TILA TEQUILA

Nguyen was born in Singapore, where her family emigrated after the Vietnam War. A few years later, they moved again to the Houston neighborhood of Alief, where they lived in rundown housing for most of Nguyen's childhood until they were admitted to a gated community run by a strict Buddhist temple. The family left the community when Nguyen was eight.

As soon as she entered middle school, Nguyen developed a tomboy attitude and kept getting in fights. Her behavior eventually got her sent to a boarding school for six months before She was transferred to another school. As soon as she reached high school, she used her sister's identification card to enter nightclubs, where she began experimenting with drugs and joined a gang. In an interview with Import Tuner, Nguyen said she had been searching for a sense of identity: "I was really confused then, 'cause at first I thought I was black, then I thought I was Hispanic and joined a cholo gang". Later She made some friends outside the gang who briefly helped turn her life around, however her past caught up with her, and she fled to Queens, New York at the age of sixteen. When she returned to Texas she had a three-way relationship, but eventually decided she could no longer handle her lifestyle. She then began to focus on her studies and job(s).