“It's just reminding me that I deserve the love and the positivity that I give out, and I should never settle for less...whether it's relationships, people, or even experiences,” she says. “And when I think about that and when I have the moments where I'm on stage and I feel alive, it makes it all worth it.”
Every performance, it seems then, is another round in the ring, another battle in the war for control over what already belongs to her. Perhaps that’s why in her two major solo performances thus far — at the MTV Video Music Awards and on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon — audiences can feel her energy through the screen. Sure, we all recognize the training from the Beyoncé School of Performance. (After all, Chlöe did play the younger version of her mononymous mentor in the 2003 classic film, The Fighting Temptations.) But there’s also a presence and yearning all her own.

“I get really, really nervous leading up to a performance,” she reveals. “My heart pounds really fast. My palms and feet start sweating. No matter how much I prepare for it, you kind of fear the unknown.” She likens her feelings stepping on stage to the rumbling that happens as a rocketship prepares to take flight. “And then it goes by so, so fast and kind of happens in front of you.”
Still, she’s not resting on her laurels as the heir apparent. “I know I still have a lot to prove,” she says. “As long as I just keep giving my all each chance I get, that's really all I can do.”
Thankfully, she’s not walking alone in this phase of her career. “I don't think I could handle any of this all on my own,” she says, ascribing her ability to withstand everything that comes her way to God. “I definitely pray a lot, and I’m a family girl so I talk to [them and] my god mom to kind of keep me centered.”
As she charts her path forward, the last two years or so of the pandemic have taught her lessons she can’t shake. “It’s taught me to live in the moment and cherish the little things, and that if you don't fight for yourself, no one else will.”
In putting together her solo album, having cited Kelis, Yebba and Imogen Heap among the artists keeping her inspired, Chlöe’s goal is to peel back some of the layers of celebrity foisted upon her to create a project that reveals her truth. She says of her album, “I hope it is a beautiful and complete representation of who I am not only as an artist but as a human being.” As for the message she hopes to convey to other young Black women, in her music and through her life, she says: "Believe and fight for yourself. When you feel like your voice is small and no one can hear you, scream louder."
“Have Mercy,” then, is not just about manifesting the self-love and confidences she’s working toward. It’s at once a bass-heavy battle cry and a signal of what’s to come. “Here I am,” she says. World, get ready.