Ruby Ibarra
Ruby wears jewelry by Wholly Toledo and T-shirt by ELLERALI. Jacket, stylist’s own. Photography B. Milky. Styling Stephanie Gancayco.
On her 2017 debut, Ruby Ibarra said everything with her chest. Now, allow the rapper and scientist to reintroduce herself.
Text Adelle Platon
Photography B. Milky
Creative Direction & Styling Stephanie Gancayco
Beauty Amanda Arroyo
This story originally appeared in Hella Pinay Issue 02: Interconnected - Fall/Winter 2021. Order a digital copy here.
Ruby Ibarra still considers herself an up-and-comer but her decade-plus career in rap could dispute that. It’s been four years since the Filipino-American multi-hyphenate — she’s a rapper, spoken word artist, producer, director and biotech scientist — released her debut album, 2017’s CIRCA91, a tribute to the year she moved from her native Tacloban City in the Philippines with her mother to San Lorenzo, California.
Before that, the Bay Area poet dropped her hard-hitting 2012 mixtape Lost in Translation, racked up views on YouTube with a cosign from XXL magazine and flaunted her flows as a member of the spoken-word collective SickSpits during her time in college at UC Davis. It’s clear that when it comes to rap, Ibarra’s not new to this.
In a genre born from the Black community’s talents, hip-hop has seen few Asian women shine. For Ibarra, though, writing rhymes and spitting flows wasn’t a cheat code to fame. As a kid, she was a shy introvert who transformed her diary entries about everyday life as a first-generation immigrant into soliloquies. Raised on late Filipino hip-hop artist Francis M’s 1999 album Yo! and J Dilla beats, Ibarra studied the genre’s greats and memorized lyrics from the likes of Francis M, Lauryn Hill, Tupac and Snoop Dogg since she was five. In hindsight, it was an exercise for what would eventually become Ibarra’s life’s passion: storytelling.
Fast-forward to 2021 and Ibarra still demonstrates the same level of dedication. While the pandemic hasn’t blocked her hustle, she’s been keeping a tight schedule, juggling married life, working with DNA at a biotech company, and digging deeper into who she is as a Pinay beyond rap. During a rare gap in her tightly packed schedule, Ibarra hopped on Zoom for a nourishing conversation with Hella Pinay and speaks on the real, emphasizing the importance of documenting and preserving the stories for us and by us.
Ruby wears a track jacket by Supreme. Photography B. Milky. Styling Stephanie Gancayco.
HELLA PINAY: Paint a picture of what it was like growing up in Tacloban.
RUBY IBARRA: I grew up in a household where, typically in the Philippines, you have a bunch of relatives living under one roof, and that was definitely our family dynamic. I had my mom, me, my baby sister, my uncle, my mom's cousin who is my aunt –– and all of us living together. My dad would visit annually since he was already a US citizen. But whenever I think about my past and Tacloban, it was always about being in that house with my relatives.
On a typical afternoon, we would watch those noontime variety shows on television. Everybody would circle around the television. Majority of the time, it was typically dancers, people singing, pop music covers of Madonna. And then one afternoon here comes this [rap] artist named Francis : who had pants similar to MC Hammer at the time, 'cause this was the '90s, and he performed the song called “Mga :.” That was truly my very first introduction to hip-hop.
There was no pressure to become an artista?
RI: There was never any pressure from my family. I was lucky in a way that my mom let us experiment and try different things. I studied violin as a kid. [My sister and I] joined different extracurricular activities and [my mom] had us test out what we were interested in.
When I bought my very first [recording] equipment, I saved lunch money to buy a microphone when I was in middle school. That was probably the moment when my mom realized that, 'Okay, I think this kid is interested in music and might want to do this professionally someday.' My mom always made sure to support it, whether that was buying additional equipment for me or actively listening to what I made. I owe a lot of the confidence that I have now in my artistry to the fact that I was supported at a young age. I think when our parents, especially our family, support us in what we love to do, that sheds the self-doubt that we inherently have within ourselves and allows us to soar and reach greater heights.
Did you ever see yourself becoming an artist?
RI: Thoughts like that might've been a bit more subconscious. In those early years, I was definitely a consumer, first and foremost, and I was also kind of researching at the same time and trying to receive as much hip-hop as I could all around me. It was more so just me trying to learn the songs that were playing on the radio.
For example, my mom ended up buying Francis’s first album called YO!. That was the only album that she brought in her luggage. I actually still have it. She'd pop it in our cassette player every afternoon when we'd do our chores. I'd slowly start memorizing [the raps] verbatim as a five-year-old kid, just playing it all over and over again since it was the only record that we had.
“I owe a lot of the confidence that I have now in my artistry to the fact that I was supported at a young age. I think when our parents, especially our family, support us in what we love to do, that sheds the self-doubt that we inherently have within ourselves and allows us to soar and reach greater heights”
Why do you think it's important, especially as a Filipino woman, to preserve your history and our history as a community?
