Beijing-based singer-rapper-songwriter Lexie Liu always comes back to music. Whether going home for the year from school in 2015 partaking in South Korean ability show K-Pop Star 5, being the keep going female finalist on The Rap of China in 2018, and at last exiting college by and large to commit herself to her art, the need to articulate her thoughts sonically has driven her life up to this point. Now signed with 88rising – the Asian-American platform who’ve worked closely with artists like Rich Brianand Yaeji – Lexie Liu’s star looks set to rise across both east and west.
Lexie Liu- Music Career
Her music is as mercurial as her journey to pursue it. Even within the eight tracks on her debut EP 2030, we get a unique mix of dancehall-inflected tunes (“Strange Things”), the futuristic, cyberpunk “Nada”, poppy and upbeat “Love and Run”, and dreamy Mandopop ballad “Sleep Away”. Switching seamlessly between her native Mandarin and English, Liu crosses genres and cultures with effortlessness, ethereality, and freshness.
It’s this quality that has already earned her the title of “the voice of a Chinese generation”, something she acknowledges as “a double-sided thing”, but also one that ultimately inspires her to keep doing better. “Staying up all night wishing my life was not my life,” she sings on “Bygone”, a track that resonates across a diaspora of Asian kids trying to follow their passions without hurting their parents, and one of the more personal songs on 2030. Lexie outlook now is much brighter: she says she’s looking forward to touring and making more music to reach “a random person in a random place on this planet and trigger them to think about something that never came to them before”.
In November, she released her new song “Sleep Away” from her upcoming debut EP 2030 which was previously released in China. The Fader named the track as one of “10 Songs You Need in Your Life”,Nylon listed it as the “Best Music Releases Of The Week”,and Refinery29 said “their ears are very into Lexie.”
On 18 December 2018, Lexie released her new cyberpunk-influenced single “Nada”, complete with futuristic-themed music video. The Line of Best Fit described “Nada” as it “sees Lexie Liu’s fierce, cross-cultural grit thrust into a science fiction dimension where language barriers don’t exist, She fuses Mandopop with grimy beats against the visuals of her accompanying Tron-esque video, directed by mamesjao, in a retro-futuristic digital world.”Nada” also made its appearance on “Best Of the Week” by Apple Music once it came out.
In February 2019, Liu released her debut EP 2030 in the United States, which included two new singles “Outta Time” featuring Killy and “Love and Run”.
In September 2019 her single “Ok, Ok, Ok” was released.On December 27, 2019, Lexie’s album Meta Ego was released.On October 28, 2020, Liu voiced the champion Seraphine in Riot Games’ virtual K-pop group, K/DA, in their new song “More” from their extended play All Out. Liu also performed on stage at the 2020 League of Legends World Championship in Shanghai.
On January 28, 2021, Lexie Liu released her second EP GONE GOLD internationally (released as Online 上线了 in China), featuring her then-newest single “ALGTR” which was self-written and self-produced alongside the rest of the EP.It marked yet another change in sound direction, with the EP taking in significantly more electro-pop influences compared to previous efforts.
The project’s contemporary theme, reflected in the title track’s music videos and the rest of the track list’s visualisers which were directed by frequent collaborator Jeremy Z. Qin, revolves around the idea of living in an online game as a character. It was inspired by the unrest experienced throughout 2020 as a result of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, where Liu’s only source of understanding the world was solely through a screen – leading her to imagine what life would be like without this source.
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