To grow up in the Asian-American experience and still become an artist is an act of rebellion; it’s a demand to tell your own story despite society deeming you interchangeable and voiceless. It’s a dismissal of the “model minority” stereotype—a patronizing label conferred upon your people for your supposed diligence and submission—and a refusal to reckon with that reduction. To be an Asian American artist also requires an inherent concession: You know that even if you attempt to address the universals in the human experience, your face will always be part of the discussion. Yaeji, a bilingual Korean American producer living in Brooklyn, could not have known that her first full-length mixtape would be released into explosive social frictions, a spate of violence against Asian Americans that would prove the “model” myth a hollow gesture. And yet her music arrives as an openhearted counterpoint, making space for both anxiety and love, offering a timely reminder of the power in subverting expectations of others and appreciating community—the kind you’re born into and the kind you built yourself.
In her short, already thrilling career as a producer, singer, and rapper, Yaeji has toyed with ideas of communication and opacity: She initially sang in Korean instead of English to obscure her lyrics, and still plays the languages like instruments with different timbres and intonations. Her warm, sparkling beats usually nod to deep house, though she often adds a glaze of icy trap languor; when she covered pop hits by Drake and Robyn, she tempered the mania with misty distortion and falsetto chirps. Across her two EPs for Godmode records, Yaeji’s songs were effortlessly chill yet reliably euphoric. Her bass drops and feathery vocals have had such nimble balance and satisfying velocity, they’ve felt purifying as only the best dance music can: between “raingurl,” “drink i’m sippin on,” and that humid cover of “passionfruit,” her 2017 EP2 remains a stalwart DJ cheat code. Even teetotalers know: Any night out is instantly more seductive upon hearing Yaeji murmur, “Mother Russia in my cup.”
For What We Drew, Yaeji’s first release on the venerable UK label XL, the 26-year-old producer could have easily shipped out a full crate of stylish, bacchanal floor-fillers without breaking a sweat. Instead, What We Drew plays like a self-issued challenge to strip away the fluorescence, to find what’s underneath pop catharsis. As a result, it’s subtler yet more resonant, because its peaks have deeper valleys to climb back from; in the tradition of Frankie Knuckles, Sylvester, and other artists who used bright electronic music as conduits of pain, here Yaeji offers smaller, darker meditations on the paralysis of anxiety and the loneliness inside the revelry.