The angel number 1111 symbolises enlightenment and awakening. In numerology, it’s considered  divine confirmation that things are on the right path. That feeling is one that Biig Piig arrived at after a long period of constant flux. It also provides the title and emotional bedrock of her highly-anticipated debut album 11:11, which finds the Irish pop star “a bit more at peace with the ebbs and flows of life.”

“Whenever I check my phone and it’s 11:11, I always take a moment to think about someone that I know, or reflect on an experience, or take a moment of gratitude,” she explains. “I feel like it's always a nice time to take a step back, and this record has felt like that too. It’s one big reflection on everything that's happened the last few years.”

Biig Piig is a queen of reinvention. At 26-years-old, she’s lived countless lives in countless cities, from her birthplace of Cork, to Marbella, London, and Los Angeles. She’s worked all kinds of unusual jobs, from dealing poker at Leicester Square’s Empire Casino to working in a draft house after a stint at “Beer School”, and babysitting for a family in Switzerland for two months. That same lawless spirit has driven Biig Piig’s musical identity, including her name. It started off as a joke – something she’d read on a pizza menu – but the more it stuck around the more it came to mirror her lifestyle: “The big pig… the big mess,” as she put it in one early interview. “But in a way, that’s the sweetest thing.” 

It’s also driven the music itself, from the bilingual bars she dropped over sleek alt hip-hop instrumentals with the London-based DIY collective NiNE8, to the global mix of R&B, dance, and neo-soul that runs through her first run of EPs, starting with 2018’s excellently-titled Big Fan of the Sesh. From there, she’s experimented with laid-back trap beats and Spanish love songs on 2019’s A World Without Snooze and No Place for Patience, and introspective alt-indie on 2021’s The Sky is Bleeding. Acting as a stepping stone towards 11:11, her acclaimed 2023 mixtape Bubblegum probed themes of self-discovery, loneliness and longing in the wake of her move to L.A – a city that can be dreamlike and disorienting in equal measure. It also refined Biig Piig’s sound, coalescing into an immersive body of buoyant dance-pop with a confessional flair. 

Recorded in various studios across London and Paris, including the late Philippe Zdar’s iconic Motorbass, 11:11 took shape as Biig Piig began to settle down. She returned to London where she now lives full-time with her two cats, she’s in her “first long long-term relationship,” she’s putting roots down. This is the position from which her first full-length body of work was created. No longer moving at high speed but still feeling things intensely, 11:11 makes peace with change as a constant, rather than trying to outrun it. “I was having a really hard time at some points, but in hindsight everything has happened the way it was supposed to,” she reflects on the writing process and personal changes running alongside it. “It’s those moments that have influenced [the record], and tie back to that same feeling that I get when I see the number 1111.”

Making its way through the outer havoc of the storm to its peaceful eye, 11:11 finds hope in the dark and confidence through endurance. “I'd love for people to feel nostalgic for experiences they've had. To be able to reflect on them, and celebrate them, and let them go through the music,” she says. “It’s about letting go of past things and loving yourself through the hard times – and having a good time, too, because that's what we're all here for.”