Ruby Ibarra:
For this next track, this one is called Us. If y’all can help us with the chorus, the chorus goes, island woman rise, walang makakatigil, that means no one can stop me. Brown, brown woman, rise, alamin ang yung ugat. Brown, brown woman know your roots. They got nothin’ on us, Then y’all will say, aye. Nothing on us, aye. Nothing us.
Crowd:
Aye.
Ruby Ibarra:
Nothing on us.
Crowd:
Aye.
Ruby Ibarra:
Island woman rise, walang makakatigil. Brown, brown woman, rise, alamin ang yung ugat. They got nothing on us.
Crowd:
Aye.
Ruby Ibarra:
Nothing on us.
Crowd:
Aye.
Ruby Ibarra:
Nothing on us.
Crowd:
Aye.
Ruby Ibarra:
Nothing on us.
Crowd:
Aye.
Ruby Ibarra:
They got it.
Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton. You just heard a clip from Ruby Ibarra’s set at the 2023 Deeper Learning Conference. Ruby Ibarra is a Filipino rapper from San Lorenzo, California. Before she kicked off this year’s conference, she sat down with Jean Catubay and me to talk about her music, her family, and her career. Let’s get right into it.
Jean Catubay:
First, I’m such a big fan of yours. In the Tumblr days-
Ruby Ibarra:
Tumblr days! Way back.
Jean Catubay:
Yeah, way back. I remember all your spoken word stuff. So I’m just really honored to… I’m also from the Bay too, from Daly City, Hercules.
Ruby Ibarra:
Awesome.
Jean Catubay:
So it’s just really cool to talk to you and have just this time together. I’m just really excited to share space with you, so thank you for being here.
Ruby Ibarra:
Likewise. Thank you.
Alec Patton:
Let me ask you actually and sort, how did you first come across Ruby’s stuff?
Jean Catubay:
Well, like I said, Tumblr, which for our folks who might not know what Tumblr is, it’s like a blog sort of based website. At the end of high school, getting into college, I was very into my spoken word sort of vibe.
Ruby Ibarra:
Are you a poet as well?
Jean Catubay:
I’m closeted. But yeah, I came across your spoken word pieces. They really… Especially because so much of it was about identity, being a woman and being at that age, I was like, wow, I’ve never seen a Panay express themselves in that way, so it was really cool to just see that.
Ruby Ibarra:
Thank you. That definitely means a lot to me. When I hear you say the word Tumblr, when I see Tumblr, it opens up Pandora’s box of my history, and just me starting out as an artist and putting myself out there for the first time. Hearing that you’re a poet yourself, I’m sure you understand what it means to share your work, especially in a more public forum like social media. So it was definitely very nerve-wracking. At the time, I was still in school. I remember it was websites like Tumblr or SoundCloud that allowed me to even feel comfortable with sharing my material, because at that point, I wasn’t performing live yet on campus, whether it was at UC Davis or back when I was in high school. So it was definitely my introduction into expressing and owning my artistry.
Jean Catubay:
Yeah, for sure.
Alec Patton:
All right. Let’s go way back then. You were born in the Philippines in Tacloban City. I know how to pronounce that because of your album.
Ruby Ibarra:
Yeah.
Alec Patton:
And that was 1988?
Ruby Ibarra:
1991.
Alec Patton:
So the album title is the year of your year of your birth. Why is it circa?
Ruby Ibarra:
It’s the start of my story. For me, going into that record, I knew that would be my first introduction. Whether or not you’ve heard my spoken word in the past or seen my performances at the local open mics, I knew that this was my stamp with regards to the music world in terms of this is who I am, this is what you can expect to hear from me. When I think about my favorite albums, of what inspired me to become an artist that I am today, was always the storytelling albums. Whether that was Miseducation from Lauryn Hill, or more recently, Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city, I think it goes beyond music. It’s more so kind of a film, a visual auditory film, where you get a glimpse of their life and a certain time period of their life. For me, I wanted to focus on my childhood and migrating from the Philippines to the US. For me, that was a very personal story, and a story that I knew the most.
Because of course, it being my debut album, I spent so many months going back and forth. What should this album be about? Is it going to be just a mix of tracks where I’m just spitting a bunch of lyrical bars? I wanted to refrain from that, because I wanted it to be more personal. Like I said, I’ve always been a fan of bodies of work where by the time you finish listening to the last track on the album, you have an understanding of who that person is behind the microphone. That really, to me, was the ultimate goal with that record.
