Biig Piig tickets

When Jess Smyth was around ten years old, her mum used to sing Sunshine by Gabrielle to her in the car. Sometimes they’d be on the way to school, other times they’d just be stuck in traffic, watching cars speed past in the opposite direction. Her mum described it as her “hopeful little tune”, a guaranteed mood-lifter when she was feeling down. Last year, Smyth took 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 a small laugh.

It’s this sense of intimacy that defines Smyth’s output as Big Pig. In the past two years, Smyth has come up through West London’s nascent art scene, garnering a loyal following for her smoky, sedative take on hip-hop and neo-soul, which moves fluidly between singing and rapping, English and Spanish. At just 21 years old, she possesses the kind of insouciant wisdom usually reserved for people beyond her years, her songs candid, slow-moving vignettes of young love, identity, and the general unease of navigating modern life. In an increasingly fast-paced world, listening to Biig Piig feels like a sigh of relief.

Early tracks like Crush’n and 24K established Smyth as a standalone voice within her scene, but she’s a natural collaborator. As a founding member of NiNE8 Collective – the eight-person-strong network of London-based creatives, which includes frequent producer Mac Wetha and friend Lava La Rue – Smyth has found a community, something that is now central to her practice. But it wasn’t always this way.

This ability to adjust is a driving force for Biig Piig. While she’s cemented her aesthetic with her sleepy, jazz-tinged bops, Smyth is inherently a creature of adaptation, shapeshifting to fit the environment around her – or, just to suit the environment in her head. Recent single Sunny saw her transform once more.

Her first release for RCA Records, Sunny is a slight departure from the after-hours haze that defined her sound. Produced by Zach Nahome, Smyth sings affectionately about the testing nature of love, about how it feels good to resign to it. Her typically laidback drawl is carried by the uptempo beat, its pronounced bass line and subtle bongos glistening with balearic influence.

For now, a forthcoming EP is where her focus lies. Titled No Place For Patience, it will complete the trilogy of Biig Piig releases Smyth has prepared. Originally intended to be high concept, character-led projects named Fran, Mira and Aura, the EPs touch on important chapters of her teenage and adult life. “They’re all similar stories but from different times. The first one represents ages 16-17, the second one ages 18-20, and then the next one coming out is about the last year,” she explains. “No Place For Patience reflects on a lot of relationships, but mostly my relationship with myself. I’ve finally started to talk to myself, do you know what I mean? I’m growing, and it feels good.” It seems the more everything changes, the more it stays the same.