Back in February I got the chance to have a conversation with Brandon Lio. Fans will know him by his stage name AYDIOSLIO. I was first introduced to the young MC via one of his close friends, fellow rapper LATE LEE.
Origins and Influence
It’s a marvel just how insightful Lio is. Not to suggest that most artists I interview don’t have a certain level of introspection, but Lio’s self-awareness is truly unexpected. I find that those who know themselves with the depth that Lio does also revel in sharing as much of themselves as they possibly can. So, too, was Lio eager to tell his story and explain what it is that drives him.
From the moment we exchange introductions, it’s evident Lio’s in the mood to unpack as much of himself as an hour will allow. “Hi, my name’s Brandon Lio. I’m a Korean-American rapper. I go by the name of AYDIOSLIO. Which is an interesting story.” All of Lio’s answers are stories. Fables meant to enlighten. “I was on break at work thinking about what to call myself. I thought of ‘AYDIOSLIO,’ which is a play on ‘Ay, dios mio.’ That’s Spanish for ‘My God.’ It just seemed different. Kinda silly, but it was memorable.”
As with many South Korean artists, his journey began humbly. Lio had an interest in music early on in his life, but it wasn’t something he truly began to take seriously until he was in college. Through back and forths with a college friend of his on Facebook he realized he had a knack for setups and punchlines, basic constructions of rap. Even more fascinating is the artist that really got him invested in the genre.
“50 Cent, for sure,” Lio says, enthusiasm seeping through the phone. “My friend let me listen to her iPod nano. She just had a whole bunch of music on it, and all of a sudden ‘In Da Club’ comes on. My body had never responded to a song like that. That’s when I knew, ‘Oh shit. I wanna do this!’” From there he fell headfirst into the annals of hip-hop’s contemporary legends: Missy Elliott, Andre 3000. But he developed a keen adoration for Tupac. “He wasn’t just rapping,” he says. “He didn’t just play that role of ‘thug’ or even ‘misogynist.’ He wrote songs with substance, about his love of women and their struggles with songs like ‘Brenda’s Got a Baby.’ That really stuck with me.”
Representation
It’s this sense of duality that informs Lio’s own existence as an artist. His conscious understanding of his role in hip-hop, particularly as an Asian-American artist, is always forefront in his mind. He does nothing without intention. When unwrapping what led him to even pursue music and what drives him, there’s clear focus.
“I didn’t really see my face in entertainment or the media,” he says. “I didn’t really have anybody to associate myself with besides” — he pauses as he considers how forward he’s going to be, then dives in — “just to put it bluntly, these little-dick mathematician nerds that couldn’t speak to girls. Or a kung-fu master who doesn’t speak English. Those were the two that I had to see myself as, you know. I was super obsessed with these martial artists because they were like the cool version of my face.
“Once I got into music it just kind of made me realize a lot of things about seeing myself in the media and how important that is for children growing up. So just to be able to be an Asian-American representative of you can do anything you want and no one or no culture is a monolith. To be able to represent my specific experience as an Asian American, it’s really important to me.”
He continues, “I have gotten opportunities to fly to Korea, you know, and do the whole K-pop thing. But, and I’m not knocking anybody who does that, because I know a lot of people who have, but I just have something to say as an American with this face and this culture because I do think I have a unique experience. I do think I have a unique perspective about a lot of things. And I try to sprinkle that in my music a lot, and I think that’s really important.
“When I first started making music, it was like super-duper on that subject matter and sort of preachy as fuck. My first project ever was called Anonymous American, sort of looking at Asian Americans in society.” He rushes to mention this fact, following it up with “Don’t try to look that shit up, it’s taken down, it’s trash. So I was super on that subject matter.
“I think now I’m not as preachy about it. I’ll sprinkle some stuff in, but I think just kind of being myself and talking about what I go through and what I’ve been through and just my experience, it’s going to be innately Asian-American. I don’t have to put that shit in in your fuckin’ face. Like I don’t need to be rapping about fucking noodles and chopsticks. It’s really corny to me. Just by being me, I am me, and obviously if you watch my music videos you’re gonna see my motherfuckin’ face.
