Bazzi's 'Beautiful' Began As An Experiment And Ended Up With Camila Cabello

In fall 2017, Michigan singer-songwriter Bazzi scored a Hot 100 hit with "Mine," a short burst the sort of fizzy elation that accompanies any crush. You might've first heard it by means of the a Snapchat filter, or perhaps you saw one of the many edits set to the song.


Bazzi, meanwhile, kept writing and making music, touring with Justin Timberlake and Camila Cabello, and even ending up enlisting Camila for a reworking of his song cute set to drop this week. Because the MTV: Push artist for the month of August mentioned recently, the song came about from a stream-of-consciousness session.


"'Beautiful' is a freestyle, actually," the 20-year-old told MTV. "I actually made pretty being like, 'I just want something to post on Instagram, like, I don't care, I'm just gonna throw something up today.'"


"I went to the studio and I freestyled cute in like a hour and also 1/2, and I threw it up and people were like, 'This song's gonna change your life.'"


The song's seemingly off-the-cuff nature was a lesson for Bazzi, who mentioned it taught him to follow his spontaneous impulses and to "care a little much less and have a little bit more fun." That journey has led him to the ultimate destination of the track being a group effort with Camila, so it seems like it worked out OK.


Yet it can may not have ever happened without the help of one particular artist's inspiration.


"Lyrically and melodically, Drake was certainly a big influence of mine," Bazzi told MTV recently. "Drake was the initial time I turned an an artist on and I was like, 'I feel that,' you know? 'That's how I feel.' And I think that really inspired me. That pushed into the category of wanting to be honest and susceptible in my music."


Watch Bazzi break down his backstory, including that time his guitar teacher accused him of ripping off Green Day, in the interview below.