With ‘Ring Ring,’ Rubio captures the California she grew up in

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. In “Ring Ring,” she does exactly that. The four-track EP, released on 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 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.

Tribune News Service