The way that I want to express that goal has kind of shifted a little bit as I’ve matured and kept on making music. I know that the effect of the goal is still the same. It’s still the same vision, just a different way of approaching that vision.”
Put Some Respect…
This is something that as a black woman speaks to something within me. Most of our musical revolutionaries, in hip-hop and otherwise, are very brazen. Militant and intentional in their expression of culture and self. The Last Poets, Talib Kweli, Wes Felton, and, yes, Tupac to a certain extent all create with intent and cultural focus.
“For sure, for sure,” Lio says. “But,” and this is where I become irrevocably impressed with the young MC, “I also think there’s a difference between the marginalization of black culture vs. the marginalization of Asian culture. Just our experience in America is honestly drastically different, and I do understand those differences. I think that’s why I think it’s too preachy or annoying to be like ‘AsianAsianAsianAsian! Yellow! Yellow!’ because it’s like for the most part what, at least in capitalistic society, have we really been through? Yeah, there were Chinese slaves on the railroad, and of course there’s racism as a minority. But, to me at least, it’s not even close to the plight of black Americans.
“I think that’s where the difference comes in. One sounds preachy, and one is more like, ‘Power to our people who’ve been so marginalized. And black is beautiful’ type of thing. I think that’s the nuance of why I don’t think it’s as appropriate to be like ‘YellowYellowYellowYellow!’
“But I think it is important for the Asian male to be, Asian-American male especially, to be seen as something other than the ‘other.’ Other than this stereotype that’s been cast of this meek, soft-spoken, no opinion, just kind of like nerd. Because, yeah, there are other things that I’ve been through racially, or discriminatorily, that have affected me. And I don’t think I fit the typecast or the monolith that has been projected by media at all.
“I just wanna show that we can be whatever the fuck we want, you know. Because I know there’s a lot of pressure on a lot of kids with these super strict Asian parents to be the doctor, lawyer, engineer, you know? It’s a thing in the Asian community. Which is great. I have nothing against that, you know? I originally wanted to be a lawyer. So I have nothing against people chasing those kinds of professional dreams.
But I just think not everybody is born for that shit, you know? Everybody can’t be a fucking lawyer, doctor, or engineer. So why would you want to stop your kid from being something else? Because if they’re passionate about something else, then they’re going to go really hard at that and be great at it. So stop putting everybody in a box. Stop putting these blinders on. We’re all human beings, and we can do whatever the fuck we want and be whatever the fuck we want. Just fuckin’ do it.
“I mean, I do say a lot of ignorant shit in my music too,” he says with a bit of mirth in his voice. “It might not come off that I’m thoughtful or put in a lot of thought or have a lot of perspective. But I know what I’m doing. Everything is pretty calculated. It’s like a mix of being conscious about what I’m doing and also just having fun. Because, like I said, there’s no such thing as one person being one thing. I feel a lot of different things. It’s like a balance between ratchetness and righteousness.
“I’m not one thing. You’re not one thing. Nobody’s one thing. And if you are one thing there’s a lot of other things to be interested in. So you should fucking diversify your interests, bruh.”
Changing for the Better
As far as the narrative of Asian-American representation in the States, Lio is optimistic yet incredibly methodical. “One hundred percent it’s changing for the better,” he says. “Even shows like ‘Master of None.’ That comes from an Asian-American perspective. People like Glen in ‘Walking Dead,’ just seeing that dude with arguably the hottest girl on that show as his wifey, he has a baby with her. It shows us in these more masculine roles or desirable roles. I didn’t really like ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’ but that was huge for the culture. It shows that there’s money here to be made. I think that’s the only thing media or entertainment really cares about: Can we profit off of this?
