![]() It’s with this mindset that he churned out the 2013 mixtape X Years. She worked in real estate and was better off than most migrant workers, who, even today, bounce listlessly from factory to factory for years, unable to scrape together enough money to find a way out.įor much of his career, Phoenix was convinced that he needed to create what he describes as “poetic rap”: contemplative, introspective music with artistic symbolism. He struggled in school, and his mother realized that she would never be able to to keep up with the strict Chinese education system once he was in high school. Phoenix was raised by his grandparents in Yichang, a provincial city with a population of 4 million on the banks of the Yangtze, while his mother migrated to work in booming Shenzhen in the south. New economic opportunities pushed millions of young Chinese to newly prosperous cities, where they made money to send back home to family. Phoenix is like many children of the jiuling hou, post-90s, generation that sprung up after Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms in the eighties. His parents weren’t married, so when his mother became pregnant, she had to return to Hubei province and marry her high school classmate in order to avoid the stigma surrounding single mothers. Phoenix’s last name is Leng, which is the same as his mother’s, as he has only met his biological father twice. With over 210’000 plays on his Soundcloud and fans from all over the world, the twenty-four-year-old Phoenix is slowly and steadily conquering the globe. Although he doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia page yet, this independent artist is part of the new online generation that doesn’t need to be signed to a label to be well-known. And yet, by embracing this notably unique style, Phoenix runs the risk of alienating a chunk of his Western audience and may not become a big star anytime soon –– though even those who don’t understand what he is saying admit that he has an obvious affinity for rap. ![]() ![]() Phoenix’s smooth incorporation of Mandarin into his music distinguishes him from many Asian-American rappers who did not grow up speaking their mother tongues, and this double fluency allows him the potential to thrive in his native country. Unlike most other non-black hip-hop artists, he doesn’t merely mimic the conventions of black music culture, but works to bring traditional elements into fusion with rap. ![]() As one of a tiny handful of Asian-American rappers, his ethnicity makes him stand out from the crowd and his music is anything but ordinary. Bohan Phoenix is a rising figure in the hip-hop circuit. ![]()
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