F  L  A  U  N  T

It’s 3:33 am, and your thoughts are deafening. Nothing but the crickets outside your bedroom window to distract you from the qualms of your heart. As your cheek is caressed by the cold side of your pillow, which you continue to flip and flip, you can’t help but transfix on the ‘what if’s’ and ‘what could have been’s.’ But don’t worry—you’re not alone. You are experiencing what is known as the ungodly hour, of which Chloe Bailey—the Los Angeles-based singer, producer, and actor—is no stranger to. Chloe has spent the last year transposing her haunting furies into a body of work that encourages an embrace of ambiguity and what is unknown.

As we converse on the eve of her twenty-third birthday, Bailey confesses, “I guess I am kind of grown.” She laughs as one might do when recognizing how fast time can slip away from us when we are having too much fun. And it’s been fun. Not that long ago, Beyoncé signed the R&B sister duo, Chloe x Halle, to her record label Parkwood Entertainment Company after witnessing their covers of pop songs online. Now six years later, the two songstresses have seemingly reigned over streaming sites as they write, arrange, produce, and engineer their music, amassing over almost 3.5 million listeners on Spotify alone. Their self-written 2018 debut album, The Kids Are Alright—a bright tale saturated with their honeyed melodies and hypnotic harmonies—fetched them their first two Grammy nominations. Chloe x Halle have now cemented themselves into their unwavering artistry, honing in on their playful yet authentically compelling sound and receiving three more Grammy nominations for their highly anticipated sophomore album, Ungodly Hour.

While Ungodly Hour was released amid a global pandemic, quarantine did not stand in the way of the two’s output and success. The album’s summer hit, “Do It” (written by Chloe x Halle, Victoria Monét, Scott Storch, Vincent Van Den Ende, and Anton Kuhl), became the night-out anthem, despite our spending most evenings in bed during the everlasting lockdown. Regardless of the constraints, Chloe still managed to give amazing virtual performances in her backyard tennis court and served fans with stunning music videos for dancing in the mirror as opposed to under the disco ball. Chloe’s voice is otherworldly with her vulnerable yet powerful tone—met with the duo’s tapestry of ethereal soundscapes.

Chloe x Halle hope to dismantle how the public perceives them, as they are no longer the girls we met in 2014 singing Alicia Keys and John Legend on YouTube. While The Kids Are Alright was their ode to adolescence—full of young love and sisterhood—Ungodly Hour is the thirteen-track, thirty-seven-minute amalgamation of their experiences thus far, laced with the intricacies and intimacies of growing up. Chloe attests, “When our experiences and story change, so will the lyrics and the melodies and the feel of the music.” Each track, with its lustrous atmospherics, depicts the tenderness of heartbreak, freedom of sexuality, and the reservations that naturally come with time, charting new terrain for the young artists. She continues, “As we are evolving and creating—the music will evolve along with us.” Chloe continues to bloom with nothing but infinite grace, as she continues to create songs as complex as the woman she is becoming.

Entering the music industry at the mere age of thirteen was no small feat. “Being a woman, and then on top of that, being a young Black woman, there are so many challenges that come with each one of those defining factors of who I am as a person.” But the singer refuses to be minimized as she transcends this feeling of being underestimated into pure force when recording her jaw-dropping R&B ballads. She states, “There is nothing like feeling that I am proud of myself because I went against the grain and did something that people said I could not do.”

This year, Chloe x Halle—now with separate Instagrams and Twitter accounts—continue to pursue their personal endeavors with nothing but endless support from each other. Chloe shares, “It has been nice, even now, to see how great we are on our own and even better when we are together. I think the support we have for each other going into our individual endeavors is truly a beautiful thing. It is the true definition of love.”

As Chloe harmoniously finds her own path, she has established herself in the world of acting, which she says is not that different from performing music. She continues to star alongside Yara Shahidi, Trevor Jackson, and Luka Sabbat in Freeform’s Grown-ish—a spinoff of the hit ABC series Black-ish. Entering its fourth season, Grown-ish continues to be a comedic yet accurate portrayal of growing pains. Not only did Chloe x Halle lend their song “Grown” off The Kids Are Alright for the iconic theme song, but Chloe also embodies Jazlyn “Jazz” Forster, the strong-minded and sassy track athlete of Cal U. The first three minutes of every episode Chloe reminds us of how far she has come singing, “Watch out world, I am grown now.”

Up next, Chloe will star as Blake Holloway in Miramax’s supernatural thriller, The Georgetown Project, with Russell Crowe and Ryan Simpkins, which is unlike anything she has ever done before. The film, written and directed by M. A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller, follows a troubled actor who begins to unravel while shooting a horror film. Meanwhile, the actor’s estranged daughter struggles to decipher whether her father has relapsed or something more sinister is taking place. While Chloe can’t share any details just yet, she expresses her excitement for the film to premiere and the fun she is having filming it, sharing, “I really love working, and any time I have the opportunity to work and show off what I have to offer, I am truly happy.”

As any other twenty-something beginning her ascent into the throes of adulthood, Chloe continues to dive deeper into herself every day. She dances in the beautiful interlude between knowing and understanding. “I am really open,” she shares, “Every day I kind of just learn that more and more—but I am learning that it is okay to not give 1000% of yourself to everybody, because what will you have left to give yourself?” While protecting our energy is something we learn and continue to preserve every day, Chloe continues to see herself as a “teddy bear,” always seeing the best in people and keeping moments at their fullest.

But Chloe knows that sometimes we cannot help the tendrils of doubt that seep into our thoughts. She shares that growing up is learning to “be comfortable with all your flaws and every bit of who you are.” When asked about her journey to self-love, she says it “has been a struggle for sure.” But she continues to remind us that, “It is so important to let your body go through the natural progression that it is meant to go through,” and adds, “I want to feel good forever, and that starts within, and that starts with myself.”

While time and experience can jade even the softest of souls, Chloe continues to protect herself in a cocoon of tender moments, precious memories, and loving people in her life. I am happy to report that Chloe is no longer haunted by the idea of the ungodly hour, but instead welcomes it as a natural means of reflection—a way to surrender to the innermost being. “I love to live life with my rose-colored glasses on,” Chloe concludes wholeheartedly. When asked what she owes her new perspective to, she says she just listened to the music, of course. “I like for the music to flow through me. When anything in life feels forced, it is truly not meant to be. I learned to let go and go with the flow of music, so why not do that with my life as well?”

Photographer: Chrisean Rose
Stylist: Alexander-Julian Gibbson
Hair: Fesa Nu
Makeup: Christiana Cassel at Mastermind Management
Tailor: Karine Gasparyan
Lighting Tech: James Bianchi
Digi Tech: Michael Cardiello
Assistant: Dylan Catherina
Flaunt Film Directed by: Nate Rynaski
Written by: Bree Castillo
Location: Hubble Studio