“For a long time they didn’t see us or any minority, really, as a profitable market. But I think definitely the landscape has changed. They see that there’s hella money to be made. There’s fucking billions of slant-eyed people. There’s hundreds of millions of ethnic people in this country alone. And also, the rise of K-pop… Like everybody knows what K-pop is. Everybody might not be into K-pop, but they know what the fuck it is. And just that knowledge I think is starting to open people’s eyes up.
“Obviously there’s a long way to go. Right now I see a lot of K-pop artists that speak English trying to cross over. I think it’s great and it’s a great starting point, but I don’t know. I want somebody who was born and raised here with this perspective to be poppin’, to represent us and to represent me and somebody who I can look on the TV or on the screen and feel like it’s a reflection of me, like a mirror. So that’s what I want to be. That’s what I want my group of artists that I work with around here, that’s what I want us to be. A representative for us.”
Line Between “Appreciation” and “Appropriation”
With rappers like Dummie and MC Jin, Uzuhan, LATE, Flannel Albert, there’s certainly a wide swath of Asian-American artists to point to and say, “This is hip-hop from a different perspective.” With the rise in popularity of hip-hop in Korea the last few years, it’s easy to get a narrow understanding of the music coming from the country. You have the obvious proponents of the craft: the Tiger JKs, Yoonmiraes, Dynamic Duos. However, there’s this fine line between, as Lio says, ratchetness and righteousness. As we’ve seen, there’s an even bigger chunk of artists who fail to truly represent the genre and its culture. Lio is 100 percent convinced Korean artists laying claim to hip-hop have a responsibility in how they go about actually expressing it.
“I think a lot of [rap] that comes out of Asian countries, or out of Korea specifically, feels gimmicky. There’s a lot that doesn’t feel gimmicky, but there’s a lot that does, and I think there’s a definite fucking line that separates appropriation and appreciation. It’s pretty clear when you just look at somebody who just looks like a buffoon. Who just looks like a fucking culture vulture and someone who’s not representing and doesn’t even know the history because it’s a cool thing to do.
“I don’t know,” he says with a sigh. “There’s a clear difference to me between appropriation and appreciation. I think once you get to speak of someone beyond the surface level it becomes pretty obvious and transparent what their intention is and the methodology about how they approach this craft and this genre. It is a black genre. It was created by black people in America and represented their struggle. That’s what I connected to, though, the black sheep mentality, the outcast mentality, and the abrasiveness and aggressiveness of how they’re combatting their discrimination. It’s, ‘Nah, fuck that, we’re here and we’re proud, and this is something we have to offer.’ And the world embraced it.
“So now because it’s such a fucking popular genre — it’s the number one genre in the world — of course you’re going to see the appropriation flood in. The floodgates are open, and especially a lot of people coming from Asia, there’s nobody to check you. And it might not even be their fault because they’re not around a lot of black people, period. But they like this music, so they’re gonna just mimic what they think is cool.
“So I mean, I don’t know, I kind of battle about how I feel about this topic. Obviously I do feel there needs to be a modicum of respect for the art form and the history and what you’re actually doing. But then I also understand ignorance is bliss, and, like, some of these cats from Asia just have no fuckin’ clue. Yeah, they should do their research. Yeah, they should be up on the history, but not everybody’s like that.”
It’s a constant struggle I have myself: justifying being a black woman in America who does appreciate some of the hip-hop coming out of Korea. It’s a genuine love of music and the adage (cliché or not) that it’s universal. That everyone has the right to express themselves no matter how that manifests itself.
After Hours
Lio pointed out earlier in our conversation that representation is important to him. Thus the creation of After Hours.
“A year after I got out of college,” he begins, “I was still trying to make music but obviously still had to get a job and shit because I have bills to pay. I’m not from one of those rich families where mommy takes care of you. I just had to man the fuck up and start paying my bills, had to start helping my parents. It was really tough for me at the time to balance music and career. Just because I had nobody in the music industry. No industry connections. I had no friends who were fucking producers. I don’t really produce really well. Just finding beats online and shit, too broke to buy the good beats. I really wanted to do it, but honestly at the time I wasn’t putting the time in to do anything special.
