Alex Bruce’s music champions female empowerment, equality
Alex Bruce’s birthday falls on Christmas Day. On the days leading to that special day, she gets all excited. And then finally that day comes and she’s not.
It’s a feeling she knows all too well—the birthday blues—but the reason continues to elude her. There’s just something about turning a year older that scares her “to the bone.” And her last birthday must have hit her harder than usual, because she didn’t just turn a year older—she turned 18.
“It’s like I’m happy, but not. Sometimes, I find myself crying. It’s a very weird day for me. I think I was afraid of becoming of legal age. For some reason, it got me thinking, ‘Pwede na ako makulong!” I’m not a minor anymore. I can no longer say, ‘I’m just a little girl!’” the hip-hop artist told Lifestyle.
“Oh my God, I’m getting old!” she said, laughing. “It shouldn’t be a big deal, but maybe it’s just not sinking in yet.”
Of course, by no stretch of the imagination can being 18 be described as old. But perhaps it can feel that way for an artist like her who has been going at it in the industry since the age of 11. “It feels like I have already experienced a lot. And in some ways, I think I’m already mature,” she said.
Bruce has been into music for as long as she can remember. At 4, her father, then a guitarist of a rapcore local band, would bring her to his gigs, and that got her thinking, “I want to do that, too.” At 11, she burst onto the scene, introduced as a “young girl making a name for herself in hip-hop.”
‘Prodigy’
Over traps beats and with her precociously fluent flow, Bruce spat out bars that batted for female empowerment. At 12, she was signed by Sony Music Philippines, which called her a “prodigy.” And at 13, various news outlets were hailing her as “the future of hip-hop.”
While that sounds like much pressure for a performer barely in her teens, the carefree Bruce refused to let other people’s prospects of her weigh her down. Or perhaps it was simply the innocence of youth. “Ang kapal ng mukha ko noon. If they call me this or that, I would just be like, ‘Yup, that’s me!’ That’s just how I was,” she said.
In hindsight, Bruce feels thankful that she had an early start. “Namulat ako agad. I’m happy with what I have been through, with my journey so far,” said the Batangas native behind such hits as “Bling,” “Yakap,” and “Pull It Off.”
Recently, while rummaging through old stuff, she unearthed her writing notebooks from when she was 11. Leafing through the pages, she found herself giggling, both amused and embarrassed. “I wrote things like, ‘Don’t stick to each other like glue.’ What does that even mean?” she said, laughing.
Although she cringed at her childhood musings, they made her realize just how much she has grown, and how much of her has stayed the same.
Evolving sound
“Looking back, I can say now that my songwriting has improved. At dapat lang! I have been reading a lot, learning from experiences. And I do feel like I have evolved, not only in the way I think, but also the way I sound,” she said.
True enough, the past couple of years saw Bruce exploring different genres, from lo-fi to Afrobeats. One time, the rapper even gave rock and rap-metal a shot (“Bulls on Parade” by Rage Against the Machine) on the urging of her father who wanted her to sing vocals for him on a video project. She was worried she wouldn’t be able to pull it off. But she did. And it was a blast.
“Hip-hop will never go away. I will always go back to it. But now, I’m in a phase where I want to experiment, try every possible genre I can until I find the ones that suit me best. Right now, I’m loving reggae, Bob Marley and his sons… Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill are also on my playlist,” she said.
But regardless of musical style, her commitment to championing female empowerment and equality remains steadfast, as reflected in her latest single, “A to Z (Drop It),” a bold, sassy track about embracing yourself and “owning your own space.” That she worked with Zae—a fellow young female rapper she was once puzzlingly pitted against—only makes the message more potent.
“We have known each other since 2019, and we have always wanted to collaborate. Our fans had been asking for it, too. We’re both young and confident women. But still, there are some who compare us. Why are we being made to compete with each other when we actually support each other and have each other’s back?” wondered Bruce, who likely already knows the answer to her question.
It can be hard not to read such comments online, especially when people find the audacity to tag her. Biting back can be tempting at times. But that’s draining, she said, and she’s not about to give rabble-rousers the satisfaction of seeing her “get triggered.” So, here’s a new single instead— “to end the beef they had in mind, a beef that didn’t exist in the first place.”
As this interview wound down, Bruce may have unwittingly tripped on the reason—or maybe just one of the many—she dreads her birthdays and growing old.
This year, she plans on releasing a new EP, her first since 2021. And in it are new songs that chart her growth, both as an artist and as a person. Safe to say, there will be no more reminiscing about her old brushes with puppy love, as she did when she was 13 in “Yakap.” “I think I was quite worried about what my relatives would think… baka manibago sila,” she said.
But the songs have marinated long enough, Bruce said. Now at 18, it’s about time she finally served them. “I have many songs piled up. But I kept on debating with myself: ‘Should I release them before or after I turn 18?’ It was basically a me problem,” she said, laughing. “But now, buo na ang loob ko.”
