PinkPantheress — British singer, songwriter, and producer Victoria Walker — opens her second mixtape Fancy That (May 9, 2025) with "Illegal," released as its third single on June 6, 2025. It reintroduces her in its first line — "My name is Pink and I'm really glad to meet you" — over a sample of Underworld's "Dark & Long (Dark Train)," with a 2-step garage / dance-pop pulse underneath. The full track story is in the Wikipedia entry for the song.
It sounds like a secret love song, and that is the trick. As she explained to Capital FM after Fancy That came out, it is actually about buying weed and the paranoia that follows — she had first imagined a song about hiring a male escort, a situation she had not lived, so she rewrote it around an encounter she could make real.
"Illegal" then outran the mixtape: a TikTok handshake trend, her second Billboard Hot 100 entry (one week at #96), a Grammy nomination for Best Dance Pop Recording, and NME naming it its Song of the Year. She told NME she did not think it would be "the one" — "I think the power of the beat itself is what people really like about it."
I had heard the name PinkPantheress, but I just assumed it was somebody like Nicki Minaj or Doja Cat. But then I heard her viral music on TikTok and checked her out, and I was pleasantly surprised that she was doing old school British drum and bass and adding vocals to it. It's an amazing combination, and I'm not surprised at her appeal and the success that followed.
— Red Hector
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