Similarly, it offers a vision of Asian cool to industries-music, advertising, fashion, television-that are desperate to be cool in Asia. The company understands how to sell Asian artists, like Wu, to American audiences. In just two years, 88rising, which also has an office in Los Angeles and a small team in Shanghai, has become an authority on how to create Asian and American pop-culture crossovers. Everyone was praised as “fire,” a “badass,” or, occasionally, a “genius.” “I want that to look like a hologram, like on New Era caps,” he told him. As he moved around the office, he stopped to peer over the shoulder of an employee who was experimenting with a logo typeface. He’s thirty-six, but his wispy mustache and sideburns make him look much younger. “Now you can really be fuckin’ anything.”Īgainst a backdrop of twentysomethings draped in minimalist streetwear, Miyashiro, who was wearing a fitted shirt with a dark floral pattern and a baseball cap with a fluorescent stripe, looked only slightly more adult. “But, if they see someone that looks like them do it, then it changes the whole perception, just like Obama did for African-Americans,” Miyashiro said. That’s the opportunity for Kris, and for us as a company.” Asian fans rarely see their stars venture outside their regional hip-hop ecosystems, let alone stand alongside an established figure like Scott. “It’s how to sell a thought,” he said, of promoting the song. Miyashiro was anxious to see how the single would be received. Wu adopts Scott’s signature style, which is melodic, sleazy, and heavily reliant on Auto-Tune. On the track, Wu and Scott list the various forms of attention that their women warrant, including a spot on a club’s guest list, a French kiss, and the song itself. Last October, at the 88rising offices in New York, Miyashiro and Wu were preparing for the release of “Deserve,” the result of the collaboration. “This motherfucker right here,” Scott recalled, referring to Wu, “called me from a long-distance number and was, like, ‘Ayo, I got this joint for you.’ And I was, like, ‘Ayo, motherfucker, I seen you in like a hundred movies.’ ” It wasn’t hard to persuade Scott to work with him. That summer, when Wu was working on music in Los Angeles, Miyashiro connected him with the Houston rapper Travis Scott. He wanted to document that culture, but he wanted to make things that shaped it, too. A few months earlier, Miyashiro had raised money to start 88rising, a company that he pitched as “Vice for Asian culture.” For decades, hip-hop has been central to young Americans’ understanding of what is cool, and Miyashiro knew that, increasingly, this was also the case in Asia. In February, 2016, Wu played in the celebrity game at the N.B.A.’s All-Star Weekend, in Toronto. (His catchphrase, delivered in Mandarin, was “Do you even freestyle?”) Like many Asian superstars, who are mobbed at home yet walk around Manhattan in relative anonymity, he wanted to measure himself against American artists. After a stint in the Korean pop group EXO, he became a judge on “Rap of China,” a hugely successful reality show about aspiring rappers. basketball and, subsequently, of hip-hop. In middle school, he had become a devotee of N.B.A. Wu, who is twenty-six, grew up in Canada and in China, where he is famous as an actor, singer, and model. To hear more feature stories, download the Audm app for your iPhone.Ī few years ago, Kris Wu decided that he wanted to be known as a rapper.
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