RI: It's so important to preserve our history. I don't recall a time where I took US history or AP US history and [read] a single sentence about Filipino-Americans in my public high school. That's why it's important that we're not only writing our stories, but also preserving our history because people aren't doing it for us. We need to document it ourselves, especially now that we're getting into a lot of discussions around representation and visibility. What I've always been kind of fearful of: is who are the people that are going to be writing these stories? Are they going to be coming from our community? So I've always been very adamant that the people who write our stories are us.
Let’s revisit young Ruby in that apartment across the street from San Lorenzo High, who started rapping. What kind of songs were you writing?
RI: They were horrible. [Laughs] It was actually very, very heavy subject matter. One of the earliest full-length songs that I wrote was during my sophomore year of high school. The title of the song was called “Abuse.” In every verse, I wrote from the perspective of someone who was in different types of abusive relationships. I can't really remember why I decided to go with that topic. It wasn't necessarily a song that reflected my own reality, but maybe through relationships that I had heard, unfortunately, from my friends at the time, or seeing examples of it through family or friends. I think I felt compelled to kind of channel [them] and write from that perspective.
I've always thought of myself as an observer ever since I was a little kid. I was super shy, super quiet, but I would always watch the people around me. I still do [that] whenever I try to think of a new song or theme to write about. It’s just things that we as people go through, whether it's love, pain or joy.
Chokers, chains and belt, all custom Jenn Wong. Track jacket and pants, Supreme. Sneakers, artist’s own. Photography B. Milky. Styling Stephanie Gancayco.
Talk to me about experiencing culture shock and navigating a new place that’s so far from home.
RI: I think it wasn't until I started getting mocked for my accent or my language, or just realizing that I was different when I would turn on the TV and see white people all the time. The pop music that I would listen to from Britney Spears, The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC were all usually white people, either with brown hair or blonde hair. I had all the posters [of them] on my wall yet none of them looked like me at all. Here I was idolizing people that didn't reflect me physically, but also didn’t reflect my story and my family’s story.
For the longest time, these kinds of realizations made it difficult for me to grapple with my identity and also made it difficult for me to recognize how I fit in this overall puzzle called America. It's like how can you make this piece fit that's a completely different shape?
During the pandemic, there was a rise in anti-Asian hate. As someone still struggling with her identity, how did seeing this make you feel?
RI: Seeing the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes last year and this year is still so disheartening, saddening and disappointing. It's like that sentiment where you tell yourself some things never change. I've seen discrimination come into play not only in my own life, but seeing it with my friends that come from other communities of color. It's been very clear to me that racism has always existed in this country, but seeing it specifically affect the Asian-American community, it's upsetting because here we are, on one hand, turning on the news and seeing these violent acts, especially on the elderly in our community and thinking, ‘This can easily be my mom, my grandma, my uncle, my aunt, any one of my relatives.’
On the other hand, I flip the channel and I see advertisements for things like [the movie] Crazy Rich Asians. It kind of made me confused. We see people especially in Hollywood and in music, celebrating Asian-American representation, [saying] things are changing for the better because we're seeing more Asian faces on TV [while] at the same time, seeing this violence and very apparent and inherent racism, and systems of oppression still at play in this country. Seeing the polarizing differences made me realize that this country still has a long way to go and representation is not going to fix that.
If it’s anything the anti-Asian hate crimes has taught me, it was that representation is not the solution to the problems affecting our community. It's not representation that we need, it's liberation and education that we need. It's equipping our communities with the resources. Representation is great, but that's just surface-level stuff. That's just the entryway for people to know about our community. I'm hoping that people realize that we need to organize on a community level and really work together in making sure that we not only combat the racism and discrimination that is still happening on a daily basis, but that we're also dispelling these racist sentiments and notions that we're still being characterized and stereotyped with.
Jinx Earrings, Cobra Choker, Devoted Choker, Lace Cuff, all Wholly Toledo. Jordan L T-Shirt, ELLERALI. Jacket and pants, stylist’s own. Sneakers, artist’s own. Photography B. Milky. Styling Stephanie Gancayco.
How do you reconcile the issues happening here with what’s going on back home in the Philippines?
RI: There are a lot of social issues happening here. The Black community is still having to go through police brutality and these horrific crimes of being murdered in broad daylight. I can't believe it's 2020 and this is still happening. I found myself and a lot of my Filipino-American peers having to grapple with these different issues in this country, but at the same time, the laws put in place in the Philippines last year in limiting freedom of speech, and [navigating] that was just heavy overall.
I realized the importance and the significance of having a platform. To be honest, I was afraid to speak out at first because I know when I talk about Filipino issues, pertaining to what's happening in the Philippines, it might look like I can simply tweet out something, but on a personal level, it also impacts and affects my family. My mom lives in the Philippines right now. She moved there a couple of years ago with my stepdad so I'm also cognizant of the fact that when I do use my platform to say things that it can also inadvertently affect my mom in a negative way.
