Cocoa Sugar is the third studio album from Young Fathers, after Dead in 2014 and White Men Are Black Men Too in 2015.
As the trio explains in their interview with The Guardian, they sought to create more accessible, “normal” music, which is reflected in the album’s cleaner production and use of lyrical hooks. Still, their dissonant and abrasive style of pop persists. As PopMatters’s Paul Carr notes, “For every hook or vocal melody, there is a contrasting, experimental noise, as if the band are at pains to scuff up the sound if things become too comfortable.”