Taiwanese popular music industry in the post-martial law period changed drastically amid the sociopolitical and sociocultural changes at that time. Among them, hip-hop music was one of the new genres that, on the one hand, connected Taiwanese popular music to transnational popular culture industry, while on the other hand, reshaped Taiwanese bodies and voices through practices of hip-hop music and dances. In this paper, I analyze the introduction of Hip-hop in early 1990s’ Taiwan with an emphasis on several emerging hip-hop artists, including L.A. Boyz, Jerry Lo, Shawn Song and more. Their bodily and vocal performances demonstrated processes of musical and corporeal hybridization and glocalization within Taiwan, United States and East Asia, with a shared identity as Taiwanese Americans in West Coast hip-hop scenes. I argue that the Taiwanese American identity, along with the hip hop music produced by these artists, reconstructs notions of race, ethnicity and gender in popular culture industries, for both people of color and Taiwanese identity. Using archival works and ethnographic writings as methodologies of this research, I examine the critical potentials of these Taiwanese American hip-hop music in dialogue with critical race studies, specifically on how the Afrodiasporic aspects of hip-hop aroused political critique through Taiwanese American bodies. I highlight how hip-hop music embodied sociopolitical dynamics at the time, and how the songs served as a crucial means in 1990s’ Taiwan to dismantle the preexisting authoritarian political hierarchy, henceforth creating a new perspective for Taiwanesness.

In 2024, socialite-turned-DJ Paris Hilton released the single “I’m Free” featuring Japanese-British artist Rina Sawayama to mixed reviews, with music critics and Rina’s fans praising her performance while framing her decision to collaborate with Paris as a betrayal to her role as an advocate for Asian representation in pop music. This placed Rina as both an ornament to her White collaborator, and an inauthentic Asian subject. While these types of collaborations are often framed as attempts at positive Asian representation, its production and critical reception still raises questions within what I define as sonic Ornamentalism – the construction of yellow femininity within musical spaces and musicking—and reinforces Orientalist notions of cultural authenticity, and the exploitation of underrepresented communities in popular music (Cheng 2019, Hutnyk 2000). However, recent musical collaborations between American rapper Megan Thee Stallion and East Asian artists RM and Yuki Chiba, and the positive interactions between East Asian and American fan communities, reveal how these artists are able to fit within the “trend” of Asian representation in Western media without conforming to essentialist constructs of gender and race (Kwon 2023). This paper examines these cross-cultural collaborative performances as a framework for exploring dominant expectations of “Asianness” in music and situating it within broader discourse surrounding the racialization of yellow bodies through performance (Wong 2004) and within popular media (Cheng 2019; Bow 2022). Through multimedia analysis and fandom-centered ethnographies, I argue that these projects become a site for understanding and challenging colonial and transnational flows of power.

This paper examines how the collaborative practices of Korean American electronic music producer Tokimonsta (Jennifer Lee) reimagine cultural identity and foster intersectional solidarity. Drawing on Chela Sandoval’s concept of “differential consciousness” (2000) and broader discourses in women of color feminism (Moraga and Anzaldúa 1981; Wilson et al. 2022), it argues that Tokimonsta’s creative work challenges essentialist identity formations while envisioning speculative futures (Nelson 2002). Her remix of Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman” with Tinashe highlights empowerment among women of color, while her collaboration with AESPA –– K-pop’s first metaverse girl group –– on “Die Trying” blurs the boundaries between real and virtual worlds. This latter track, featured in the Netflix film Rebel Moon, invokes Afrofuturist aesthetics, where outer space serves as a metaphor for transcending fixed identities, categories, and boundaries. Rooted in early underground multicultural scenes, Tokimonsta’s approach to collaborative practices demonstrates how music serves as a site for shaping our subjectivities and forming alliances in solidarity. Situating her work within discourses on women of color feminism and Asian American musicking (Wang 2001; Wong 2004), this paper employs multimedia analysis and archival research to explore how her Afrofuturistic and speculative aesthetics model new possibilities for inclusive creative futures.