Alec Patton:
Yeah. Is it true that you were four years old when you discovered hip hop?
Ruby Ibarra:
Yep. It was an artist named Francis Magalona back in the Philippines.
Alec Patton:
So that was when you were still living in the Philippines that you…
Ruby Ibarra:
Mm-hmm.
Alec Patton:
Tell me what was that like?
Ruby Ibarra:
It was incredible. I wish I could remember more of it just because I was so young at the time. But what I can recall is that I couldn’t keep my eyes and my ears off of this performer that I was seeing on this television. It was one of those afternoons where I was watching these noontime Filipino variety shows, sitting there with my grandmother, and all of a sudden, Francis M gets on stage and it’s very rhythmic. Since it’s the 90s, he has on these MC Hammer type baggy pants. He even has the dance moves to accompany it. I was like, “This is completely different from the music that my parents often listened to.” This wasn’t your typical ballad singer. For me, it was like he was using his voice as an instrument in another way that I’ve never heard before. I think that really what was initially exciting for me and what drew me to hip hop.
Alec Patton:
How long after that was it that you came to the US?
Ruby Ibarra:
We only stayed in the Philippines for about four years and then when we moved to the US, my dad had already been living in California. So me, my mom and my baby sister, we traveled 7,000 miles from Tacloban City to the East Bay, California. We ended up in Hayward. It was definitely a shift, a shift in culture, a shift in tradition and I remember crossing the San Francisco Bridge from the airport. And I’m like, “Oh my God. All of these structures are so massive. It’s beyond anything that could even be encapsulated in film.”
I think the first time too that I attended elementary school, getting introduced to different cultural foods, eating a burrito for the first time, not knowing how do I start to eat this? It’s not like Filipino food at all. But to me, that really was the fun part, I think, of being an immigrant was the education of it, learning other cultures, hearing other beautiful languages, and just getting to know other people’s traditions and practices, and understanding that my world that I had understood and recognized before, that just expanded by infinity. All of a sudden, I wasn’t in my bubble anymore. I became so curious after that.
Alec Patton:
How many languages do you speak?
Ruby Ibarra:
I speak two languages, English, obviously, and then this language called Waray from where my mom is from in Tacloban. Well, obviously Tagalog as well, but I don’t speak that fluently. I just understand it.
Alec Patton:
Right. Because you rap in all three, right?
Ruby Ibarra:
I rap in all three. Yeah. Like on the track Playbills.
Alec Patton:
Yeah. Apart from burritos, in that early time that you came to the US, how were you feeling?
Ruby Ibarra:
I was feeling nervous, aside from the excitement. I think within a year of starting kindergarten, I started recognizing that I felt out of place. I felt different to the point where, in the first grade, I believed that I already knew that I was labeled as a foreigner, as an immigrant. I think what led me to start harboring those feelings was, in kindergarten, I got put into an English as a second language class because I was such a shy kid. I barely even spoke up in class. I think my teachers at the time just assumed that I didn’t understand or know how to speak English, so I was immediately transferred into those classrooms. I got to meet such awesome classmates and students there, but it was always confusing to me, because I would go home and ask my mom, how come I got moved to this other class when I can understand? I can speak English?
I think that was the very first experience of being automatically boxed in and labeled as the other automatically, at such a young age. Of course, even though I grew up in such a diverse community, the Bay Area, racism never escaped us as well. Whether it was hearing kids on the playground taunting my accent, or saying racist derogatory things, that was still visible in the communities that I lived in. I think just being a young immigrant kid, and having to navigate those things and asking those kinds of questions to my mom, I think it was challenging for my parents too at the time of what kind of answer do we provide our kid, when they themselves were also very new to the country, and they were also trying to navigate and find their place in this country.
Jean Catubay:
Have you had those conversations with your parents? Yeah. Because my parents also… I was born here, but I feel like we’re just starting to… Now that I see my parents as, not so much my parents but human beings also, I’m like, “Oh yeah. You are going through some things too.” We’re slowly having those conversations now. So I’m curious. Has that been happening with yours, or what’s the dialogue around that?
Ruby Ibarra:
Absolutely. More recently, especially after my record came out, and my mom listened to the album, and she understood what parts of our story I shared, and even the skit for example.
