Coco & Clair Clair are pop-rap’s ultimate provocateurs

It feels fitting that Taylor Nave and Claire Toothill, the pop-rap duo from Atlanta better known as Coco & Clair Clair, met online. Over the last decade, the pair’s close friendship has crystallised into a sound that feels native to the internet: peppered with playful provocation, it straddles the sugariness of pop and the brashness of hip-hop, blending both genres to conjure up a singular musical potion best knocked back in one.

​“Like most bedroom artists, our trajectory with music started with SoundCloud, a few drinks and some very supportive friends,” Clair Clair says. ​“Claire is a real ass ride or die,” Coco adds. ​“Only girl I know who would show up to my house at 3am with a shovel.”

This is the kind of energy that lays the foundations for Coco & Clair Clair’s second album Girl. On each song, their delivery is deadpan and unbothered; the lyrics all attitude and clever quips.

Killer comebacks include ​“The dumb bitch economy is booming” and ​“Don’t come yapping with that damn fucking beak” on Bitches Pt.2 and ​“Hit the club with my squad tight/​You know this is Luar, right?/Now gonna let a broke ass ruin the night” on My Girl. Paired with some fizzy electro-pop production, these bars just scratch an itch. Then, halfway through the album, there’s a cover of Our House by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. It’s a curveball, but it works.

​“I had the time of my life making this album, and felt like the luckiest girl in the world every step of the way,” Clair Clair says. ​“I think we’re more comfortable and confident than we were a couple of years ago, but in a way, that’s a return to how we felt when we first started making music. With Girl, we focused more on what we wanted to make and experiment with, rather than what might make it successful.”

Luckily, they’ve managed to do both with this project. ​“One of my favourite things about what we do is telling someone that I’m a musician and watching their face as they try to find the perfect balance between pity, fear, shock and bewilderment, until I tell them that we’ve sold out tours,” Coco adds. ​“My favourite, favourite thing is getting to do it all with Claire.”

Not to mention these two are the kind of girls you’d have an unforgettable chat with in the toilet at a party, before exchanging numbers and maybe (probably) never seeing each other again. Girl, meanwhile, is the perfect soundtrack to that kind of interaction. ​“Then you’ve left the party and you’re in the back of the Uber with the windows down and the wind is in your hair. Your phone is on 2% but you have your favourite song playing in your headphones,” Coco says. ​“All is well.”

What’s a bad habit you wish you could kick?

Clair Clair: Needing something to snack on whenever I’m drinking alcohol.

Coco: I also feel like that’s very British of you, so in a sense that’s posh! I need to stop losing my phone.

Clair Clair: Maybe I just need to swap the chips out for vegetables…

Love, like, hate?

Coco: Love you! Like pickles. Hate haters.

Clair Clair: I love lotion, I like highlighting things, and I hate this one French man who sat in front of me on my flight to Africa with his seat all the way back the entire time.

What’s your phone screensaver?

Coco: An old stamp from the Netherlands, very colourful with fruit on it.

Clair Clair: It’s black with a blue bow going diagonally across, like a wrapped gift.

Favourite song of all time?

Coco: Kate Spade by Coco & Clair Clair

Clair Clair: I’ll go with Clair by Gilbert O’Sullivan.

When’s the last time you fell over?

Clair Clair: What the…

Coco: What’s it to you?

Who would you like to play you in a film about your life?

Clair Clair: Addison Rae for my teens and twenties, Jennifer Lopez when I’m in my thirties – we’d use AI or CGI to make her look like she did in the early 2000s – and Julia Roberts once I reach my forties.

Coco: Shocked by that answer honestly. I don’t care if we look nothing alike but I’m going to have to say Zendaya. I want the movie of my life to be a box office hit, she will get the tickets moving. Angela Bassett plays older me.

Do you have any interesting scars?

Coco: I have a big scar on my neck from a bar fight.

Have you ever stolen anything?

Coco: I never had the stealing phase in middle school that everyone else did because the thought made me anxious, but I would go with my friends who were in their stealing era and would have them take things for me. I think I got a couple things from H&M that way.

Clair Clair: I stole a lot of things when I was younger. Now I only steal coasters from restaurants. My mom collects them so I like to bring them home as a souvenir from my travels. But it can’t just be one, it has to be at least two but preferably four and they have to be in mint condition. It isn’t really stealing, though, is it? Because they probably get thrown away after one use anyway. So really I’m giving them a proper life.

What can artists do to help save the world?

Clair Clair: Almost any answer I give is going to be a tiny bit hypocritical, but I think so many of us could produce less merch. It feels wasteful even when it sells out. I hate the thought of putting more products into the world.

What’s the most memorable DM you’ve received?

Coco: They are all so memorable and I hold them all very close to my heart. Especially all the ones asking us to come to Brazil.

Clair Clair: We posted a fundraiser in support of Palestine and someone who disagreed with us doing that told me I was going to get decapitated for being ​“too revealing” – I’ve never been told that my clothing was too revealing, I thought that was nice because I usually feel like a frump.