After living with the uncertainty of immigration police and drug abuse, the 19-year-old artist moves forward through the solidarity of his supporters.
Photos by Lil EG
Less than 400 miles away from Los Angeles, Pink Cig has kept his head down and his work ethic up, reaching revered corners of the scene while maintaining a tight-lipped stance. His status as a humble force is in harmony with his environment, Phoenix, Arizona, where he was born and raised. The fifth-largest city in the United States, it can be easy to overlook the hub of the South West in favor of its predecessors, Houston and Chicago, especially when it comes to matters of rap. Yet, the 19-year-old describes his city as experiencing a renaissance as artists who previously left for New York and L.A. boomerang home. Within an extensive metro area connected by mountains and palm trees alike, the “Angel Dust” rapper perpetuates this seeming contradiction, treading into country sounds as easily as R&B. Despite his dynamism, he learned to tread lightly through an unforgiving upbringing.
“I would always move in the same city from apartment to apartment,” Pink Cig recalls of his childhood. “Because we’d move every year, I never really went outside to get to know the people I lived around.” Fortunately, his talent for soccer translated seamlessly into playing FIFA inside. While he was often left to his own devices with his brother due to his parents’ demanding work schedules, he knew better than to ask to go out, explaining, “both my parents came from Mexico and came from broken families, so they were a little overprotective of me.” Further complicating matters was a fear of immigration officials that ran throughout his family – an underlying anxiety that touched Pink Cig deeply. “I’ve had multiple instances when a knock at my door would create panic,” he describes. “We’d turn all the lights off and I’d have to get away from the windows and doors and go into hiding.”
Despite these challenges, Pink Cig had sources of positivity to tap into, which ultimately placed him on the road to creating music. It was through his father that he developed a deep passion for classic rock – just one of the many traits he says he’s inherited. “My dad when he was younger back in Mexico was a fucking weirdo because all of his homies would be bumping Mexican shit,” he says, making a Reggaeton-type rhythm, “but he was listening to rock music and wearing all black and he had his hair long.” While sounds ranging from AC/DC to the Beatles were in the household rotation, it was Pink Floyd that particularly struck a chord with the young artist, ultimately inspiring half of his own moniker. “[Their] music was just so fucking beautiful to me, like, not even exaggerating, that shit would bring tears to my eyes with just how pretty it sounded,” he explains. “It was the pinnacle of how music should sound.”
Pink Cig’s introduction to music did not stop at rock and roll. He joined newfound junior high buddies in a Kik group chat, where one fateful day after class a participant was brave enough to drop a video of himself freestyling with no beat. Confident that he could beat him at his own game, Pink Cig challenged him to a virtual rap battle, which he ultimately won. Having discovered that there was raw talent amongst their friend group in the process, they decided to transform themselves into a collective. “We saved up money and bought a little $50 microphone,” he says of their main tool, which he continued to use up until 2019. Thematically, the group was “a mix of really ignorant shit and really conscious, trying to be J. Cole-type shit” as they internalized mainstream rap.
Eventually, Pink Cig hijacked the mic. He set up in front of the computer in his living room where he would watch YouTube tutorials and experiment in Audacity. “I miss those days when I would just shit post on Soundcloud, when I’d make a song and as soon as that shit was finished, I’d drop it,” he says of his recording process at the time. His demos would amass around 10 plays, sometimes even 20, “and those 20 were probably fools who knew me,” he adds. But there was still one critic he couldn’t escape: his little brother. With a two-bedroom apartment to accommodate the family of four, the youngest of the family got the couch and was subsequently exiled when it was time to record. Cig recalls one memorable instance: “He got mad as fuck at me, he was like ‘man, you’re always telling me to go into your room but the music you make is wack bro, I just want to watch TV.” Over time, the presence of a brutally honest sibling proved to be an asset to his makeshift studio. “That shit was mad funny to me because later on when I started getting better, he started telling me ‘yo, I actually like this,’ and I knew this time, he meant it.”
As Pink Cig progressed through high school, his presence as an artist continued to evolve. He tried on many names, including Yung Pegasus, which was based on a vision he had while high in a forest with one of his buddies, who corroborated the sighting of the creature. Eventually, Pink Cig—a combination of his rock influence and a poem he wrote about a burning cigarette—stuck for good. As he grew secure in his colorful manicures and shadowy outfits, he refused to become complacent in one identity when it came to his sound. While he admits that his songwriting process has become more calculated since his living room days, Pink Cig has remained as contradictory as the fuck bitches/stay in school disposition he put forth in junior high. This approach has manifested Spanish-spoken “Mentí,” country ballad “Love At the Rodeo,” and, of course, favorites like “Xanny Bars 222” and “Angel Dust” – the latter featuring his longtime local collaborator and one of his few trusted friends, Emo Fruits.
While Pink Cig’s life has largely been marked by solitude, the growth of his music was accompanied by a swift turn in his personal life. Thrust into the thick of teenage chaos, he would often leave school to do drugs with his friends. “I grew up around those shits,” he explains. “My homies were always either selling them or doing them, but I never really got into them until I was about 14.” This was the same age at which Pink Cig noticed a shift in his mood and outlook, which he later came to know as depression. As alcohol and marijuana escalated into Xanax, Percocet, and OxyContin, Pink Cig remained convinced that he was only using recreationally, stating, “I would just kid myself, like, I’m not doing these drugs because I’m sad, I’m just doing them because they’re fun, I like how they feel, just shit like that.” In addition to partying at friends’ houses, his buddies and he would run the streets, testing the boundaries of what they could get away with. From throwing rocks through windows to picking fights to “stealing shit like it was free,” Pink Cig acted out, but, over time, the socialization led back to isolation, particularly as he got more heavily into drugs.
Convinced that he would die by fate before 18—the age at which he would see harsher ramifications for his actions—the future didn’t seem ambiguous as it does for many young people. In fact, it was completely obsolete. While Pink Cig continued to make music, he started spending more time in his room, neglecting calls and texts in favor of watching YouTube and “enjoying highs to the fullest extent.” As he kept silent from much of the music community, Pink Cig found words from his father hard to shake. “He would remind me that the world outside ain’t shit,” he explains. “There’s always going to be someone who is looking to get something out of you.” This wisdom proved to be difficult to abide by in an industry in which leeching is common but vast collaborations are expected.
Against the odds of acquired demons, Pink Cig is writing a new destiny. As his 20s lay on the horizon, he has been hard at work sharpening his social skills, studying the social cues between people engaging in public interactions. Perhaps the most significant task on his self-improvement list has been getting sober. The artist indicates that he is ready to confront his underlying struggles, stating, “I’m not all the way there [to begin with] so it didn’t make sense for me to throw addiction into the mix; it’s just throwing another problem into the clusterfuck of my head.” Making music has not only helped keep him busy, but it has allowed him a place to put the rollercoaster of emotions with which he has been embracing. While many of his tracks capture some of his darkest time, he has appreciation for the purpose that they serve. “It’s like a little compilation of the last few years,” he says of his release Beautiful Strangers, which will be followed up with an album comprised solely of new tracks.
Now more than ever, Pink Cig is taking the lessons that he shares with his fans seriously as his listenership has exponentially grown. In the time spent hidden away in his bedroom, it was kind comments professing relatability that managed to reach him. It is in this context that Pink Cig recalls additional words from his father: “There’s nothing new under the sun; everything you’re going through…a shit ton of people have already gone through it throughout history.” By striking a balance between embracing individualism and learning to find solace in solidarity, Pink Cig continues to ignite many shades.
Listen to Pink Cig’s new single “Pain Or Pleasure” below.