Christian Oh returns a second time for our last editorial guest post of this weekend’s series. This time around, he touches upon some of his favorite artists of the fairer sex, highlighting two completely different genres in the process.
This first section is really a response to my brother who posted recently that he believes there are so many better white rappers out there than Mac Miller, Yelawolf, Machine Gun Kelly, and Asher Roth. He pointed out El-P, Despot, Lakutis, Aesop Rock, Brother Ali, R.A. The Rugged Man, and Atmosphere. But I had to jump in and post that there are also so many good Asian American rappers as well. And it got me thinking. Can you name them most of them? I mean, thank God for sites like A-tunes.net for showing us the way, because the talent is strong in Asian Americans as noted here in “The List”. My favorites are there, Dumbfounded, Kero One, Lyricks, Chan, Jin, and more. But what I do see missing is our lady MCs, such as Rocky Rivera, Ruby Ibarra, MC Knewdles from MisNomers, Shin-B, Honey C*caine, Theresa Vu aka T-Minus from Magnetic North, and Lin Que who worked with MC Lyte and toured with Wu-Tang Clan. Can you name others?
In the spirit of that, I wanted to give a shout out to all the Girlz out there who represent.
Check out this video from Rocky Rivera dedicated to GRLZ!!
Lastly, I wanted to take a moment to discuss my guilty pleasure. Even though they are not Asian American, they have had such an impact on Youtube and Asian Americans here in this country who love these two girls. Jayesslee, are two Australian Korean girls who are not only beautiful, but sing covers with such sincerity and flawless harmony. I had the pleasure of meeting them and actually being in the same airspace with these lovely ladies at Kollaboration Seattle in October 2011. These girls, Janice and Sonia Lee got their start in 2008 and put out their Youtube videos with such simplicity and grace that immediately they became a phenomenon over night. Now currently on tour through out South East Asia hitting the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, these girls are continuing to shine with their music, beauty, and soulfulness. You have to take a listen, if you haven’t yet.
Visit their site for more information on them and their tour. www.jayesslee.com
And check out their most recent cover of Maroon Five’s song “PayPhone”
Christian Oh is the executive director of Kollaboration DC and is a faculty lecturer of Asian American Studies as the University of Maryland, along with many other roles.
Two Cents is an editorial feature and the views and comments made by the author do not necessarily reflect those of a-Tunes.net as a whole.
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