✦pink cig✦ is an emo rap artist based in Arizona. I remember listening to his music on Soundcloud at work a few years back. He really knew how to convey emotions in a relatable way and seemed to be someone I got to know personally through his music.
The mark of a true artist is someone who does their craft out of catharsis and that is clearly the case with him. This is definitely someone I see blowing up in a huge way in 2019.
He just dropped a single, “Loser 00”, and is approaching the release of his LP, Beautiful Strangers.
Here are the ten albums that most influence ✦pink cig✦:
Lil Tracy- TRACYS MANGA
“AYEE LIL TRACYYYYYY. I’ve always considered Tracy to be one of the finest lyricists of our generation, for real. His word play, not only on this album, but throughout his catalogue of music, be catching you off guard sometimes leaving you wanna listen to every song again just to pick out all the cool shit he says. I fuck with that heavy. Lil Tracy been an artist in my top 5 because I can go to his music for whatever. When I’m feeling sad, when I’m feeling pretty, when I’m feeling anxious, etc. Pretty much anything I’m feeling, he got a song for. This project was my introduction to an artist that played a major role in my development as a musician, and it wouldn’t be my list if Lil Tracy wasn’t on it.”
Pink Floyd- The Wall
“Sonically, Pink Floyd was godhead to me for a while. I grew up on them & when I started making music myself, their music, in my head at the time, was what music should sound like. The reason I added The Wall as opposed to any other of their albums is because I remember being about 8 or 9 years old and singing “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2” with a passion because I hated school so fuckin’ much. I would be in class singing in my head “we don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control, no dark sarcasm in the classroom, teacher leave them kids alone!!” without even completely understanding what it meant.” (he laughs) “The Pink in ✦pink cig✦ is actually out of homage. I got Pink Floyd to thank for not being another brick in the wall.”
Young Thug- Slime Season 3
“Young Thug’s impact on music today is already undeniable. Thugga been a legend in my heart from the moment his melody-rich mumbles first came in contact with my ear drums in 2015-2016. Slime Season 3 is the project that made me fall in love with his discography. The way Young Thug uses his voice to convey a message that sometimes can’t be transmitted with words has always been beautiful to me. I love that you don’t always have to understand what he’s saying and yet he’ll still get his point across, that’s a trait I admire. As far as his actions outside of music go I also feel like his fashion sense provided a push for me. Back when first I seen Young Thug in a dress that shit was so sick to me, as a straight male with traditionally feminine tendencies, I like that he didn’t limit his options to boy clothes or girl clothes. He said ‘fuck gender roles ima look pretty ima wear what I want.’ It showed me to really not give a fuck about what another straight dude gotta say about your sexuality. thanks to young thug ima do me regardless.”
Amir Obe- Happening in the Grey Area
“”Amir Obe is so fire. I been bumpin’ his music since sophomore year of high school after I had just broken up with the girl I was with. This project got me through some shit. Songs like “The Only” & “Still No Good” are songs I immediately identified with and the production throughout the project undoubtedly served as inspiration to get out my feelings and make better music. It was at that point when I started writing songs about the girl I lost & sonically Amir Obe became an artist that I looked up to.”
Ariel Camacho y Los Plebes Del Rancho- El Karma
“My appreciation for this album is directly correlated to where I grew up in Arizona and the girls from my city. But overall the fact that it’s that braggadocios narco shit I fuck with whilst at the same time a body of work that contains sentimental shit too. Ariel Camacho does such a beautiful job at transitioning between threatening opps, flexin’, and writing ballads for the woman on his mind. Effortlessly. And the fluidity in the transition between topics is something I look up to. I sing about different shit than Ariel Camacho but I’m definitely tryna’ go into making corridos at some point in my life. I’m tryna’ do as much as I can while I can. To me it’s almost like there are certain emotions that can be translated so much better using spanish words & Ariel Camacho’s music is an example of that.”
Lil Peep- Crybaby
“This album changed my life. When Crybaby came out I was 16, heart broken, and lost. As I saw the world around me fall to pieces I jumped into the void in hopes of catching up to it. In order to keep my mind from destroying me I set out to destroy it first and in my eyes self destruction was to be my fate and my demise. I was too tired to want to live and too afraid to let anyone know I wanted to die, because my stomach turned at the thought of their pity. I thought I was just being a bitch. I hated myself for feeling the way I did, and I hated myself for not being like the other kids. While the other boys where focused on gettin’ into girls, I was too caught up tryna’ get out of my mind. I heard Lil Peep cry my stories over 808 filled guitar samples, for the first time I knew it was okay. I knew I wasn’t alone anymore, and for that I’ll always be grateful.”
Jalopy Bungus- Samson
“This is one of my favorite albums of 2019 so far. Jalopy Bungus go into some real shit in this album & I appreciate that. The concept of feeling like Samson alone, of knowing you have your mission and turning your back on it only to be left betrayed, is one that’s been circulating my mind a lot. I fuck with Jalopy Bungus for putting these feelings into words. The paranoia, the naivety, the fake love, and the secrecy that comes with this music shit. Songs like “I, Me, Myself (Delilah)” & “Procrastinating Suicide” are songs that any girl with any type of long term interest in me gon’ have to listen to. It might just give them an idea of the shit that cross my mind better than I could describe with my own words.”
Emo Fruits- LONELYWORLD
“I have a placement on this album & I love Fruits so this one might be a little biased but I guess that’s what makes it special. Right before this album dropped in March of 2018 Fruits & I were working on our first solo projects after we made Girls, Drugs, & Dying together, and about 2 months in fruits sent me his album. While I was listening to LONELYWORLD, every song back to back was a song I fucked with, and in my mind all I could think about was that it was this dude who I knew and fucked with that made it, “somebody I know made this album”. After my first time through, as soon as the last track ended I trashed my album on the spot. I probably had like 7 songs done that I never released to this day because I felt like his was just so much better to me and I wanted to use that as motivation to improve, so I started over and Beautiful Strangers LP is gonna be my first full length project over a year later. There really is no ✦pink cig✦ with out Emo Fruits. I mean, I’d still be making music, shit wouldn’t be the same at all though.”
Ghostmane- Plagues
“Plagues was my gateway into Ghostemane in 2016 & it didn’t take long before he was one of my favorite artists overall. His Three 6 inspired flows and his hardcore vocal parts come together so fuckin’ nicely with his cold ass, dark self-produced beats. How different he sounded from the music everybody else fucked with definitely had people saying I listened to weird shit but I didn’t give a fuck. Ghostemane fye. I stand by it.”
Led Zeppelin- Mothership
“The role Led Zeppelin played in the development of my love for music is a crucial one. Me, being a son of immigrants that came to this country with nothing, I didn’t get to see my father too much growing up simply due to the fact that he would work from before I woke up until after I fell asleep most days. Whenever I did see him around, he would blast rock he grew up listening to in the apartment and so I had no choice but to fall in love with Zeppelin at one point or another. Over time as I started making my own music I started realizing the influence Robert Plant’s vocals alone have had on the way I used mine and I can only hope my music means as much to anybody as much as Led Zeppelin’s music means to me.”
Check out ✦pink cig✦’s newest single, “Loser 00”:
Grab some ✦pink cig✦ merch for his upcoming LP, Beautiful Strangers by clicking here!
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