Yaeji In Concert
One of the buzziest acts in electronic music, Yaeji truly broke through following her mid-2017 intimate Boiler Room set. Inside a New York warehouse, the Korean-American producer and vocalist with a fanny pack breezily strewn over her shoulder might have been the smallest person in the room. But as elated bodies moved rhythmically, all eyes and ears were squarely on her and the riveting mix of lo-fi house with hip-hop and pop undertones that she put down. The thumping bass settling in alongside Yaeji's breathy bilingual coo on songs like "drink i'm sippin on" and "raingurl" makes her music impossible not to dance to, whether comfortably swaying at a midsize club or joining thousands in a rave-whistle and laser light show–driven party at the Coachella Music & Arts Festival's Yuma Tent. In fact, lyrics in both English and Korean have become a hallmark for Yaeji's refreshing music, and fans singing along at her shows have happily gravitated to the phonetic cadences she seeks to create. "I actually really like how Korean sounds," she told Pitchfork. "It's a very angular, textured sound, which is why a lot of my vocals sound whispery."
Yaeji Background
Kathy Yaeji Lee (Yaeji) was born in Queens to Korean parents in 1993. A single child, she moved with her family to Atlanta then to South Korea when she was in third grade. Bouncing between schools in South Korea led Yaeji to become a true product of the Internet age as she made friends online and became exposed to music of all kinds. She eventually moved to Pittsburgh to study East Asian fine art and visual culture at Carnegie Mellon University, but also picked up Ableton production software, started DJing on her college radio station, and began uploading tracks to SoundCloud. This is where Godmode Records label head Nick Sylvester came across Yaeji's enthralling productions and helped raise her profile by releasing two EPs (‘EP2' and ‘Yaeji') featuring her remix of Drake's "Passionfruit" and her biggest hit to date, "raingurl." The latter has clocked in over 15 million streams on Spotify, and the two EPs were collectively named Album of the Year for 2017 by influential music blog Gorilla vs Bear.
