It would be a grave mistake to open the Pink Siifu pigeonhole and miss out on everything that drives the Alabama-born, Ohio-raised artist. Simply asking him what audiences can expect when he makes his Miami debut at III Points brings this warning: “Don’t expect anything. Never expect anything,” says Pink Siifu. New Times via Zoom from New York. “I want people to come in with no expectations other than quality, but don’t expect anything with sound.”
It can be a swinging punk-rock, hip-hop hybrid, like his raw album on black identity, ebony. Or it can be done by his signature cadence and the art of storytelling with little more than a simple beat. “I want to play with 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, the Miami booty bassist enters the conversation as soon as he starts talking about his brother, Dee, who was born and raised in Fort Lauderdale.
“Scam Daddy, Uncle Luke, SpaceGhostPurrp – me and mine [producers] Apollo and Peso, we were big fans of SpaceGhostPurrp. I still touch what he plays,” Siifu says. “I always wanted to be my brother and I would listen to what he was listening to, which was the stuff from Florida.”
Born Livingston Matthews, Siifu moved from Birmingham to Cincinnati when he was 6 years old. He took up the trumpet, switched to drums around fifth or sixth grade, and was part of his school’s marching band. Matthews began writing poetry and, like most college freshmen, used a lot of different music.
Matthews started producing under the name Pink Siiffu in 2016 when he debuted his album. Two thousand and nine. What followed were eight albums, two deluxe editions and a slew of songs that included everything from Thai love ballads, doo-wop and every other hit.
Part of the magic comes from the 30-year-old rapper’s ability to work with multiple producers. Each has a different range to create a song that strays far 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 said, ‘Brother, I heard this song in a taxi and he gave me the song.’ And I listened to it and I thought it was beautiful. I gave it a loop and then let Navy Blue take it from there. We killed him.”
Siifu, along with Peso Gordon and Chuck Strangers, recently dropped Pour the Wine as well as a nine track album. real bad flights, with Real Bad Man co.
“I was just making songs and I heard that beat and I knew I wanted Chuck to jump on the hook,” Siifu says of “Pour The Wine.” “I rolled my nigga Peso. I wanted it to be cinematic and 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 down the hook.”
“Smile with your gold teeth/Smile with your gold teeth/Smile with your gold teeth,He subtly commands the listener on “Ensley (Smile Made of Gold)” from his 2018 album of the same name. Siifu could have borrowed from his Southern and Ohio roots and rapped using torpedoes favored by Lil Yo. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and Andre 3000. Instead, his tempo is much slower – almost sleepy.
“I learned how to rap from Lil Wayne, Outkast, Mos Def. It’s more old man shit,” he explains. “I like niggas rapping like an old man — Earl Sweatshirt, Navy Blue, Maxo. It’s so organic, old man talk from these young cats.
“Lil Wayne gets on a track and get lazy. Eminem did that a lot and played with words. This new song I did, I was like I rhymed ‘experience’ with ‘soul.’ Sometimes you gotta be lazy to rhyme like that. It’s storytelling, it’s being fashionable. I like to rap in a different pocket than other people, or sometimes not, and it’s already laid out for you.”
Otherwise, ebony The track “FK” is a punk anthem filled with screams and chord progressions that crackle through the amps – only to hit the brakes and switch to a distorted vocal snarl over a barebones beat.
Siifu is equally inspired by George Clinton, with whom he identifies on a spiritual level, and great jazz legends like 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 on, and I was like, ‘Damn, that’s my vibe.’ And I’ve always loved music that comes like that shit, but I also like music that comes from young niggas, and international people and mutations of world music.”
Siifu wants to give the same feeling to the listener. “I want people to have an experience. I want people who listen to my music to say, ‘Wow, I want to see this live.’
Pink Siifu in III Points 2022. From 3 p.m. to 4 a.m. Friday, Oct. 21 and Saturday, Oct. 22, at Mana Wynwood, 318 NW 23rd St., Miami; iiipoints.com. Tickets are $119 to $499 through iiipoints.frontgatetickets.com.