Jean Catubay:
That’s your mom on it, right?
Ruby Ibarra:
That’s my actual mom on the very first track called Brownout, where she tells me to go inside because I’m going to get too dark.
Jean Catubay:
I still love that.
Ruby Ibarra:
I specifically, I wrote that script, but that is a reflection of real life experiences that I had growing up. And I remember when I had my mom in my vocal studio at home reciting it. At first it sounded very robotic because she was reading the script. And I was just envision those times where you did tell us to do those things and to shield ourselves because of colorism. And I think she had to unlearn. It’s also a process of unlearning on our immigrant parents. And for them that was, I think whether that was education that was passed down to them or. The normalcy and the traditional practices where they just accepted it as fact and they never really questioned it.
I think for their generation it was more, survival was more so important for them. And so we didn’t get to have those conversations around racism or social justice because they were trying to make ends meet. They were just trying to survive. And so now for us to have these adult conversations with my mother, for example, I think it’s a process of unlearning not just on her part, but also with me and just going through that process together.
Jean Catubay:
And because you’re the oldest too.
Ruby Ibarra:
Yeah, I’m the oldest of two.
Jean Catubay:
Oh, oldest daughter lives.
Ruby Ibarra:
A lot of responsibility and generational travel you got to carry for sure.
Jean Catubay:
For sure. Yeah. And I feel like the oldest daughter in a lot of cultures, not only Filipino culture, we hold a lot for our families and our people. So having those conversations is so important. I remember at the beginning of the pandemic when everyone was very energized, I saw a lot of posts with how to talk to your families about anti-blackness, because in Tagalog there’s like, we don’t have the words for that. And so to have these conversations with our families, we need to build up the language to even have those conversations.
Ruby Ibarra:
And those conversations definitely aren’t easy. I’m sure with your family that I could only assume that there’s also other things that are going to be challenging. The things that you’d be hesitant to bring up during the holiday dinner. Oh, maybe we should-
Jean Catubay:
I just don’t want to be disrespectful, right?
Ruby Ibarra:
Oh, this is going to start family riff right now everybody’s about to leave. But for me, it’s just reminding myself too that the difficult conversations are the necessary ones, especially when it’s brought so much trauma to our experience or to generations in our family. And at the same time, I don’t think I fault my parents at all. I definitely don’t place blame on them. It’s just at this point I have to understand that I have to take the responsibility of teaching and guiding them.
Alec Patton:
Okay. Shout out to your mom for that performance because we were both, is that-
Jean Catubay:
I was shook. I was like, oh, I need to go inside. This is my life right now.
Ruby Ibarra:
Yes, mom.
Alec Patton:
How did she feel? Because it’s like your love and respect for your mom really comes through in that album and also things that your mom said and particularly around colorism, it’s fairly critical within it. When did you start talking to your mom about, “Hey, when you tell me to go inside, there’s some other stuff going on there.” How did that happen?
Ruby Ibarra:
I don’t think it was kind of just one conversation starter that, okay, I have a whole list of things, and I’ve been wanting to address this for 18 years. I think it was more so just as I was getting older and whether it was through conversations with my peers or especially once I started attending college and I started taking classes like Asian American studies where it also broadened my perspective, I think I just started to share those kinds of information to my mom and started questioning for the first time. And even to this day when I learned something too and it kind of changes my perspective. I’m always quick to question myself first, but also question those around me who I know practice the same thing.
Alec Patton:
So if your mom were here and we asked her about it, what would she say about those conversations, do you think? What’s your sense of that?
Ruby Ibarra:
She definitely doesn’t tell us to use lightening soap anymore. I think that one thing that I am very proud of her is that at some point during the pandemic, I heard her, she was FaceTiming with one of my cousins back in the Philippines, and she was actually educating my cousin and telling him to not use those lightning creams and telling him the effects that it might have on his skin and-
Alec Patton:
[inaudible 00:15:50] Got cancer now.
Ruby Ibarra:
Yeah. Is that first of all the chemicals that are in those products, but also second kind of hearing her explain that he should just embrace who he is. And for me to hear that from my mom in that generation where she’s kind of taken the information that not only I’ve shared with her, but I think she’s done her own research and formed her own kind of opinion around those things, and hearing her communicate that, to me it shows me that even at her age, and even from her coming from her generation, she’s willing to learn and change and progress. And I think ultimately as human beings, that is the ultimate goal, is how can we be better than we were? And that’s why I’m super proud of my mom.
