Tone Deaf talks to Bohan Phoenix about his music, inspiration, and how he’s leading a new generation of Asian-Americans in hip-hop.
Most people turn to art in a moment of self-reflection or introspection. Bohan Phoenix’s identity crisis, however, set in after he started writing music.
“It’s funny because I never even felt confused about where I belonged until I started writing music,” the China-born rapper recalls on the Saturday morning we talk, shortly after his performance at The Joy Ruckus Club: Virtual Lunar New Year Festival.
“Before that, I was just happy to have friends, blend in, have girlfriends, go to school. But as I’m writing and rapping in English and trying to impress people by how they’re really complicated raps, I’m like: ‘Oh, no one really gives a shit. It’s just someone else trying to impress people by rapping. So, what is hip-hop in my mind?’” He says.
To answer that, he had to go all the way back and think about what it was that drew him to hip-hop in the first place when he first moved to America as a child. Soon after, he realized that he was ‘caught in the middle’, that his self-expression was an amalgamation of his unique experiences as an immigrant, vacillating between his connection to China and his coming-of-age in America. His purpose was to find a way to reconcile the two without exoticizing either.
“It went from me being super conflicted about it and being like, ‘Oh man, like, am I Chinese? Am I American?’ To being accepting and going ‘Wow, I’m fucking blessed to have had my life in China, and my life in the States.’ And I gained a perspective that I normally wouldn’t have otherwise wouldn’t have.” He explains.
While recent years have seen a crop of Asian-American artists grappling with their dual identity, setting Bohan Phoenix apart from the crowd is his staunch refusal to sort himself into either category. To him, it boils down to a simple fact that surpasses a label: hip-hop is storytelling, and all you need is someone to relate to yours.
Tone Deaf caught up with Bohan Phoenix shortly after The Joy Ruckus Club: Virtual Lunar New Year Festival, to talk about his music, inspirations, and future.
Tone Deaf: New York is where you got your musical start, right? Brooklyn was home base for you. What does it mean to you? Where does it fall on the emotional landscape?
Bohan Phoenix: That’s where I started doing music as a career. Gospel choir was really where I had my start back in high school, so I have a pretty strong sentiment towards my gospel choir and that time. But as far as Brooklyn goes, that’s definitely a place that I considered calling home besides China, and Boston, where my mom is.
TD: I was so surprised to learn — I would have brought it up if you hadn’t — about gospel choir. That’s such a far cry from rap. How did you make the the journey from point A to point B?
Bohan Phoenix: In high school, I was really into hip-hop, but obviously there wasn’t like a “hip-hop choir”, but I wanted to be closer to music and I thought ‘Okay, if I’m in a high school, where’s all the music happening? In the choir and the band’. I didn’t play any instruments, so I couldn’t do the band. So I was like, ‘Okay, I guess I’ll join the choir.’ That was my way of wanting to get closer to music, you know, performing on stage.
Those early days performing on stage with my high school choir and me rapping — because my director let me write raps as long as it was about God; as long as it was about love, I could rap it. That was my first experience on stage, and I had my whole choir behind me. It was the confidence that I needed when I got to New York afterwards to pursue my own thing. Gospel choir definitely was that got me even closer towards music in general.
TD: So who were the first artists that you listened to?
Bohan Phoenix: Growing up in China, I heard many types of music. There was a lot of Chinese ballad. And the first time any music that got me interested with Jay Chou, from Taiwan. I remember I was about to move to the States, 10 years old; my grandparents and I were shopping around for some English learning tapes.
I came across this wacky-looking cover of Jay Chou’s album The Eight Dimensions, where half of his face was, like, bionic. I just thought it was cool. I was 10 years old, I had never seen anything quite like that. You know? And the place I was grew up in was so small. To give you perspective, I shared a bed with my grandparents for the first 11 years. So, I bought [the album], and I remember listening to Jay Chou and thinking, ‘This is different.’
When I got to the States, my mom thought that one of the ways of learning English was watching TV, watching cartoons and getting used to hearing it and maybe repeating it back. One of the movies [I watched] was 8 mile. At that time I didn’t speak English, so I couldn’t understand what hip-hop was. Nor did I understand that this was a culture. I didn’t have any of that concept, but what drew me in was his story. What drew me in was his story of perseverance and finding confidence in this music, in a world where he doesn’t belong. And I felt like that was me. I thought I was in a world where I didn’t belong because I wasn’t really into America when I first moved here.
