Everybody in my university program seems to know Bùi Ngọc Cẩm Phương, though in the music world, she's more popularly known as Ci Pi, a stage name that combines her name’s 2 initials. Be it because of her music or her noticeable Japanese fashion styles, even on campus, Ci Pi’s presence is “vivid” and easy to spot. However, it wasn’t until I knew her personally through a group project that I caught a glimpse of her true self. Despite the edgy appearance with quirky hairstyles and aesthetics, Ci Pi is quiet and calm, and always seems to be immersed in her own world.
Experiencing her discography as a whole, you will find two distinct styles and vibes: raging voice atop a pulsating phonk instrumental and raw vocals over a minimalistic beat. The similarity is that, in both, Ci Pi’s emotions — anger, frustration, or wistful thoughts — are all laid bare, direct and candid. Music to Ci Pi is simultaneously an escape from and expression of her chaotic thoughts: “Because my mind is not very orderly, I struggle with many things. However, with music, I feel like it gives me a certain vibe — sometimes I do this, and at other times I do that. But there is still a distinct ‘color,’ a distinct combination.”
I was flabbergasted to hear Ci Pi, now a sophomore, describe the starting point of her journey with rapping in seventh grade as “recent.” Still, it made sense as she began making music in “lớp chồi” (preschool grade for children of 4 or 5 years of age); at the time, little Ci Pi often hummed melodies with self-written lyrics for her family and even had a poem published in Nhi Đồng magazine in third grade. Then, after experimenting just for fun, Ci Pi started listening to rap and playing with this genre in seventh grade. Her first rap verse, she recalled, was “really silly”: it was a diss track aimed at two classmates who were dating. As childish as this sounds, this was a starting point from which she continued to “create and create.”
Ci Pi’s first encounter with fame was during tenth grade, through a collaboration with a team she found through posting on her school’s confession page, looking for friends to make music with. “My team joined a competition to create a music video. The competition allowed us to use any music for the MV, but since I was ambitious, I decided to make my own music for it,” she recalled. Being a Saigon native, Ci Pi infused the Saigoneer spirit into the lyrics on an EDM beat she found online, accompanied by the MV showcasing signature activities and landmarks in the city. Even as an amateur, Ci Pi’s work already hinted at her future style: self-made music, self-made visuals, and Saigon vibes delivered even through non-traditional genres.
But the breakthrough was the team’s ‘Christmas Cypher 2021’; Ci Pi posted her part on TikTok and attracted a lot of attention. The full song, penned by Ci Pi, offers a humorous twist on Christmas. Instead of traditional activities like attending church and family gatherings, it captures the rebellious spirit of Vietnamese youth celebration, with alcohol, gossip, and convenience store snacks. This marked the “official” start of Ci Pi’s rap journey.
Ci Pi went viral thanks to a “bouncy” (her own word) track that took TikTok by storm: ‘t sốt dmm’ (i’m m*therf*cking sick). This song belongs to phonk, a genre that incorporates dark, warped techniques including chopped and screwed instrumentals. Apart from being one of the rare phonk tracks that reached a wide Vietnamese audience, this song caught the attention thanks to Ci Pi’s mock-childish tone and lyrics warning others about her sickness and anger. The additional use of screamo — an emo genre featuring screaming aggressively about feelings and emotions — confronts listeners right on. Adding the typical menacing energy of phonk, we have Ci Pi’s trademark: “When you listen, the word ‘vivid’ pops up in your mind. It's like, ‘Hello everyone, it's me, I'm here!’ — it's loud.”
However, Ci Pi’s discography doesn’t include only noisy, bouncy, and aggressive music. Writing music, for her, is a way to navigate and express her inner disordered world. There are times when she feels the need to “scream” them all out and release all chaos through the screamo genre: “Basically, it’s all about shouting, and my mind is boisterous; it’s not quiet at all. So I think screaming is a logical way to express that. It helps me release all the noise in my head.” More or less, to her, this style is the musical version of a rage room — instead of punching the emotions out on the walls, Ci Pi screams them out in her music.
But there are also times when her mind is quieter, filled with personal feelings and thoughts. These translate into a more “indie” style, utilizing minimalistic lo-fi quality beats, as seen in either her guitar-driven tracks or rustic demos with unpolished mixing. These are not fully fleshed-out creations, just covers, sometimes with altered lyrics that are raw like her emotions. Take ‘nếu có yêu tôi’ as an example: no heavily mixed instrumental; no bass that feels like a throbbing headache; no extravagant scenes of Ci Pi being in the middle of a landfill; just a simple background of her bedroom, raw vocal, and a guitar backing track. She sings about the confusion of falling in love — the whirlwind pace, uncertainty, and vulnerability — in a way that seems polarizing different from the noisy and chaotic phonk screamo tracks.
Describing the duality in style, Ci Pi stated: “The ones that are ‘noisy’ and ‘childish’ are the most lively, but other than that, I still lean indie. I’m not sure what adjectives to use, but I imagine it as a blend of brown, purple, and black. Brown feels very genuine, indie, and rustic; purple is childish; and black adds a chaotic, dark aspect that merges with purple.” This kaleidoscope of “colors” is emblematic of Ci Pi’s music-making philosophy: genre and style aside, the meaning, what the lyrics convey, is truly what matters the most.
Balancing an artist's life and the studying load of a student is hard; at the moment, Ci Pi is focusing on completing her university program. Even amidst the academic stress, it is impossible for her to give up on arts completely: “It’s not like I’m too stressed to create, because it’s not what stresses me out — it’s what helps me release stress.” Ci Pi takes this temporary hiatus as an opportunity to step away from the spotlight, like doing work-related performances or making music for the audience, to focus on what she wants to do. Regardless of whether it's music or not, it's still art.
Thinking about the future, Ci Pi envisions a life far away from the busyness and hustle of cities: “I’ll work remotely, traveling around instead of staying in one place. I’ll go up into the mountains and stay there. My jobs will involve writing, like writing songs for artists. My goal is to write — I want to write even more than I want to make music.” Dreaming about laying low, Ci Pi admits that she might not be able to step into the mainstream scene, but being rich has never been her life goal anyway. Ci Pi jokingly shares how she doesn’t want to be part of the industry anymore, but instead, to make a living, she could make pottery, open a café, do something artistic, and work on some projects. “I just want to get by day by day. I don’t want to be super rich. I just want to live simply in the mountains.”
Pursuing screamo and phonk — non-traditional genres that are not well-known in Vietnam’s musical landscape — is not an easy road to approach the mass audience. The virality of ‘t sốt dmm’ off is a funny outlier to her. Studying Communications in university, therefore, is a strategic choice: “I think I need to understand what people like and target a specific audience. In this way, even when I make music that caters to my audience, I won’t lose my essence.”
Photos courtesy of Ci Pi.