“I was just in a lost place and kind of thinking about giving up. Once that fucking thought hit my head, literally the next day when I was like, ‘Nah I’m done with this shit. I have no resources, it’s getting impossible,’ one of the only homies I knew who actually rapped and shit, he hit me up and was like, ‘Yo bro, would you be interested in starting a collective, a group, like a hip-hop collective?’ And I was like, ‘Uhh, fuck, maybe. Let me listen to the dudes who you’re interested in.’ So he showed me all of their music. I was like, ‘Goddamn, these fools are talented! Let’s do this!’
“He was just the focal point who knew all of us and connected all of us. So I met everybody, and we all fucked with each other. At the time it was a five-member group. There was four vocalists and one producer. We just hit it off and started recording everyday together. Then as time progressed, two of the members fell off. One was the guy who brought us all together. He kind of just got super career-focused. Sort of got on his old-man tip and was like, ‘Yo, I’m gonna propose to my girl, I’m like super into my career. I think I’m done with this.’ We completely respected that. We were like, ‘Yeah, bro.’
“That fool’s a genius,” he says with obvious admiration in his voice. “He got his Master’s Degree at both USC (University of Southern California) and UCLA at the same time. He’s a fuckin’ boss, so we understood.” The other former member of After Hours had an unfortunate addiction problem. Thus we have the trio that is the collective now: Lio, rapper Yoso, and Pablo Tonez, the producer. “Us three just naturally made the most music, period. We were the ones cranking shit out all the time. So it naturally fell into us three.”
Another Lifetime
I’m always fascinated when it comes to artists who work within a group dynamic, then branch out on their own. “To be honest there’s no difference to me,” he admits. “The ‘After Hours EP’ came about because we made so much music. We were at least getting the footings of what our sound is going to be as a group. And we were like, ‘Fuck, we have all these songs. Let’s put some out and see what the fuck happens.’
“I honestly didn’t want to do a solo project for a really long time.” Another confession he offers freely. “I just wanted to focus on the group. But…” It’s here he hesitates, introspective, thoughtful. “I would say,” he begins after an anxious stretch of silence, “I’m the workhorse of the group. I just don’t stop making shit and trying. I guess the other two were kind of in a personal funk for a bunch of different reasons. Understandable, but they kind of got into fucked-up places mentally, which they’re back from now, I want to note.”
Another endearing trait about Lio: his desire to never downplay the efforts of those around him. He offers his criticisms, whatever they might be, with a heavy dose of understanding. However, that shouldn’t suggest he’ll ever deny his own drive.
“In that three to six month period, I wasn’t sitting around [waiting for them] to get their pace up work ethic wise. I don’t slow down for anyone regardless of if I’m in a group or not. So in this two to three month span I made like 60 songs with me and this other producer called Kwak Z, who produced the whole EP [Another Lifetime]. Yeah, and that’s how the solo project came about. I was like, ‘Dude, I can’t wait anymore.’ I was kind of financially backing the group for a whole lot of stuff.
“When I saw the effort of the others wasn’t on pace, I was like, fuck it, I’m gonna release my own thing until you guys get it together. Then let’s go again, because I wanna get there with the group, you know? When I broke it down to them, they completely understood. That’s how this project sort of came out.”
With as much ambition as he clearly has, I’m curious as to why he was hesitant to go solo in the first place.
“No, I always knew I wanted to do my own thing,” he clarifies. “I just thought that I would do it later. We all wanna obviously have our own identities as solo artists. But the group thing was going well. I really feel like me and Yoso are, and people say this all the time, we balance each other out really well. We have very different styles. I’m very aggressive and energy, and he’s super smooth and laid-back. Even our personalities are like that. So it’s kind of a yin and yang. I really love all the music we make together, which is why I was so all about the group.
