San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Bonus Beats
singer and Asian Man Records honcho Mike Park does, over a 90-second bruising ska-punk workout.
Niki — “Every Summertime”:
At first listen, “Every Summertime” sounds like an old New Orleans R&B song until the lyrics reset the GPS to the foggy banks of the Presidio: “18, we were undergrads/ Stayed out late never made it to class/ Outer Richmond in a taxicab/ You were sweating bullets on the way to my dad’s.”
Indonesian singer Niki wraps herself tightly around this sunny throwback about young love moving too fast. It appears on the “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” soundtrack, curated by the Asian-centric label 88rising.
Jessi — “Zoom”:
Queens-born rapper Jessi is a veteran presence in K-pop, from her salty bars to her outsize attitude and styling. Aligned with “Gangnam Style” PSY’s label P Nation, Jessi has been putting out spicy hits with regularity. “Zoom” is her latest bump, gleefully checking the thirst traps she sets. If you think all
K-pop looks and sounds the same, you ain’t heard Jessi.
Bo Joyce Wrice & Kaytranada — “Iced Tea”:
Japanese and African American R&B singer Joyce Wrice collaborates with Grammy-winning producer Kaytranada for this confident banger about navigating the relationship minefield. And like the summertime drink, it’s cool and refreshing with a brisk caffeine kick.
Ez Mil – “Re-Up”:
Ez Mil is a Las Vegas Filipino American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and dancer, and “Re-Up” is his bilingual empowerment anthem. Switching between English and Tagalog, he flows through a head-bopping beat. Most exciting, he invites the women of the world to join in with an intersectional chant: “We got Black girls, white girls, Asians and Latinas, Hawaiian girls and Islanders, and all my Filipinas.”
Starkids — “Let Go”:
Starkids reminds one of 100 gecs, if they
and documentary footage.
Toro y Moi, a veteran of Bay Area music festivals such as Outside Lands and Treasure Island, has a few U.S. shows in support of “Mahal” lined up, including an appearance at the free Stern Grove Music Festival in San Francisco this summer and the Music + Camping Weekend in Big Sur in the fall. But he still feels conflicted about touring with the COVID-19 pandemic still affecting so many people.
“I feel like I’m getting my legs back a little bit, but I’m still not really traveling,” Bear said. “I already feel strange playing large concerts when were Japanese (two members are Hawaii-born) and influenced by anime, Soundcloud rap and desperation. “Let Go” is their latest assault on the senses, spreading their hyperpop sound beyond the Pacific. Check them out and you’ll want to book the next flight to Tokyo to party with them.
Mariya Takeuchi — “Plastic Love”:
City pop is a genre of music that came out of Japan in the ’80s, and it draws from American R&B and pop. It
people are still getting sick, so I’m trying to find that balance of the ethics of it all.”
Last year, he performed on the second day of Travis Scott‘s Astroworld 2021 festival in Houston, where 10 people died and dozens more were injured. In the days following the tragedy, he announced plans to donate all his profits from the event to victims’ families.
“Profiting from this event feels completely off and I’d like to encourage other performers to consider helping in some way as well,” he said in a statement at the time.
Despite his newfound openness to change, the first track on “Mahal” finds Bear in a nostalgic mood. On “The Medium,” he laments the slow death of print (including this newspaper) and his feelings about the internet reflects the period when Japan’s economy was one of the world’s biggest and the music reflected that optimism. These days, record diggers have been focusing on city pop because of its sunny disposition (so needed), and it’s funky as hell. Mariya Takeuchi’s 1984 jam is the go-to city pop track — the genre’s “Scenario,” as it were — a song that everyone stops and wilds out to.
CL — “Spicy”:
Korean rappersinger CL led one of the most beloved girl groups in K-pop history, 2NE1. At Coachella 2022, CL brought out the other three members in one of the biggest surprises to emerge from the Southern California desert bacchanalian festival.
“Spicy” is blessed with the most pro-Asian line you’ll hear in a pop song (“You’re rocking with the most fly Asians” goes the hook), and the song begins with actor John Malkovich inquiring about Korean condiments. If you haven’t heard this, you really need to spice up your life.
age. That’s part of the reason the cover looks like a magazine cover, with a bar code tucked in the corner, he noted.
Just days before the release of “Mahal,” Bear admits he still grapples with the question of whether he’s giving too much away. But eventually, he concedes, “I feel like I’m speaking to my truth.”
“This isn’t a record made with the motivation of being a commercial success. It was made as an art piece,” he said. “If it’s successful, that’s great. As long as it’s holding truth, it will rise to the top.”