Taken from the April Issue of Dazed & Confused:
Brooklyn bass producer Brenmar: “Tink is making a name for herself at a time when Chicago’s hip hop is having an international moment. There’s no denying she can rap, but the girl can sing too. She’s just beginning to find her voice and has years to grow, which is the most exciting part!”
Tink is poised to be Chicago hip hop’s newest breakout success, with three mixtapes to date that effortlessly switch between breezy r&b vocals and such teeth-kissing rhymes as “your boyfriend gave me brain, and I must say he’s mighty clever”. “There’s not a lot of people that can combine rapping and singing,” asserts the badass 18-year-old one day after high school. “It’s unusual, and I can reach different emotions that way.”
Tink’s DiY sensibility and take-no-prisoners attitude is best showcased in her eye-popping video for “Fingers Up”, from her album-quality 2012 mixtape Alter Ego. As she breathlessly explains, “me and my best friend went to the thrift store and picked up colourful shirts, then we found an abandoned building downtown and just leapt up on to the roof...” In the video, she switches between verse-spitting and singing the earworm chorus, jerking and shuffling with her bezzie in primary-coloured prints. “We wanted to do something that nobody’s ever done before.”
Although she started singing in church at a young age, it wasn’t until Tink was a freshman that she discovered her natural talent for rapping. “Back then, I guess I liked the flow of Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne,” she says. “I remember my brother put on a Clipse beat one day in his room, and I was just playing around and freestyled over it. We put it on Facebook and everyone liked it.”
It’s a drive to forge her own path that carries through to new track “All That”, a collab with fellow Chi-town up- and-comer Mikkey Halsted in which Tink declares herself “on top of my game like Kobe” over a stuttering, whooping beat. “My song ‘Kardashian’ is about that too,” says Tink. “You know, ‘whipping up that white girl, tryna get that white money’ - I wanted to appeal to the hustlers of Chicago! You don’t need to be selling dope to be a hustler, y’know? I like to think of cheeky ways to say things.” But it’s all about coming for that Kardashian status? “Definitely!” Tink laughs. “You got the point.”
