Argentinian songwriter and performer Nicki Nicole remembers seeing the movie Ray. The film, which starred the multi-talented actor and musician Jamie Foxx portrayed the nuanced and tumultuous life of famed soul singer Ray Charles. Foxx won the Oscar Award for Best Actor for his performance. But when the movie made its way to the city of Rosario, which is the third-largest in Argentina, Nicole realized something important that she hadn’t noticed before.
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Like many, she was already a fan of Charles. First and foremost, she says, she’s loved his music. But the award-winning movie showed in detail Charles’ life story, too. It wasn’t just the hits and the big stages and vast applause. It was also the darkness, the drugs, the recovery, versatility, and the triumph. This enlightened Nicole near the outset of her own musical journey and has since helped to inspire the diverse work of the burgeoning star, who released her latest LP, Parte De Mi, on Friday.
“His ability to overcome obstacles,” the Spanish-speaking Nicole tells American Songwriter through a translator. “When I watched his movie, I saw a new side of him I didn’t know. It was more of a real feeling, rather than a celebrity. Every artist has their own trials and tribulations. It was nice to see those sides.”
At 21 years old, it’s hard to see any other musician’s star growing as quickly and as brightly as Nicole’s. She has millions of social media followers and millions of more song streams and video views. And she’s collaborated with big names, including Christina Aguilera. While Nicole is humble, saying that words can’t describe what it was like to work with the famed vocalist, she also notes that it’s important for her to work with artists like Aguilera, Becky G, Nathy Peluso, and others because those are the people she looked up to earlier in life. Ultimately, though, Nicole knows she rides only as high as her fans will take her.
“If everything continues the way it’s going,” she says, “the opportunities are endless. I still have a lot of contributing to do to the music industry and a lot of growth. But as long as my fan base supports me, the opportunities are infinite.”
For Nicole, music has been a mainstay in her life, but it wasn’t until about 16 years old that she knew she wanted to invest any significant time and effort into the endeavor. Around that time, her creative mind began to open up thanks to the many inspirations around her, from big names like Charles and Nina Simone to local acts in Rosario. But what pushed Nicole to pursue the art form was what it offered her mind.
“I felt I had a lot of things to transmit and feelings to share,” she says. “I started to use it as a method of expression.”
Nicole, for all her fame, grew up shy. She isn’t a big fan of talking to people, especially those she doesn’t know. She’s a talented, beautiful young person and, as such, would get lots of attention from people even if she wasn’t a celebrity. Yet, music offered Nicole a way to communicate better and beyond the more rudimentary mundane conversation. Music, she says, gave her a way to explicate her feelings and emotions that conversations face-to-face couldn’t offer. And once she dove into the process of making it, she learned while doing.
“I had to learn very abruptly,” Nicole says. “Learning by going through the motions, because my first single gained a lot of momentum. I learned as I grew with my fan base.”
Nicole was in night school when her first single, “Wapo Traketero,” began to gain significant attention. It was April 2019. She’d switched from day classes to night classes for high school so that she could work on music and the move paid off almost immediately. The journey had begun in the rap ciphers she went to as a 16 and 17-year-old, learning to hang with a macho crowd, and those lessons carried over as she began to make her way as a recording artist, even as a teenager. She later began to release music with Argentine producer Bizarrap and their work quickly went viral. Nicole released her debut LP, Recuerdos, in 2019 and it’s been up and up for her since. While her songs are current pop successes, Nicole says they’re rooted in her country’s history and her family.
“Argentina is part of me, it’s my roots,” Nicole says. “My culture is always going to be part of who I am. And all of my music has aspects of the songs I used to listen to with my family growing up.”
To create her new emotive album, Nicole gives a lot of credit to her team. It can be difficult to know what to release into the world but, she says, she has a strong circle of collaborators and listeners who help guide the decisions she makes. As an artist, Nicole is versatile and sharp. She raps with a biting quality and sings with an alluring one. It’s the result of someone who works constantly and who, amidst any daily experience, has the creative gears turning. Nicole is one of those creative people who listens and watches at all times, perhaps most when you’re least suspecting.
“My maturity and vision are two things that have increased since I was [a student] in night school,” Nicole says. “I’ve grown very much. I’m not the same person but I carry the same essence.”
In a way, Nicole says, she’s been living a dream. One that’s almost hard to accept. Yet with each verse, each song, each show, the work sinks further into her bones. Ultimately, she invests so much into the music—into her latest diverse, riveting 16-song LP—because her relationship with music is synergistic, reciprocal. Music gives back. It’s the proverbial spectacles she can don whenever she needs to see the world or herself that much more clearly.
“It makes me feel different emotions,” she says. “I credit it with helping me understand things that I otherwise wouldn’t.