Alec Patton:
So when did you play the album for your parents? Was it like, I’m going to get the whole thing done and then we’re just going to sit down? Or was it song by song or how’d that happen?
Ruby Ibarra:
I would share several tracks with my sister and my mom here and there, especially my mom. So kind of a context to this, she’s a big hip hop fan, almost as big as I am. So growing up in middle school, she would be bumping Too Short in the car, for example, we’d arrive at my middle school parking lot and my mom has Too Short playing in the car, and that’s not my request, that’s her asking me to burn a CD with Too Short, E-40 on there. And that’s her blasting her in her own vehicle.
And her being a hip hop fan and her seeing kind of my growth as an artist and becoming more of an MC myself throughout the years as I got older, I think she’s kind of been, not to say that she’s always involved in the process, but she’s always kind of eager to learn what’s the new stuff that I’m working on. And so while I was making Circa91, she was definitely with me throughout the process, and I would share few tracks here and there, but once the album was finished, I definitely made sure to tell them, don’t skip any tracks. And you have to start from track number one because it’s going to be a story.
Jean Catubay:
So I’ve heard you in a couple of interviews mentioned that you were shy growing up, and so I’m like, dang, how did you go from a shy kid to this super strong badass MC? At what point did that happen and how did you get to that point?
Ruby Ibarra:
It’s still a journey. I still consider myself shy. I’m shy, I’m awkward, I’m nerdy. This is why the only other times I’ve been to San Diego is Comic-Con.
Jean Catubay:
Okay.
Ruby Ibarra:
For me, I think what’s given me the strength, the courage and the bravery is through the art, finding my voice. I think whether you’re an immigrant or whether you come from trauma or experiences that kind of limit your voice, when you feel like you don’t have a voice, I think it’s going to be kind of natural that you’re going to be shy or you’re going to be afraid to speak out. And I think for the longest time until I found hip-hop or I found poetry, I finally found a way to utilize this voice that I’ve been wanting to share. And I definitely owe it to music for sure, that’s allowed me to be able to come into my identity and being comfortable in my own skin. Even when I was first starting out to rap, I would rerecord myself even sometimes doing multiple takes because I felt like my accent was showing up in the track.
Like, oh no, that sounds too fobby, and fob means fresh off the boat. And to me, after doing that throughout high school, and then once I got into college and I was still finding myself doing that, and I thought to myself, why are you still doing that to yourself? Why are you still erasing those tracks? Because in a sense, by doing that, that’s erasure, that’s a sense of erasure that you’re erasing your identity and a part of who you are. And so for me too, it was kind of just being comfortable 100% in my story, in my voice and what I look like. And knowing that if I’m going to present myself wholly and fully as me and people accept that, then why should I change otherwise?
Alec Patton:
Did you start with writing or free styling?
Ruby Ibarra:
I definitely started with writing. I actually started writing kind of rap verses first before I got into poetry. When I got into poetry, it was because of my high school drama teacher. Shout out to Miss Beth Daley from San Lorenzo High. I don’t, not sure if she’s still an educator. She introduced me to Def Poetry Jam. She would show a lot of those clips in her class and then also ask us the student to perform, whether it was a piece that we wrote ourselves or a particular piece that we really liked to share it in front of the class once a month. And that was my very first introduction to performing in front of an audience. So shout out to our educators out there. And it’s just, again, inspiring to be in a space like deeper learning where we are in this community with educators, because I can definitely say that I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my teachers.
Alec Patton:
So how old were you when you started writing verses.
Ruby Ibarra:
I was around 13 years old. The eighth grade, inspired again by Lauren Hill, inspired by Tupac. Those were the very first hip hop artists that I was really drawn to their voice and their story so much so that it inspired me and I thought to myself that maybe I can also share my story and write it in kind of a poem or a rap form. And so I started doing that in the eighth grade and I started doing talent shows at school and then eventually getting into drama class and performing more often.
Alec Patton:
Were you performing your own raps at talent shows?
