A Bite of Yaeji 🍪
A Bronx-based skate collective led me to this dreamy musician
Monday Bites are bite-sized musician spotlights & playlists by Grace Lilly.
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🏆 A top-read post
• 3 min read •
“Dance your soul out until sunrise”
Yaeji says that’s what her music will make you want to do. She’s right.
I first heard of her through Bronx-based skate collective Brujas in 2017, when she performed at their Anti-Prom alongside Cardi B. I’d attended one of their previous events and the experience was so impactful that anyone they collaborated with automatically got my interest.
Sadly I couldn’t make it to Anti-Prom, but I spent that whole week listening to Yaeji’s music. Her absurdly catchy “Raingurl” was stuck in my head every day.
Her music feels like a dream. Surreal and alluring, it gets in your blood.
Yaeji
The basics
🤝 NYC-via-Seoul producer, DJ, and vocalist
🤝 b. 1993 (Queens, NY)
🤝 Blends elements of house music and hip hop with mellow vocals
Why you should know her: Named by Pitchfork as one of the “25 Artists Shaping the Future of Music”; has global appeal occupying a space all her own
If you like
✨ Fred again..
✨ Peggy Gou
✨ James Blake
✨ Caroline Polachek
✨ Charli XCX
✨ SOPHIE
Known for
🏆 Introspective, dancefloor-ready tracks
🏆 Singing in both English & Korean, creatively unbounded by language and geography
🏆 Her singular, hybrid-sound that synthesizes influences of Korean indie rock and electronica, late ‘90s and early 2000s hip hop and R&B, and leftfield bass and techno
🏆 Working with Dua Lipa, Robyn, and OHHYUK
Bite-sized facts
🍪 Born Kathy Yaeji Lee in Flushing, Queens as an only child in a Korean family; moved to Atlanta when she was 5, then to South Korea in the 3rd grade
🍪 While in South Korea, switched schools on a yearly basis, leading her to find friends on the Internet and discover music
🍪 Moved back to the US to study conceptual art, East Asian studies, and graphic design at Carnegie Mellon University
🍪 During her college years, started DJing at house parties; 2 years later, began writing & producing her own music
🍪 Featured at MoMA PS1; graced the cover of The Fader; partnerships with PAC-MAN & Marc Jacobs; featured on Charli XCX’s 2019 album Charli
🍪 Sold out two headlining worldwide tours
Songs & dates
♫ 2016 Releases her first single, “New York '93” referring to her year of birth
♫ 2017 Breaks out with singles “Raingurl” and “Drink I’m Sippin On” off her 2017 debut EPs
♫ 2020 Releases her critically-acclaimed mixtape WHAT WE DREW 우리가 그려왔던
♫ 2021 “Year to Year” and “29” are released, her first collaborative work with Korean Indie band front man Oh Hyuk of Hyukoh
♫ 2023 Her debut album, With a Hammer, comes out featuring singles, “For Granted” and “Done (Let's Get It)”
She said
On her artistic intentions
⭐ “It’s very much a feeling, and language is so limiting. To limit those feelings into words is really hard, which is why it helps for me to use two languages, because I feel I have a larger spectrum of tools to work with to describe what I’m trying to say, but it’s very much a feeling for me, too. It’s hard for me to put it into words, which is why I often abstract a lot of my lyrics.”
My Yaeji Playlist
I gathered my fav Yaeji songs, from me to you with love. Like & save on Spotify and listen all week 💗
Where to start
“Drink I’m Sippin On” music video
Yaeji’s big break came in July 2017 when her single, “Drink I’m Sippin On” was released on 88srising’s Youtube channel. The video garnered over one million views in two weeks.
〰️
A day with Yaeji
Learn what’s in her asian supermarket haul, the trinkets she likes to collect, and how her obsession with documentation formed the basis for her latest project in this 2023 Dazed Interview
〰️
Yaeji and Dua Lipa
The two talk about pet parenting, the process of remixing, and how language influences creative expression
Down the rabbit hole
If you wanna dive even deeper:
Boiler Room New York DJ Set on Youtube
An hour of Yaeji making her magic. Watch here.
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Sources
thanks for this! an artist I don't know at all!