Argentinian singer-songwriter and performer Nicki Nicole remembers seeing the movie Ray. The film, which starred multitalented actor and musician Jamie Foxx, portrayed the nuanced and tumultuous life of famous soul singer Ray Charles. Foxx won the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance. But when the film made its way to the city of Rosario, the third largest in Argentina, Nicole achieved something important that she hadn’t noticed before.

Like many, she was already a fan of Charles. First and foremost, she says, she loves her music. But the award-winning film also showed Charles’s life story in great detail. It wasn’t just the hits, the big stages and the applause. It was also obscurity, drugs, recovery, versatility and triumph. This lit up Nicole at the start of her own musical journey and has since helped inspire the up-and-coming star’s diverse work, who released her latest LP, Parte De Mi, Friday.

“His ability to overcome obstacles,” Nicole, a Spanish speaker, told the American songwriter through a translator. “When I watched his film, I saw a new side of him that I didn’t know. It was more of a real feeling than a celebrity. Each artist has their own trials and tribulations. It was nice to see these sides.

At 21, it’s hard to see another musician’s star grow as fast and as brilliantly as Nicole’s. She has millions of social media followers and millions of other song streams and video views. And she has collaborated with big names, including Christina Aguilera. While Nicole is humble, saying words cannot describe what it was like working with the famous singer, she also notes that it is important for her to work with artists like Aguilera, Becky G, Nathy Peluso. and others because they are the people she admired earlier in life. Ultimately, however, Nicole knows she only goes as high as her fans will.

“If everything continues like this,” she said, “the opportunities are endless. I still have a lot to contribute to the music industry and a lot of growth. But as long as my fan base supports me, the opportunities are endless. “

For Nicole, music has been a mainstay in her life, but it wasn’t until she was about 16 that she knew she wanted to invest a lot of time and effort into the business. Around this time, his creative mind began to open up thanks to the many inspirations that surrounded him, from big names like Charles and Nina Simone to local artists from Rosario. But what drove Nicole to pursue this art form was what she offered to her mind.

“I felt I had a lot to share and feelings to share,” she says. “I started to use it as a means of expression.”

Nicole, despite all her fame, grew up timidly. She doesn’t really like talking to people, especially those she doesn’t know. She is a beautiful, talented young person and as such would get a lot of people’s attention even if she wasn’t a celebrity. Still, music offered Nicole a way to communicate better and beyond the more rudimentary mundane conversation. Music, she says, gave her a way to explain her feelings and emotions that face-to-face conversations could not offer. And once she got into the manufacturing process, she learned by doing.

“I must have learned very suddenly,” says Nicole. “Learning through movement, because my first single gained a lot of momentum. I learned as I grew with my fan base.

Nicole was in evening school when her first single, “Wapo Traketero”, started to gain attention. It was April 2019. She had gone from day classes to evening classes for high school so she could work on music and the move paid off almost immediately. The journey started with the rap numbers she went to at the age of 16 and 17, learning to hang out with a macho crowd, and those lessons continued as she began to make her way as a recording artist, even as a teenager. . She then started releasing music with Argentine producer Bizarrap and their work quickly went viral. Nicole released her first LP, Recuerdos, in 2019 and it’s been going and that for her since. Although her songs are current pop hits, Nicole says they are rooted in the history of her country and her family.

“Argentina is part of me, they are my roots,” says Nicole. “My culture will always be a part of who I am. And all of my music has aspects of songs that I used to listen to with my family growing up. “

To create her moving new album, Nicole gives her team a lot of credit. It can be difficult to know what to post in the world, but, she says, she has a strong circle of contributors and listeners who help guide the decisions she makes. As an artist, Nicole is versatile and sharp. She raps with biting quality and sings with seductive. It is the result of someone who is constantly working and who, in the midst of all day-to-day experience, turns the creative gears. Nicole is one of those creative people who is listening and watching all the time, maybe more when you least know it.

“My maturity and my vision are two things that have increased since I joined [a student] at night school, ”says Nicole. “I grew up a lot. I am not the same person but I wear the same essence.

In a way, says Nicole, she is living a dream. The one that is almost difficult to accept. However, with each verse, each song, each performance, the work sinks a little deeper into its bones. In the end, she invests so much in music – in her latest diverse and fascinating 16-song LP – because her relationship with music is synergistic, reciprocal. Music gives back. These are the proverbial glasses that she can don whenever she needs to see the world or herself much more clearly.

“It makes me feel different emotions,” she says. “I thank him for helping me understand things that I wouldn’t understand otherwise.