Ruby Ibarra:
Oh, definitely. I’ve never performed other raps. I don’t know, I’ve always been kind of picky around that just because I think probably growing up in the nineties and back then with battle rap being such a big thing and lyricism. The golden era of hip hop, where that, to me, I kind of adapted that mentality where if you’re going to be on the mic, not only should you have something to say or share, there should be a reason why you’re in front of the microphone, but it should only also be your work. And that’s kind of the mentality that I’ve always adapted.
Alec Patton:
Did you say that you were kind of doing Tumblr before you were doing other live shows, did I get that right?
Ruby Ibarra:
Yeah. I was on Tumblr before live shows.
Alec Patton:
Tell us about the Tumblr thing.
Ruby Ibarra:
Tumblr was awesome because-
Jean Catubay:
It was a time
Ruby Ibarra:
For the younger generation that’s listening. It’s basically, like you mentioned, a blog and kind of the Instagram before its time. And I particularly loved seeing the Post on Tumblr because there were other artists on there too that I followed. And it was just kind of the safe space where you could post your video, you can post your audio. I typically would wrap on Lupe fiasco, instrumentals, for example, and post them up on Tumblr. And I never really thought about it. I thought I was just sharing my stuff with my friends, whoever was following me, but laying the groundwork that was my practice to be able to do the things that I do today. So I think it also helped me build the consistency as a writer and making sure to constantly publish things and to put things out.
Jean Catubay:
I mean, I think especially being Asian at that time too, in terms of representation, there was not really anybody really out. So at least for me, I would be watching YouTube, Wong Fu Productions, One Down, stuff like that. And just to see people who look like me was so powerful. And you couldn’t get that in any other sort of media.
Ruby Ibarra:
That’s absolutely right. Now we’re seeing K-pop as a global phenomenon, we’re seeing a lot more films and TV shows that center on Asian American characters. But you’re absolutely right. At that time you barely saw Asian American or Filipino representation in mainstream media. And because of that, Asian American and Filipino artists gravitated towards the Tumblrs and the YouTubes and the SoundClick. And because these were spaces where we were not only able to share our stuff, but also able to build an audience through that. And I think that was kind of the first indication that there is an audience for Asian American artists.
Jean Catubay:
Now everybody watches anime, Blackpink is going to headline Coachella.
Alec Patton:
Was there a point where you were like, people want to hear, this has an audience?
Jean Catubay:
Yeah. Did you get a gig off of something on Tumblr or YouTube or something?
Ruby Ibarra:
Well, specifically for Tumblr, it led me to a friendship with Domino from the producer of Hieroglyphics, this rap group from the Bay Area. And also getting introduced to other artists like Bamboo, for example, seeing them and following them on Tumblr and getting connected through websites like that. But for me, I think what kind of shifted my understanding of, okay, this is kind of a hobby. I’m just wrapping in my bedroom and posting these videos up on Tumblr and YouTube to, oh, maybe I should do live shows, was one of my videos that I had published on Tumblr, it was a track over an old hiphop beat from the early nineties. It ended up getting on this world star hiphop blog. And I remember I had just started working. I just graduated college. I just started working. And I remember seeing… I was on my phone all of a sudden, I got all of these notifications on Tumblr and my Facebook where I was getting so many friend requests. I was like, what’s going on? Something had to have happened.
And within that afternoon, by the time I clocked off work, it was a million views already. So I was like, this is kind of going viral right now. So definitely those experiences on posting on Tumblr and YouTube has helped me expand my audience for people who aren’t local audiences and allowed me to this day to be able to perform in different cities in different towns.
Alec Patton:
I can’t imagine putting anything online because you just know people are going to say mean stuff. It’s a guarantee. It’s an absolute ironclad guarantee. And just being like, I’m going to put up some verses and how do you go, I know this is coming and I’m still just going to put it out there.
Ruby Ibarra:
So when it was Tumblr, I wasn’t so kind of nervous about the comments and the reception because for the most part it was just my friends following me on there. But when it got to larger platforms such as WorldStarHipHop, or when I started posting videos on YouTube where it’s kind of a free for all, whoever catches this video, you can type and comment whatever you want. And I think specifically it was WorldStarHipHop, because I was excited, I was like, a million views. I was scrolling through the comments, I was like, oh my God, my feelings. I’m being destroyed. I want to quit. And then even my mom too, she was on the computer, she was responding to every comment. She’s like, “Ruby, there’s so many haters.”
