Pink Siifu It’s in these tender moments that Nymph shines. “Firefly,” “Heaven,” and “Coochie (A Bedtime Story)” are perhaps some of the best cuts on the album for that very reason. “Coochie,” in particular, is a standout, telling the listener, “gotta get the coochie coo,” playing on the double entendre for the seductive lullaby. While she worked with producers like Danny L. Harle, Arca, Mura Masa, and Blood- Pop on the album, it’s her partnership with longtime collaborator Sega Bodega that has proven to be the most fruitful. She cofounded the no-fucks-given record label Nuxxe in 2017 alongside him and Coucou Chloe, and the vast majority of the production on Shygirl’s cata- logue has been produced or coproduced by him. (Six of Nymph’s 12 tracks have his input.) “Me and Sega have been friends long be- fore making music, so it kind of felt natural to utilize that space in music,” she explains of her collaborator. “He was the person to ask me to start working with him. Before I ever made anything, he was the person I was mak- ing stuff with.” Their work together, she adds, is a testa- ment to their friendship and the freedom they give each other both in music and life. “It set the standard for my other working relation- ships,” she says. “I think it’s why I’m particu- lar with who I work with.” Before Nuxxe, Shygirl was drawn to Lon- don’s nightlife through her work as a photog- rapher’s assistant and later a casting agent’s assistant. Eventually, she got a job as a booker at a modeling agency, allowing her to meet DJs at fashion events around town and lead- ing her to start DJ’ing herself. In 2018, she found herself managing other artists, DJ’ing, and making music. Realizing her side gigs were generating substantial income, she quit the modeling agency and devoted her- self full-time to music. “I liked my day job, but I was like, This music thing feels like something that can happen now, and I can always go back to my job if I so choose,” she says. Five years later, the gamble has paid off for Shygirl. She has been performing around the globe, she’s set to make her Miami debut on the first day of III Points, and she’ll go on a headlin- ing tour starting in December. Her appearance at the Wynwood festival will be the first time she’s ever set foot in the Magic City, an occasion she admits she’s been looking forward to. “Miami is definitely somewhere I’ve been wanting to go for ages,” she says. “I got this Mi- ami show, and then I got this show in the Cay- man Islands, and then I got shows in Brazil, Buenos Aires, and Santiago. I’ve got a quite nice run of shows happening, and I’ve been looking forward to this side of the year for a while.” Noting that many of her friends are joining her on the III Points lineup, she says she can’t wait to check out Flume and Rosalía’s perfor- mances in particular. “It’s definitely been a highlight of my calendar,” she says. “I can’t wait to come.” III Points 2022.3 p.m. to 4 a.m. Friday, October 21, and Saturday, October 22, at Mana Wynwood, 318 NW 23rd St., Miami; iiipoints.com. Tickets cost $119 to $499 via iiipoints.frontgatetickets.com. I t would be a grave mistake to pigeonhole Pink Siifu and miss everything that drives the Ala- bama-born, Ohio-raised artist. Just asking him what the audience can expect when he makes his Miami debut at III Points brings this warning: “Don’t expect nothing. Don’t ever expect anything,” Pink Siifu tells New Times via Zoom from New York. “I want people to walk in with no expectations other than quality, but don’t expect anything sonically.” It could be a punk-rock-thrashing, hip-hop-shak- ing hybrid à la his raw album on Black identity, Negro. Or it may be done by his signature cadence and art of storytelling with little more than a simple beat. “I want to play Miami. I want to move to Miami,” he adds. “I don’t know if I want to die in Miami, but I want to grow old in Miami.” Inevitably, Miami booty bass enters the conversa- tion once he starts talking about his brother, Dee, who was born and raised in Fort Lauderdale. “Trick Daddy, Uncle Luke, SpaceGhostPurrp — me and my [producers] Apollo and Peso, we were big SpaceGhostPurrp fans. I still tap into what he plays,” Siifu