Niko Rubio knew she always wanted to be a singer. The hard part was figuring out what she wanted to sound like.
The 24-year-old singer-songwriter, who was born in the Los Angeles South Bay and is of Mexican and Salvadoran descent, was always encouraged by her family to pursue her artistic ambitions. When Rubio was a preteen, her maternal grandmother even pushed her to audition for “La Voz Kids,” the Spanish offshoot of “The Voice” for singers under the age of 15. She wasn’t picked for the show, but it reaffirmed her belief that she was meant to be a singer.
“I’m the first generation that is allowed to sing, that has the opportunity to really not have a baby,” she said. “To say ‘Grandma, grandpa, I’m not going to go to college. I’m going to go figure out how to be a songwriter.’”
Like many children of immigrants in Southern California, Rubio grew up listening to music in English and Spanish. Her grandfather Sergio would play Pedro Infante and Shakira, while her mother, Vilma, exposed her to the likes of Sublime and No Doubt.
Rubio, who’s very close to her maternal grandparents, said they wanted her to sing traditional Mexican music, but it was a piece of advice from her mom that relieved some of the pressure she might have been feeling.
“I wanted to make them happy,” she says. “Then my mom was like, ‘F— that! Do whatever the f— you want.’”
In “Ring Ring,” she does exactly that. The four-track EP, released July 15 on Atlantic Records, is an expression of her upbringing and explores what it means to grow up bilingual and first generation in this country at this time. Instruments that are staples of traditional Mexican music underpin catchy pop ballads sung in Spanish. “Baby,” the EP’s first track, opens with the accordion before Rubio’s sultry voice kicks in. In “Quisiera Saber,” Rubio beckons to someone she desires but cannot have in a dreamy intonation, channeling Lana del Rey and backed by percussion and strings reserved for boleros romanticos.
Rubio began her career in the world of alt-R&B and alt-rock. At 19, she signed with independent label Sandlot Records, founded by songwriter Jacob Kasher, who has written for Britney Spears, Selena Gomez, Maroon 5, Dua Lipa and Lady Gaga. She looks back on her early work fondly, but recognizes she was still learning who she was as an artist.
“I was so young,” she says. “My first EP [2021’s “Wish You Were Here”] is like a very pop, alt-rock project that I love and I’m very proud of, but I was just too afraid. I didn’t have the knowledge or really the understanding of myself.”
And though the EP did include a track in Spanish — ”Amor” — her sound was missing a key component: her Latino roots. She wanted to capture a mix of the California she grew up in.
“I had this idea of making this alternative Mexican California beach rock-meets-mariachi romanticos kind of album,” she said.
“I told the whole f—team, I told my whole label: ‘I’m making two projects in Spanish. I’m taking a break from English. This is what I have to do for my family. This is what I have to do for myself.’”
She agonized over what it would sound like.
“I didn’t want to just be another Latin artist that was making another thing for the void that wasn’t going to be special, or say anything, or tell the right story,” she said.
She eventually found the perfect collaborator in Grammy Award-winning producer Lester Mendez. Rubio says she admired how Mendez tapped into Shakira’s Lebanese and Colombian influences in her 2005 album “Fijación Oral, Vol. 1.” She wanted something like that for her own work — an eclectic blend of personal influences.
The two worked on “Mar y Tierra,” Rubio’s first Spanish-language EP released last September. It features the standout track “Sirena,” a bossa-nova-influenced romantico duet with Hawthorne-based singer Cuco.
“Ring Ring” was originally slated to drop in June, but then masked federal agents descended on Los Angeles, carrying out immigration raids and terrorizing immigrant communities across the country. Like the rest of the world, she was in shock — so much that she postponed her album release show. She rescheduled it to July 15, donating 10% of all her merch sales to the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, the immigration advocacy group that provides legal assistance and policy organizing.
“My first headline show was the most epic amazing special sweet perfect night,” she wrote on her Instagram after her show. “I’m just the luckiest girl in the world.”
In many ways, Rubio was inspired to see people fight back against the immigration raids and proud that Southern California presented itself as a unified front.
“It was amazing to see everyone come together for the protest, and how the city of Bell stood up to ICE agents was incredible,” she said, referring to a mid-June protest.
“We need more of that. This is a fight that isn’t equal because people are afraid to stand up and become the next target, so those of us who need to speak up. I’m proud of my generation speaking out; it would be easy to turn a blind eye, but we won’t. We were raised by and around immigrants, and we won’t allow for this disturbing abuse of power.”
When asked what it means to sing in Spanish at this moment, Rubio is unapologetic about her roots.
“I think right now, more than ever, it is so important to be proud of being Mexican and Salvadorian,” Rubio said. “It is so important to speak our truth. It is so important to honor our culture, honor our heritage, honor the fact that our families worked so hard for us to be here, and we deserve to be here, and we are. We are here. We’re here.”
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