And she was like, you can’t talk to my daughter like that. And then just these type of comments, I’m like, mom, you can’t be a keyboard warrior right now. Do not respond to every comment. A lot of these people are trolling on purpose. And I think that’s something that I’ve learned in the last five to six years is to avoid the comments and just more so focus on the reception in terms of maybe the view count or the demographics that are leaning towards my music. And at the end of the day, I think I just have to remember, since we’re in such a big social media times where I have to ask myself constantly, first of all, why do I do this? Why do I make music? And I make music to express myself. And when I kind of remember and recognize that those comments aren’t so hurtful anymore. But I definitely saw a lot of very sexist and racist comments.
Alec Patton:
Does somebody read your comments for you? Do you have an agent whose job it is to…
Ruby Ibarra:
Yeah, my mother, my number one. She could probably recall every single one.
Jean Catubay:
Username and [inaudible 00:27:54] oh my God.
Ruby Ibarra:
Say, I block them.
Alec Patton:
That’s awesome. Have you always had a more conscious taste in hip hop than your mom? Because you were talking about Lauren Hill and she listened to Too Short.
Ruby Ibarra:
I think probably just the hip hop education and digging through the crates and finding music yourself. With my mom, it’s definitely more radio based of what is readily available. She turns on our local radio, hip hop radio stations.
Jean Catubay:
Shout out 1 0 6 .1 KMEL.
Ruby Ibarra:
Hey. Yeah, stations like that and whatever they’re playing. Whereas for me, again, growing up in a time where you had these new platforms popping up, whether it was the SoundCloud and the YouTube, and also file sharing sites and not saying we support that, but for me, when I saw those software starting to pop up more frequently, I took that as an opportunity to go back and teach myself about hip hop.
I’m downloading albums from the eighties, okay, I got to Run DMC, learning about Common. And for me, it was kind of just going back and hearing the previous albums in previous works because I felt like if I don’t know about hip hop history, again, I’m a guest in this space as a Filipino American rapper, this is a genre and a culture made by black people, made by the black community. And so I’ve always understood that I’m a guest in this space, and for me to be respectful in this space, I do need to educate myself.
Alec Patton:
How did you see your relationship with Bay Area Hip Hop when you were just starting to rap?
Ruby Ibarra:
When I was first starting to rap, with regards to Bay Area Hip Hop, I am to this day, of course, definitely a fan. And that that’s even without bias, just because I feel like as much as we had the Hyphy Movement back in the mid 2000s, it’s still kind of the unspoken voice I feel when it comes to kind of the regions and also the subculture and sub genre within hip hop where it’s always… It’s never lost in my mind that I wish the rappers from this region got more shine, got more opportunities, and got to bigger stages. And there’s such a rich culture of also parallel to that of the activism in Berkeley, in Oakland and San Francisco. And it was often tied in with the music and the lyrics and kind of the purpose of why these MCs were wrapping in the first place.
And so beyond being a fan as an artist, I’ve also been cognizant that sometimes I wonder, is my sound Bay Area enough? Because it’s not typically your dance tracks that we’re accustomed to listening to. But then I remember that we also do have artists, like I mentioned, Souls of Mischief and hieroglyphics, where it’s not necessarily that usual kind of Bay Area 808 with the club sound. And I think that just goes to show the diversity of hip hop in the Bay Area. So ultimately, I definitely carry the Bay Area region on my back and make sure to represent in every gigs that we do and let people know where I’m from. But I think that I would love for Bay Area to definitely get more love. I don’t think that it’s gotten the love that it’s deserved yet.
Alec Patton:
And so were you going to shows in high school?
Ruby Ibarra:
I wish I could have gone to shows in high school but… Not to say that my parents were strict, but they definitely expected me to be home. I could have…
Jean Catubay:
Nine o’clock.
Ruby Ibarra:
Yeah, I could definitely have my friends over. And at that point, I was already actually recording myself. I saved up lunch money and I got myself a microphone, plugged it into the back of my computer and started recording songs already in high school. So I always usually had friends over, or also other MCs from high school where we’d link up during lunchtime like, “Hey, you want to come over after school? Let’s record a track together.” So I’d have guys actually at my mom’s house all the time. And my mom never really questioned that, even though there were five dudes in my small bedroom recording hunched over computer.
Jean Catubay:
She knew you had stuff to do.