“But I made so much fuckin’ music, and I was just tired of waiting around. I’m not getting any younger, to put it bluntly. I don’t got time to waste. Pretty much like the biggest motif is I don’t have time to waste. I’m in this space of 1) chaos, and 2) understanding where I am and really knowing what I want in my future now. Kind of seeing the light through fog. It’s just something I had to do, and I have a lot more shit coming, a lot more solo stuff coming, a lot more group stuff coming. I’m just gonna do everything. At this point I’m just gonna do it all until I’m where I need to be.”
‘Wa$$up’
Another major theme of our chat: duality. The duality of “thug” and “poet.” Of “ratchetness” and “righteousness.” It’s this latter dichotomy I want to touch on. With a track like his solo debut single, “Wa$$up,” you get pieces of that militant rapper he spoke of before.
“Well ‘Wa$$up’ kinda touched on everything,” he says. ”It’s very wide ranging from knowing what I want, leaving my girl and stuff to go for what I want. There’s a few bars about my grandpa and carrying on his legacy. It was also just like, I think the first song I made with Kwak Z where we both turned to each other and were like, whoa, this is something. That kind of started the EP. It was one of the first songs we made and we were like, ‘Oh shit! Okay, I think we work well together.’ Prior to that we hadn’t worked too often together, just here and there. That kind of sparked us getting in the studio everyday for like eight hours going crazy.
“I wanted to release that as the first one too. One, because it was the turning point for me and Kwak Z on the direction. Also the subject matter was super varying and touched on everything I wanted to talk about in the EP. Then also it was just like, ‘Wassup, I’m here.’”
The visual aspect of the song was quite striking. Flashes of Lio in front of a fire; images of reels from the Korean War. It was a feast of symbolism.
“I have to give all of the credit to videographer, director, and editor, Lucas Tikano.” Lio is generous with his praise when he lavishes it on someone. “That fool’s a fuckin’ G,” he says excitedly. “I can’t praise him enough. Yeah, [‘Wa$$up’] was sort of his baby.
“Originally we shot for twelve hours all around LA. I wasn’t happy with the footage at all. I thought, ‘This is gonna be so bad. I don’t know what the fuck we just did.’ Like, I was standing in a fucking forest with a fucking sword. I don’t know what the fuck this is gonna be, burh. This is weird. Literally two days later he shot me a rough draft with all those clips and stuff. He kind of explains what he was gonna do, but I don’t have the eye like he does, which is why he’s the fuckin’ videographer and I’m not,” he says with a chuckle. “I was like, ‘Yo this shit is fucking nuts! This is perfect!’
“That also is an ode to how much I appreciate collaborating with other creative people now. Before it was just me, just my thing. Slowly but surely as I’m getting deeper into the music scene and getting older I’m realizing that teams are what make dreams work. As corny as that shit sounds. Without people around you who are just as hungry and just as creative, it’s really hard to come up. Especially without any real cosign or any kind of real connections. You need people around you and a team to build with.”
‘Morning Backwoods’
Counter the very palpable meaning of “Wa$$up” with a song like “Morning Backwoods.” The collaboration with LATE is definitely a big flex. An ode to, shall we say, the testicular fortitude of a group of bachelor troublemakers.
“We used to live in this phat-ass loft downtown, me and Yoso,” Lio begins. “[It] would be the hub for all the pre-games, all the parties, and all the music. We had our studio set up in there. So [LATE] was over, and our producer, Pablo Tonez, was cooking up the beat. Literally the second he started making the beat, me and LATE turned to each other. We were like, ‘Yo! Let’s just make some DUMB, dumb shit to this, for sure!’
“We actually talk about this all the time, me and LATE, about that moment, because it was so vivid in our memories. We turned to each other and were like, ‘Holy shit! This shit is knockin’.’ The hook was sort of the first thing I freestyled. And LATE turned to me and was like, ‘Fuck yeah, that shit is fuckin’ litty. Let’s fuckin’ do this.’ We both wrote our verses in 20 minutes, laid it down, and that’s what it was.”
Which then leads to the story behind the actual shooting of the music video.