I thought that hip-hop was a good way for me to escape, the way Eminem was escaping. That was the first time I felt like I was relating to someone. Maybe I took those little small details and [got] hooked.
TD: I understand why you would say that, because you’ve said before that you felt too Chinese for America and too American for China. How has your music helped you find that place where you belong?
Bohan Phoenix: It’s funny because I never even felt confused about where I belong until I started writing music. And then I had to keep writing music to help resolve that conflict. Before that, I was just happy to have friends, blend in, have girlfriends, go to school. But as I’m writing and rapping in English and just trying to impress people by how they’re really complicated raps, I’m like ‘Oh, no one really gives a shit. Like, it’s just someone else trying to impress people by rapping. Okay. So what is hip-hop in my mind?’
I had to go all the way back and think: ‘It’s a form of self-expression.’ So I said, ‘Okay, let me tell my story.’ When I started talking about my own stuff, my own life, that’s when people started connecting to it. Slowly, I realized that even though we don’t share similar experiences exactly, we have gone through the exact same emotions of hope, love, hate, despair.
Therefore, when you tell your story, other people relate to it. Cause they relate to the emotions that you have gone through. So it wasn’t until I started writing about my own life that I’m like, ‘Wait a second. I’m caught in the middle here.’ And then I started self-analyzing through the songs, and those are ways of me trying to make sense of myself.
It went from me being super conflicted about it and being like, ‘Oh man, like, am I Chinese? Like, am I American?’ To being accepting and going ‘Wow, I’m fucking blessed to have had my life in China. I have my life in the States.’ And I gained a perspective that I normally wouldn’t have otherwise wouldn’t have.
TD: When you started writing music, was there any moment where you felt alienated or alone in this landscape? I can’t imagine there would have been a lot Asian-American people in hip-hop when you started out.
Bohan Phoenix: To be honest, when I started liking hip-hop music, I was so young that any of this never came into play. I liked it purely because I liked it. I liked the power that it had. I never really thought about anything beyond that, like: ‘Oh yeah, he’s white, they’re black, I’m Chinese, but it’s still just music.’
TD: Did that perspective change when you started writing music?
Bohan Phoenix: I realized that no matter how Chinese I am, no matter how much Chinese I put in the rap songs, no matter how many gongs I put into the beat, it is still a Black art form. So for me to stand somewhere on a stage and be like, ‘I’m here to spread Chinese culture,’ I was starting to realize that there is a hypocrisy in that statement.
My problem with a lot of the stuff out there is that people are using Chinese hip-hop as a selling point, but the music itself is not that great. A lot of people understand that if you label it Chinese hip-hop or Asian hip-hop, people are going to be interested. They’re going to want to click on it. If you look right, if you have the right accessories, if you have the right budget, you can convince people that this is something that’s happening right now.
The perspective shifted when I realized, ‘Okay, I need to stop worrying about exoticizing myself for attention. I need to stop rapping in both languages on every song, just because I felt like that’s the way people will listen to it, if I am switching it up in the middle. I need to go back to music. What is hip-hop? It’s storytelling. It’s talking about the life that we are all living in.
TD: You started getting more and more active in China in recent years. What effect has increasing contact with your homeland has on your music?
Bohan Phoenix: Definitely gave me more perspective in terms of what kind of person I want to be with my music. But sonically, ironically, before the last two, three years of moving around in China, I was using more Asian instrumentals. But now that I’ve spent some time in China, I’m starting to take them out and starting to go back to whatever sounds good instead of just adding them there.
TD: This reminds me of what you said about wanting to have longevity in your music. Could you elaborate on that concept for me?
Bohan Phoenix: When I say I want longevity in my music, it just means that this is something that I love so much that I want to be able to do this as long as I want to, without it becoming too much of a burden, without it becoming something that’s monstrous to me, where I’m miserable from doing it, you know?
And a lot of people will get to that point because they put pressure on themselves, like ‘I gotta be famous when I’m, by the time I’m 30’. And I’m like, ‘Why do you do this to yourself?’ So when I say I want longevity, I don’t even mean that I want people to know me for a long time or whatever. I just want to be able to do this, you know, for as long as I want to do it.