Ruby Ibarra:
Because she knew that there was kind of a purpose to it. I think she would prefer that than me to be going out to shows. So I actually didn’t… Long story short, my very first hip hop show wasn’t until college where Common came into UC Davis to perform. And I heard him perform The Light, in person for the first time, and me and my roommate were in the third row. “Oh my God, this is so magical.”
Jean Catubay:
Yeah. Sick.
Alec Patton:
That’s awesome. So who was it who, you said the guy who was affiliated with Hieroglyphics?
Ruby Ibarra:
Domino.
Alec Patton:
Domino. So how’d that happen?
Ruby Ibarra:
He hit me up on Tumblr because he saw one of my posts and he said, “where you located?” And I said that I was in the East Bay and he wasn’t too far. And so we decided to meet up at his engineer and producer friend’s apartment. And then we tried working on some tracks together, and then we actually ended up doing a show where I opened up for Hiero in San Francisco.
Alec Patton:
Oh, cool. Wow-
Ruby Ibarra:
Such a cool experience.
Jean Catubay:
Well, I’m very curious, Ruby, because I know you’re a very respected, a very woke individual, but I need to know what is your this phase song? Because I thought you were born 88, but you’re 91. I’m 92, so we’re very close in age.
Ruby Ibarra:
My this phase song,
Jean Catubay:
Yeah.
Ruby Ibarra:
Has to be a Mac Dre, has to be Thizzle Dance.
Alec Patton:
I have no idea what that means.
Jean Catubay:
Mine is No Hoe.
Ruby Ibarra:
Or Get Stupid too.
Jean Catubay:
Yep.
Alec Patton:
Okay. We should get into your career as a scientist. So what were you studying at Davis?
Ruby Ibarra:
So I studied biochemistry and molecular biology. I was initially premed, my plan at the time was I was going to be a doctor, so I wanted to go to med school eventually as a pediatrician. And I think eventually I kind of shifted and I thought, okay, maybe I want to go to pharmacy school. I want to be a pharmacist. So I did all the science requirements, all the course requirements, even did internship at the UC Davis Medical Center at the emergency room up in Sacramento.
And then I think it was my junior year where I realized that I didn’t feel like I was 100% myself, something in that path. And that journey was still missing, and music always kept calling me back. So even throughout Davis, as I was doing my courses, I was still also a performer on campus. And I started performing at Sac State and doing local open mics in Sacramento and Davis as well, and just growing my community of artists friends. And I think ultimately I recognize that my heart is drawn towards music. But I did still end up finishing my time there at Davis, and I ended up working at a biotech company up until 2021.
Alec Patton:
And you were working on COVID stuff, is that true?
Ruby Ibarra:
Yep. I did DNA testing. I remember at the start of 2020 actually, well, I don’t know if people still do this, but for me this has kind of been a ritual where December 31st, I already have a list of my new year’s resolutions. Like, “Okay, these are the things I’m going to do, but probably not end up doing.” And for me, 2020, the goal was to become a full-time artist. And I thought to myself, okay, I think things are finally lined up for me, and I’m getting more consistent with the performances and income is coming in more frequently where I sustain myself through my art. And then I did a show in February of 2020 where me and my entire band, we performed at the Getty Museum, and we did two sold out shows there. So I was definitely on a high. I was like, okay, the rest of the year about to be like this. The stars are aligned.
Literally a week after our trip March, 2020, there’s this announcement that the entire nation is going to be on a shutdown. And all of a sudden I started getting emails at all of my gigs for that upcoming spring like, “oh, we have to cancel it because of the pandemic and the closure of the nation.” And I was like, wait, this is serious right now. What’s going on? And so I found myself actually working close to double the hours at work, and I ended up staying at my company up until 2021. And that’s not to say that that was a bad thing. I think if anything, what the pandemic taught me with regards to the work that I was doing in sciences was it gave me a different perspective of the importance of the work that we did.
Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed is hosted and edited by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by brother Herschel, Ruby Ibarra’s album, Circa91 is out on Beat Rock Records. The song that she introed at the start of the episode is called Us. We’ve got a link to the music video in the show notes. If you’re wondering what happened to Ruby’s career after lockdown, we were wondering that too. But we had to cut the interview short so she could sound check. There will be a part two to this interview. Look out for it. Thanks for listening.
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