The high-spirited artist reveals her childhood jams, the production collaboration of her dreams, and the inspiration behind her single, “Hot Sauce”
Photo courtesy of @pinkcaravan
“Don’t you miss when fun was fun?” pinkcaravan! asks on her single “pop, lock & lemon drops.” Throughout her songs, the St. Louis rapper copes with dark topics over bubbly, upbeat production that transports you back to the days of ice cream trucks and nursery rhymes. Coming from a background of poetry in high school, she eventually started putting her words over beats. “I’ve always been interested in rap,” she explains. “I remember being like five years old and writing a rap or something, just for fun. I didn’t think I was gonna be a rapper, but that’s just what it turned into.”
Without any friends interested in making music when she started out, pinkcaravan! credits her mom as her earliest supporter and inspiration. “Growing up, I listened to a lot of Kanye West, Missy Elliot, obviously. My mom was super updated on hip-hop. The first CD I owned was Lil Bow-Wow, and then the first song I heard through headphones was 50 Cent. My mom would always just support what I did, she bought me a microphone interface when I was 16 and wanted to start making music. She raps around the house sometimes too—freestyles. She could release a mini-project or something,” she laughs.
While pinkcaravan! admits she wants to get better at promoting her music and using the internet, the 24-year-old rapper is often open about her struggles with mental health online. i always cry on my birthday because i’m not where i want 2 be. no more pain like mary j blige said! i have so much to accomplish this year. im finally getting back to myself…, she wrote in a post after her birthday this year. “I think about my career a lot,” she explains. “I just want to be able to provide for my family. Until I can do that, I’m not where I want to be.”
Her lyrics read like morbidly honest poetry, hidden behind bouncy Mario-type beats. “Cindy Lou who / Christmas stole my joyful jolly rendezvous / I picked life from a tree/ 18 years prior / suicidal thoughts picking on me / for Pete’s sake I / romanticize the sweet days,” she sings on “Coogi Sweater” from her first EP, a very sad happy birthday, which was entirely produced by her frequent collaborative partner, Namesake. “I feel like a lot of people can get down on their birthdays, I know I do,” she says of the EP’s title. “I don’t know if I’m that way anymore, but when I was a little younger I used to be like, ‘if I don’t get it done by 24, 25, it’s over for me.’”
In an Instagram caption shared at the end of 2019, pinkcaravan! wrote, I didn’t release any new music this year cuz… well life happens! She credits fellow St. Louis native Smino for pushing her to keep going. “He showed love so early on. Probably the first song I posted on Twitter, he messaged me and he was like, ‘No matter what, you can’t stop. You just gotta keep going.’ I think about that a lot—like, I can’t stop, you know? Him being from St. Louis and going so far is really inspiring. He always shows love, I’m very grateful for him.” In February of this year, she broke the radio silence since her second EP 2002 with the bouncy single “Hot Sauce.”
For pinkcaravan!, songwriting is a way to process life as it goes on around her. “I’m most inspired by things I’ve seen with my own eyes,” she says. “Whether I’m inspired by sad or happy moments in my life, I’ll write about them. I like to come up with cute melodies to go with them.” For “Hot Sauce,” she drew from a part of her childhood spent at a homeless shelter with her siblings and mom. “The food they provided was trash. The only thing we ever ate from there was potato chips and hot sauce. I remember putting hot sauce on potato chips and drinking grape Kool-Aid, they didn’t have any other flavor ever. I’ll probably never drink grape Kool-Aid again.”
I saw in the comments on your “Hot Wheelz” music video someone said, ‘one day you’re gonna have to do an interview and tell us why you chose this rap style.’
I think it chose me. I would just say I’m having fun, it’s always gonna be unexpected. I feel like it can range from “Bombay” to “Hot Sauce”—two completely different feels, you know? Just writing about what I feel and trying to put it into that moment.
I saw another comment that described you as ASMR hip-hop.
I kind of fell into that style. I have to be quiet [when] recording sometimes. My second EP I recorded in the closet. I was living at home with my mom. it was actually her closet.
You and Namesake have great chemistry together, when did you get in touch with him?
I was looking for someone to produce “a very sad happy birthday.” I knew I wanted it short—three songs, so I was reaching out to people in St. Louis, and this guy introduced me to Namesake. I went on his page to see beats, and he had one called ‘Mario type beat.’ I was in his DMs, ‘I need something like that Mario type beat.’ Within a day, he sent over the first beat, which ended up being on the project. We did it super fast, within like a month’s time. We became friends after that…we’re a good duo.
Are there any producers in particular that you want to work with one day?
I want to work with meltycanon, he produces for Father a lot. I feel like it’s gonna happen. 2021.
Are you still unsigned? The only thing that came up when I looked it up was something called Larry the Llama.
No label. I just always put Larry the Llama for my distribution. Llamas are my favorite animal, and then Larry…I dunno, it just went together. Larry the Llama.
I saw that “Hot Sauce” was mixed by Alex Tumay. How did that come about?
I performed in New York at an EP release for this artist Ness Nite. Tumay saw me there at this really small, intimate event. Afterward, he came up to me and said, ‘I really like your sound,’ and that we should record together sometime. It took a while, but we got in the studio and recorded “Hot Sauce” there with him.
You went by a different name at first, JSMN. Why the switch to pinkcaravan!?
People kept calling me like, ‘Jameson,’ or something that. And when people would say ‘have you heard of Jasmine?’ it just sounded like, I dunno, someone’s homegirl. So I was like, alright, I have to change my name. And it was just pinkcaravan!
Why the exclamation mark at the end?
Because we’re here to have some fun!
You said you’re living in Phoenix, Arizona now. What’s your day-to-day life been like since you’ve moved?
Pretty boring with the pandemic, I wish I had more to talk about. I dunno…get up, eat a Pop-Tart.
How’s the music scene in Phoenix? Or what was it that drew you there specifically?
I don’t know too much about the music scene. I’m really to myself out here right now. I think I’m just drawn to being closer to L.A. so I can go out there more often—and I have been. I had to get out of the Midwest.
What’s in the future for pinkcaravan!? Is the plan to move to L.A. eventually?
Yes! I think that’s where I belong. I want to get better, release more, and just change the game. There’s more crazy stuff coming soon.
Listen to pinkcaravan!’s single “bombay!” (prod. Namesake & Quib) below.