Meet Yaeji

Yaeji, né Kathy Yaeji Lee, is a GODMODE-signed producer, DJ, rapper, and singer (her Twitter bio accurately reads, “I’m into it all”) who levitated onto the house music scene over the past few years with drum-heavy tracks and dreamy vocals that rarely rise above a whisper. It’s been one week since she quit her graphic design job to work on music full-time. Yet without her visual background, her dance music career might never have existed in the first place.

A Korean-American electronic music artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her style blends elements of house music and hip hop with mellow, quiet vocals sung in both English and Korean.Lyrically, though, the 24-year-old’s musings are not your typical party-staring fare. From her 2016 debut release through to her EP2, Yaeji’s songwriting is funny and deeply introspective, tackling topics including Korean identity, anxiety, therapy, and the tyranny of makeup and skincare culture in a mix of Korean and English. It can be heady to look at her lyric sheets, but her sound, a unique mashup of house, trap, and rap, is interested in sheer joy. This is most clear in songs like “Last Breath,” a forceful, high-energy club track about how surreal beauty regimens can be.