Coco Jones

Grammy-winning singer and actress Coco Jones moved from crafting dance-pop for a teen audience toward a more exposed and emotionally direct brand of contemporary R&B. While still in her teens she balanced regular Disney Channel appearances with an emerging recording career, playing a lead role on the series So Random! across 2011 and 2012 and then issuing the buoyant dance-pop EP Made Of in 2013. By the time her fourth EP, H.D.W.Y., appeared in 2019, she had fully adopted a mature R&B approach. Signing with Def Jam, she delivered the What I Didn't Tell You EP in 2022, the same year she began portraying Hilary Banks in the Bel-Air reboot of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The project yielded the Top 20 R&B/hip-hop single “ICU,” which claimed Best R&B Performance at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, and she followed with further releases such as the 2024 single “Sweep It Up.”

Born in Columbia, South Carolina, and raised in Lebanon, Tennessee, Jones is the daughter of former NFL defensive lineman Mike Jones and studio singer Javonda Jones. An early starter as a vocalist, she self-produced and released an album in 2010 that drew Disney’s interest and led to her placement on the Radio Disney competition series NBT (Next Big Thing). From 2011 to 2012 she portrayed Coco Blue on So Random!, then starred in the 2012 Disney Channel film Let It Shine and appeared on its soundtrack. Her two duets with co-star Tyler James Williams, “Guardian Angel” and “Me and You,” each reached the Top 40 of Billboard’s Rap Digital Song Sales chart.

After signing with Hollywood Records she issued the Made Of EP in early 2013, which peaked at number ten on the Heatseekers Albums chart. A guest spot on teen rapper MattyB’s “Flyin High” arrived in early 2014, shortly before the label dropped her. She put out the independent single “Peppermint” that August, and in mid-2015 she reached Billboard’s R&B Digital Song Sales chart via a feature on Nia Sioux’s “Slay.” Returning to acting, she co-starred in the 2016 family film Grandma’s House and the 2017 music-centered comedy-drama Flock of Four before releasing her third EP, Let Me Check It, in November 2017. A recurring part on the teen drama Five Points occupied her in 2018 and 2019, after which she self-released her fourth EP, H.D.W.Y., in September 2019.

She continued screen work with roles in the 2020 films Vampires vs. the Bronx and White Elephant. In 2022 she joined the cast of Peacock’s Bel-Air, the reimagining of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, as Hilary, and simultaneously signed with Def Jam, which released What I Didn't Tell You in November and a deluxe edition two months later. At the 66th Annual Grammy Awards she earned five nominations, among them Best New Artist and Best R&B Album, and won Best R&B Performance for “ICU.” In 2024 she issued the singles “Here We Go (Uh Oh),” “Almost There,” and “Sweep It Up.”