French electro-pop artist Cannelle Ferragu is from a tiny village in the south of France that you’ve probably never heard of. Where she lived, she’s said, there were no other Black girls and no one who shared her interests, “no alternative people whatsoever.” Only as a teenager did Cannelle discover an escape through Instagram and Tumblr: She’d go out into the meadows and stage self-photoshoots, pretending to be a “fairy in the forest” with her icy-blue hair.
Since then, Cannelle’s world has opened up: On a whim, she began making music, and she’s played shows alongside Live From Earth in Paris and opened for Ninajirachi in the U.S. CINNA, Cannelle’s debut mixtape, is blingy ringtone pop for the Tumblr princess, the sound of logging into your bedazzled laptop and getting lost in online fantasy. At its best, the mixtape is youthful, sparkly, and infectious: “Stereo,” co-produced with new pop queen-maker Oscar Scheller, is a bouncy bloghouse bonbon with found-it-at-the-sample-sale exuberance. “Sunshine” sounds like a watermelon vape-addled reimagining of “Walking on a Dream,” the needle drop you’d hear in the deep-fried version of a coming-of-age comedy where everyone communicates in memes.
In interviews, Cannelle has spoken about wanting to represent her country and make French cool, and CINNA shines on this front, infusing sounds popularized by the likes of Justice and Yelle with fresh humor and personality. On “Idole,” Cannelle delivers her best Uffie impression as she talk-raps with irreverent French brattitude: “Dans ma chambre tout est léopard/J’ai des magazines des trucs bizarres/Ils me disent ‘Mais c’est quoi ce bazar/Pourquoi y’a 15 vapes dans ton placard?’” (“In my room everything’s leopard print/I have magazines and weird stuff/They tell me, ‘What is this mess?/Why are there 15 vapes in your closet?’”) Loopy, ridiculous Franglais graces lines like “Bitch dans le club ses fesses font clap-clap.” Yet CINNA’s world can also be cloyingly repetitive, running back the imagined superstar life on repeat: NYC to LAX, flashing lights and limo rides. There’s a minor charm to the simplicity, evoking the glittering appeal of a “manifesting” moodboard dedicated to a life more glamorous than you can yet comprehend.
CINNA’s goodies are fairly front-loaded—the dreamy optimism of “Sunshine,” the Yelle-ian delight of “Stereo,” the metallic butterfly twinkles of “Restless Dreams.” Most songs hover around two minutes, and for the most part, this works: any longer and their concentrated hits of sugar and caffeine might knock you out. But by the second half, the mixtape feels decidedly scrappier, like a soup of unfinished drafts. “22” is an EDM-flavored snippet that builds toward nowhere, and “Hi” feels oddly like a BLACKPINK cutting-room scrap, mind-numbing chorus and all. Occasionally, it’s CINNA’s bedroom ethos that comes through a bit too strongly: “TtyL” sounds like it was recorded in Photo Booth.
Small flourishes keep Cannelle’s ultra-bubbly style from feeling like empty-calorie electro-pop. The spidery screech in “Dollars” flips the image of the superstar from American Idol to Perfect Blue; the muffled swirl of synths in “Idole” feels like sucking through a thick dollop of foam atop a unicorn drink. Even if CINNA isn’t pushing the envelope, it’s still undeniably fun: a getting-ready soundtrack that’s determined to live the internet It-girl fantasy for real.
