Jones is the moment, but getting to this point wasn’t always as easy as it appears.
In a recent interview on the New York radio station HOT 97, the 25-year-old sensation admitted that she came close to quitting after several setbacks had her questioning whether the entertainment industry was for her.
The Bel-Air star said that it wasn’t until she started thinking positively about her future that things began to turn around for the better.
“I got signed at 15, and then I got dropped at around 16, turning 17. So I was just like, what do I do? I’m out here by myself. I don’t have a team. I don’t have management,” she disclosed. “That was one of the main things I was praying for ‘I just need a team that knows what to do with me. Because I had management and I had a label, they all didn’t look like me. They did not understand me. They just wanted to try this formula out on me. That was very scary and sad. Not having any clue of what was going to change for me or if it ever was.”
Following her popular Disney Channel film Let It Shine and being dropped from her record label in 2014, she said she contemplated whether she should take the “Plan B” route, although at the time she didn’t know what exactly that would be.
“Do I have to have a Plan B now? Like what would my life look like? Should I go home? It was scary both ways, but it was scarier to give up. That’s what I tell people like ‘just don’t give up that day, and then the next day do the same thing,'” she said.
She advised people going through a similar situation to remain steadfast and not to “quit on your worst day” because in the moments of failure is when the true life lessons come along.
“Psychologically, seeing other lighter girls get every job can mess with your literal mental health as a kid as you’re coming up in this world,” she said. “But that’s another reason to why I make songs like ‘Caliber’ on my EP. Because what I’m really saying is I have standards like you’re not going to be able to just treat me any type of way. Like, get on my level. Can you bring something to the table, or are you just taking from me, you know? Because music is life! What you are saying in these songs becomes life. I just be thinking like I want to give girls another option.”
She concluded: “All just more positivity because I realized when things started to change in my life like my circumstances started to change and people were paying attention to me again after years of what seemed like my world being over, it was because I was speaking better things about myself and what I could have. Words are powerful. I really am intentional with the words I put in my music. I want the girls singing my songs to be speaking life over themselves.”
