88rising: Bringing Asian Music to the Western Audiences
Brendan Qiu | USD Radio
“88rising was built here,” said Sean Miyashiro, as he stood on the top level of a parking garage of a Residence Inn in New York. If you don’t know who Miyashiro is, he created Thump, the electronic and dance music platform on VICE. However, shortly after the successful creation of Thump, Miyashiro became interested in life beyond dance music, and decided to take his ambitions and experience to the Bronx to start from scratch. “I knew that after launching a whole content platform, I had the ability and know-how to do it again,” Miyashiro told Bloomberg in their Youtube documentary At 88rising, East Meets West, One Viral Hit at a Time. Since he could not afford an office space, Miyashiro started working out of his car in a grimey parking structure, which he showed Bloomberg in the documentary. During this phase, he formed a friendship over Twitter with a young Indonesian boy by the name of Brian Immanuel. “I didn’t even know he rapped,” recalled Miyashiro in a Bloomberg interview when asked how he found Immanuel. “I just thought his Twitter was genius with all the content and memes he was posting.”
Two weeks after forming this Twitter friendship, Immanuel dropped his first rap song as Rich Chigga on Youtube titled “Dat $tick,” which immediately became a viral hit. Miyashiro noticed the virality as well as Immanuel’s unique style, and as a result, Rich Chigga (now called Rich Brian) became 88rising’s first signee. Several months later after 88rising started gaining more traction, Joji, formerly known by his Youtube absurdist persona Filthy Frank, saw how Miyashiro was successfully bridging Asian culture into the West. “I really wanted to be a part of the movement,” said Joji in the documentary. His transition from the Youtube comedian who created the original “Harlem Shake” video to becoming a serious artist was a success, shown by the release of his first EP on 88rising, In Tongues, which within a few weeks reached number 2 on the Billboard R&B charts. Since then, 88rising has only gotten bigger, signing up and coming Asian and American artists, booking sold out tours in the US and Asia, and launching other entertainment branches under the 88rising name. This creative movement has been turning the heads of many popular American artists like Migos and Skrillex to name a few.
Combining elements of Asian culture and Western hip-hop, 88rising is a young entertainment company hoping to build a lasting, global brand that will outlive fleeting moments of virality. With influential artists like Rich Brian, Joji, Keith Ape, and Higher Brothers generating millions of views and streams for the network, the next question for founder Miyashiro and his team is how to translate that success into a long-term platform in a rapidly changing industry. In a Pitchfork interview thinking about what’s next for 88rising, Miyashiro says: “We help facilitate, as well as create ourselves. That’s why I think in the past, no Asian company or crew has been successful globally unless it was part of a large corporate company, like Psy or some sh%t like that – some gimmick. It didn’t last, and it was obviously because it was funny. In terms of real culture, there’s been no crew doing what we’re doing, period. Now we have a responsibility to make this something that is tangible and long-lasting.”
Website: https://88rising.com/
Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZW5lIUz93q_aZIkJPAC0IQ
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/88rising/