says. “I always wanted to be my brother, and I would listen to what he listened to, which was Flor- ida stuff.” Born Livingston Matthews, Siifu moved from Bir- mingham to Cincinnati when he was 6 years old. He took up the trumpet, switched to drums around the fifth or sixth grade, and was part of his school’s marching band. Matthews took up writing poetry and, like most first-year college students, tapped into different music heavily. Matthews started producing under the Pink Siiffu moni- ker in 2016 when he debuted his album, Twothousandnine. What came next were eight albums, two deluxe versions, and a slew of singles incorporating anything from Thai love bal- lads, doo-wop, and whatever hits different. Some of the magic comes from the 30-year-old rapper’s ability to work with numerous producers. Each has a differ- ent palette to create a track that strays far away from the mainstream. “My friend Q — he was traveling somewhere,” he says of the Thai love ballad loop used on the Navy Blue-produced track “Stay Sane.” “I don’t know where, and he was like, ‘Bro, I heard this song in a taxi, and he gave me the song.’ And I heard it and thought it was beautiful. I made a loop to it and then let Navy Blue take it from there. We killed it.” Siifu, alongside Peso Gordon and Chuck Strangers, re- cently dropped “Pour the Wine” as well as a nine-track al- likes of Lil Yo, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and Andre 3000. In- stead, his cadence is much slower — almost drowsy. “I learned how to rap by Lil Wayne, Outkast, Mos Def. It’s more old-man shit,” he explains. “I love niggas to rap like an old man — Earl Sweatshirt, Navy Blue, Maxo. It’s very or- ganic, old-man talk from these young cats. “Lil Wayne gets on a track and be lazy. Eminem did that a lot and played with words. This one new track I did, I was like I rhymed ‘experience’ with ‘spirit.’ Sometimes you gotta be lazy to rhyme like that. It’s storytelling; it’s being fashionable. I love rapping in a different pocket than other people, or sometimes I don’t, and it’s already laid out for you.” Conversely, the Negro track “FK” is a punk anthem spiked with screams and chord progressions screeching through the amplifiers — only to slam the brakes and transition into a dis- torted vocal rapping over a barebones beat. Siifu is equally inspired by George Clinton, whom he iden- tifies with on a spiritual level, and the great jazz legends like PRETTIER IN PINKDon’t expect anything from bum, Real Bad Flights, with collaborator Real Bad Man. “I was just making songs, and I heard that beat and knew I wanted Chuck to jump on the hook,” Siifu says about “Pour The Wine.” “I looped my nigga Peso. I wanted him to get cin- ematic and go biblical on it. Real Bad Man did the beat. It was very authentic how it came together. I did my first verse, and Chuck laid out the hook.” “Smile with your gold teeth/Smile with your gold teeth/Smile with your gold teeth,” he delicately commands the listener on “Ensley (Smile Made of Gold ) “ off the 2018 same-named al- bum. Siifu could have borrowed from his Southern and Ohio roots and rapped using torpedo tongue twisters favored by the Pink Siifu at III Points. BY GRANT ALBERT Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra or experimental outfits like the Pixies, Radiohead, and Death Grips. “I used to go to this thing with my mom and dad called Jazz in the Park in Cincinnati, and they used to have old school niggas and jazz records,” he recalls. “Frank Beverly would come, and I was like, ‘Damn, this my vibe.’ And I al- ways wanted music that came like that shit, but I also enjoy music that comes from young niggas, too, and international folks and world music shit.” Siifu wants to deliver that same feeling to the listener. “I want people who get the experience. I want people who lis- ten to my music to say, ‘Shit, I want to see this live.’” 2 7 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC |MIAMI NEW TIMES miaminewtimes.com | CONTENTS | LETTERS | RIPTIDE | METRO | NIGHT+DAY | STAGE | ART | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | NEW TIMES MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2008 OCTOBER 20-26, 2022 Aicha Soussan
