San Francisco Chronicle (Sunday)
Birth of a legacy: Big projects in the works for Ruby Ibarra
Filipina American rapper has a new record label and a baby on the way
Listen closely to the spoken-word outro of East Bay rapper Ruby Ibarra’s latest single, “Bakunawa,” and you’ll catch a soft heartbeat buried beneath layers of crisp vocals, harmonies and a rugged scream.
While it may seem like a minute detail in the context of the just under five-minute track, the sound actually plays a major part in her latest project as an artist — and in her life.
The heartbeat belongs to Ibarra’s first child and came directly from one of her ultrasound sessions. She was in the midst of working on the follow-up to her 2017 debut album, “Circa91,” when she found out she was expecting, and Ibarra said she hasn’t been the same since.
“It made me think about the kind of legacy that I want to leave behind,” she reflected.
Pregnancy inspired her to reassess a few portions of her forthcoming sophomore album. In addition to revisiting a track on the record that she said discusses mental health, she is also carving out more space to delve into her experiences as a woman.
“Going into my motherhood … I’m experiencing a different dynamic of my femininity and also the joys and the celebration that come with that,” she said.
Given the impact that her future child has already had on the record, Ibarra only saw it fitting that she publicly announce her pregnancy with her “Bakunawa” music video, which premieres at 9:30 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 15, just two days after the track dropped.
Ibarra wrote and directed the video, with her big announcement revealed at the very end when the camera slowly
zooms out from a close-up shot of the Filipina American rapper to reveal her baby bump.
“It wasn’t just about capturing images,” explained Desire Lacap, the video’s director of photography and editor. “It was about how we were able to translate the emotions and ideas and the dreams into this visual language that would be able to resonate with the audience.”
Ibarra said she now views “Bakunawa” as a mini-project within her second album, which she plans to release next year through Bolo, the Filipina American-focused record label she co-founded last October.
The 33-year-old has been working on the project since the beginning of the pandemic. While she describes the creative process of making her debut album, “Circa91,” as both cathartic and therapeutic, Ibarra said that working on her followup felt completely different in that it allowed her to embrace transformation.
“Because I’m changing as a person, I think naturally, artistically I’m also going to change,” Ibarra told the Chronicle in November, long before she got pregnant.
Now, the sentiment rings even truer.
“That’s my immigrant story,” she said, reflecting on 2017’s “Circa91,” which covers her experience moving from Tacloban City, Philippines, to San Lorenzo when she was just 4 years old.
The success of the record scored her a feature in a national television commercial for Mastercard alongside Grammywinning R&B artist SZA shortly after its release. Ibarra even visited New York with her mom to see a billboard of the campaign in front of Madison Square Garden in early 2018.
“I think that moment was kind of in the physical sense, the ‘Mama, we made it in America,’” she recalled. “To think that my music did this, our story did this without ever having to compromise who I am, without ever having to filter my beliefs, my thoughts and my experiences, I think that, to me, made me feel really proud. ”
Fostering an environment for other artists of color to gain the same kind of widespread exposure and opportunity has been a driving factor for Ibarra ever since.
“Especially as Filipino artists. … We don’t see ourselves represented in music too often,” Ibarra went on, emphasizing the importance of having such a diverse array of artists on “Bakunawa.”
This is precisely the reason she co-founded Bolo with her close friend and producer Lasi: to provide opportunity and exposure to Filipino artists in the Bay Area.
The label was announced last fall along with its first roster of Filipino American artists:
Ouida, Ian Santillano and Vince A. In December, Ibarra appeared alongside them at a Bolo Music Group showcase at the New Parish in Oakland.
“As an independent artist, it’s kind of hard to carve out a space for yourself in the Bay Area if you’re outside of what feels most popular,” Ouida said. “It makes it less scary to be in solidarity with other creatives in the Bay, and particularly within the Filipino community here.”
Ouida provides vocals on the second verse of “Bakunawa,” which also features FilipinoCanadian singer and rapper Haniely “Han Han” Pabelo and June Millington from the Bay Area ’70s rock band Fanny. The song draws inspiration from Filipino mythology, its name a reference to a powerful dragonlike serpent.
“With this track, it’s a good opportunity to show the people that we’re not against each other, we’re against a system,” Pabelo said, noting how the music industry tends to pit women against each other.
“Bakunawa” switches between English and the Filipino languages Tagalog and Bisaya. The latter is the main language in Visayas, the region in the Philippines where Ibarra was born and where she said the story of Bakunawa is rooted.
“I think Ruby is a genius,” said Millington, who contributed third-verse vocals and guitar to the track. “She’s breaking down barriers and the work in a certain way, which she’s really specific about.”
With Millington based in Massachusetts and Pabelo in Canada, most of the guest features were recorded remotely. Last month’s three-day music video shoot, which was filmed in Crockett, Castro Valley and Oakland, was the first time all four artists shared space together.
“It was just a lot of huge hugs, a lot of laughter, a lot of big smiles,” Ibarra recalled. “To have four Filipino artists come together that not only come from different generations but also from different genres and different regions. … We all brought something different to the table.”
Though the track maintains the hip-hop flow and clean vocals of her earlier sound, she said it’s completely different from her previous work.
“I don’t see myself as an artist who is here to reproduce the same album over and over again,” she said. “I want to remind myself that I’m evolving, that I give myself the permission to change and to transform and to evolve and develop and become a better person.”
Ibarra didn’t initially set out to be a recording artist. She studied biochemistry at UC Davis and worked a day job in the field before eventually pursuing rapping as a full-time career in 2021. After years of juggling music with work, using paid time off to fly out to gigs, she realized she had to make a choice.
“For so long … I had one foot in and one foot out,” she said. “It was like, ‘It’s now or never, I need to take this leap,’ and I’m so glad I did that.”
Ibarra grew up in a musical household, introduced to hiphop by the songs of Filipino rapper Francis Magalona, aka FrancisM, that led to her appreciation of West Coast hip-hop stars like Tupac and Snoop Dogg.
She first started writing songs as a sophomore at San Lorenzo High School, where she’d often hang out at Lee’s Donuts across the street. While she joked about a lot of that early music being fueled by teen angst, as she was navigating her parents’ divorce at the time, it served as a genuine outlet for Ibarra to process changes in her family dynamic.
“It actually was pretty turbulent at home,” she said. “I felt like as a child, being in the middle of that, I had a voice through my poetry and through my music. ”
Today, her music continues to serve as an outlet. She expresses raw emotions while unapologetically representing her Filipino and American culture in a way that many are taking notice. From Fox’s crime drama “The Cleaning Lady,” for which she composed some of the series’ music, to her growing list of musical collaborators — from Korean American singer Ann One to Filipino artists Inigo Pascual and Bambu — it’s clear her career is still on the rise.
Ibarra’s first child is due in early November, but she has no plans of slowing down. She’s keeping busy working with Bolo artists on their solo releases, fine-tuning her own project and even has a few live gigs booked, including headlining the allFilipina concert Island Woman Rise in Los Angeles on Oct. 5.
“Everything I do from this point really is greater than myself,” Ibarra said. “It’s not just for me. ”