Here’s the heat to kick off your week: Overseas Vol. I, the first mix in a new series by American music industry professional and DJ Allyson Toy, aka DJ TOY:
The mix comes midway through a tour Toy is doing with Bohan Phoenix, a Chinese-born, New York-based rapper who’s spent the last few years building a solid fanbase in both places. She actually tagged along on a China tour Bohan did last year, and caught a hard look at the creative explosion currently underway in various pockets of China’s cultural underground.
In an interview with Hypebae posted over the weekend, Toy says about being switched on to the China scene:
Bohan helped me tap into what feels like a sort of creative renaissance out here in China. Simply put, there are more young creators and innovators than ever, which paired with a real demand for creative output and the sheer numbers and scale of China, is an equation for success that simply doesn’t exist in the U.S. anymore.
Toy, who is second-generation Chinese-American, talks in the interview about the “bamboo ceiling” limiting Asian-Americans in creative fields in the US, and uses her expertise to highlight differences in the commercial landscape of the US vs Chinese music industry. For someone who’s spent time in the industry grind working on projects with such household names as Kanye West and The FADER, Toy’s interest in the China scene — strong enough to cause her to relocate from NYC to Shanghai — should tip you off to the fact that it’s getting very real over here.
Read Allyson’s full Hypebae interview here, and click play above to hear her first mix in a series that aims to create sonic bridges between East and West (it opens on one of our most spun tracks of the year so far, Higher Brothers’ “WeChat”).
Related:
