Biig Piig

When Jess Smyth was around ten years old, her mum used to singSunshineby Gabrielle toher in the car. Sometimes they’d be on the way to school, other times they’d just be stuck intraffic, watching cars speed past in the opposite direction. Her mum described it as her“hopeful little tune”, a guaranteed mood-lifter when shewas feeling down. Last year, Smythtook her mum to Gabrielle’s comeback London show, a decade on from their car journeys.“There were so many tears, we were both just bawling,” Smyth remembers, giving way to asmall laugh.It’s this sense of intimacy that defines Smyth’s output as Biig Piig. In the past two years,Smyth has come up through West London’s nascent art scene, garnering a loyal following forher smoky, sedative take on hip-hop and neo-soul, which moves fluidly between singing andrapping, English and Spanish. At just 21 years old, she possesses the kind of insouciantwisdom usually reserved for people beyond her years, her songs candid, slow-movingvignettes of young love, identity and the general unease of navigating modern life. In anincreasingly fast-paced world, listening to Biig Piig feels like a sigh of relief.