I think what finally led me to speak up about what was happening in the Philippines was I realized that I might be afraid, but I'm not unique in that experience. There are so many more people who are in a position where their hands are tied, even more than mine, that they have even less freedom, and those are the people that are actually living in the Philippines. I thought that I would be doing my platform a disservice if I didn't talk about the things that I speak about in my music, that I would be a hypocrite. I never want to do music or say things in my songs without actually having the actions behind them in real life.
When you look back on your own activism journey, were there any instances where you felt like you fumbled that became a teachable moment for you?
RI: I think I still have a lot of teachable moments to this day. I've been very fortunate that [my label] Beatrock Music is my family; not just in music, but they're my community too. I think releasing an album like CIRCA91 through Beatrock Music gave people the impression that I've been doing activism work for a long time. A majority of the [roster’s members] were organizers or activists and they ended up making music later down the road. For me, it was actually the opposite. I've been a poet and a musician first. I realized that there are themes [on CIRCA91] that people not only could relate to, but are also inherently political. I wanted to educate myself more in politics and educate myself on how I can actually be an organizer in my community.
Even to this day, I'm still hesitant about calling myself an activist. I think that a term like that is something that you earn and not something that you necessarily title yourself. So when it comes to the activist work that I do within and outside of music, I'm still very careful. I still see myself as someone who is still in the process of learning.
“It’s so important to preserve our history...We need to document it ourselves, especially now that we’re getting into a lot of discussions around representation and visibility. What I’ve always been kind of fearful of is: who are the people that are going to be writing these stories? Are they going to be coming from our community? So I’ve always been very adamant that the people who write our stories are us.”
I want to pivot to self-love. Being a part of a Filipino family, you get unfiltered criticism about your appearance and your choices constantly. Where are you in your self-acceptance journey?
RI: I attribute my accepting and celebrating being Filipino to taking ethnic studies courses, but also listening to [Filipino] artists like Blue Scholars and Bambu while I was still in college, being introduced to them, serving as my inspiration and later, [becoming my] collaborators. If it wasn't for artists like them who made me realize that there is a stage for us, that we can make music and make art, and we can document our stories, I don't think I'd be making the type of music I do now without the people that came before me. Me embracing being Filipino is still an ongoing journey.
When is the CIRCA91 follow-up coming and what are we going to hear Ruby talk about? Marriage, perhaps?
RI: I'll write my first love song. [Laughs] I'm definitely very excited about this next album. It's still in the recording process and nearing the mixing phase. What I can share right now is for me, this is an elevation of the previous work not just musically, but also story-wise and lyrically. On the previous album, I wanted to make sure that I told my story in the music, that people knew who the artist was by the time they listened to the last song on the album. With this next record, I have a bit more leeway to experiment and tell other stories as well beyond my experience as a Filipino-American because of course, there are other dimensions to me, there are other aspects of my life, other experiences that I've gone through.
I'm a lot more proud about this next album because I've been a lot more involved. I've been co-producing every single instrumental on the track as well and we have a lot of live instruments. There are no samples at all, all the way down to the grunts. I wanted to make sure everything was completely organic. It's definitely a lot more musical. You'll hear everything from hip-hop to jazz to rock.
Jinx Earrings, Cobra Choker, Devoted Choker, Lace Cuff, all Wholly Toledo. Jordan L T-Shirt, ELLERALI. Jacket, pants and purse, stylist’s own. Photography B. Milky. Styling Stephanie Gancayco.
Is there anything about the Ruby Ibarra narrative you'd like to dispel?
RI: I think the only thing that I've seen about me on social media that I'd like to dispel is that I'm not 100% confident all the time. I'm not this person that constantly has the courage, the audacity and the bravery to speak up for my community, but also to even speak up for myself. I recognize that I've served as an inspiration, especially to young guys out there who might not feel like they have a voice, who might feel like I'm this strong character that they want to model themselves after.
I want people to know that it's okay to not be brave all the time. Those moments of vulnerability, those moments [of] self-doubt, those moments where we question ourselves are also learning moments that are pivotal in our journey. That's why we should never feel like we have to be 100% sure of who we are or 100% confident. That is part of the process. That's how we evolve. That's going to help us get better and get stronger.
How did you become a biotech scientist?
RI: I was always into science. I went to UC Davis and majored in biochemistry and molecular biology. I was also a super geek as a kid. From the start of my [rap] career, I've always had my nine-to-five job. Straight out of college. I worked for a biotech company where we do research and development and work with DNA.
Growing up in the '90s, I was introduced to Bill Nye The Science Guy in one of my classes. Not only did he do experiments on the show, but it also had hip-hop in it. So being like an eight-year-old kid watching it in my third-grade class, I was like, 'Oh my God, he's doing both things that I love — hip hop and science.'
If you could send a Balikbayan box to a young Ruby, what would you put in it?
RI: This is the first time I've ever been asked that question. I would put my album [CIRCA91] in there and tell her like, ‘Look, you don't gotta write anymore. You just got to release this right now.’
Shot on location in San Lorenza, CA.
This story originally appeared in Hella Pinay Issue 02: Interconnected - Fall/Winter 2021. Order a digital copy here.