After a long, hard sigh, he says: “I’ll reveal some shit. Pretty much the only purpose for us going to Vegas and booking the hotel and shit was to shoot the video. LATE had a group of like ten girls who were already in Vegas. They were all down to be in the video. So we were like, ‘Fuck it, bro. Let’s just fuckin’ go to Vegas, shoot the video real quick, and then party.’
“The time came to shoot the fuckin’ video, and literally all of them bailed. They were like, ‘Nah, we’re gonna just go to this club instead.’ We were like, what the fuck! We literally came all the fuck the way out here to shoot the fuckin’ video, and now we can’t. What are we gonna do, just a whole bunch of dudes in a hotel room? Nah, dude, that’s not the vibe at all.
“We got some cool footage while we were in Vegas and on the way to Vegas, just us. But it wasn’t like what we wanted at all. So that was a complete fail. I lost hella money gambling, I fuckin’ got kicked out of a club for reasons I will not disclose. It was just fail after fail after fail, L after L after L. I was like, ‘Fuck this trip! I hate this shit so much!’ So we threw a party maybe a week later, which some of the other scenes are shot at. We made it work. But, yeah, that Vegas trip sucked!
“It’s all good,” he says, his voice mellowing after reliving the experience. “I realize that I always have to learn things the hard way and go up like the biggest hills. Whatever. That makes me stronger.”
The Many Parts of Me
Duality. The young intellectual who wants to uphold his grandfather’s legacy. The young-minded hooligan trouncing around Vegas, getting kicked out of clubs. There’s so many sides to Lio, I wonder what song he thinks best represents who he is.
He takes a few moments to think about it, repeating the question to taste its texture and depth. Then, “I would say with what’s out right now, ‘Better Days’ is my favorite. Just because, I don’t know, I think it’s the realest song on the project. It kind of talks about heartbreak, talks about me losing one of my close friends recently. So it was just the most emotional song. I’m definitely an emotional person. I feel like I expressed emotion really well on that song. So that’s my favorite. But I don’t know if it’s representative of who I am.
“Like I said, I feel I’m just so many fucking different things. ’Cuz on that day or in that moment, that’s exactly who I am. But on something like ‘Up,’ where I’m just fucking wildin’ like a motherfucker, that’s me too. That’s equally me. I am that. I have perspective, and I’m super empathetic a lot of times, and emotional and all in my feelings and shit. But also I’m like the wild motherfucker at parties. The loud motehrfucker. Yeah, I’m all of it.”
“Another Lifetime” most certainly acts as a self-portrait, a look at the prismatic nature of his personality.
“For sure,” he agrees. “It’s all different parts of me. I wouldn’t say it’s everything. This is just a taste of what I’ve been working on that I felt like I just needed to put out in the world, and which I’m really proud of. I do love everything I have put out and everything I’m putting out right now, but it’s also, at least to me, a little old just because that’s just how it goes. I’m always prepping the next shit six months to a year down the line. When you’re hearing the shit that dropped, I already have the next year planned out.”
As we end our conversation, I keep going back to that idea of legacy, of being a representative of Asian Americans. That in mind, it’s interesting that he doesn’t place expectations on his audiences regarding his music.
“I don’t really want you to ‘know’ anything,” he says. “Just take it how you will kind of thing, you know? I did my part by making it to the best of my ability. And, I don’t know, it’s up to you to feel something, if you do or don’t, you know. I don’t think I need to tell the listener how to feel or how to think. You can do that on your own.”
We come to the end of our time together. It was a revealing hour of conversation. Lio opened up so completely about his personal politics and his incredible journey. I left our chat more enlightened and eager to see what he’s got in store for all of us. Thus he leaves me with, “Go stream ‘Another Lifetime’, please. Run up those numbers. And get ready for a lot of After Hours stuff coming out. Fuckin’ follow me.”
Love this interview I am a fan of Lios works and he is such a great artist. This wa’s so well written and it gave me new information that not many people know . I also can’t wait to see what he does next . This interview made me ROFL 😂 at some points. I love that Lio is so honest and he knows what to say he is really awesome and well spoken.