Hip-Hop artist Kaptivated made an interactive infographic taking you down a path of which Asian American rappers to listen to, and we wanted to share it with you. The list features many Christian hip-hop artists, such as HeeSun Lee, J. Han, and MC Jin.
Kaptivated answered a couple questions about it.
What inspired you to create this graphic?
The Asian American creative community is a relatively close-knit circle—there’s so few of us that we all know each other. Outside of that community, there might be a handful of thought leaders and tastemakers that do know their stuff when it comes to Asian talent, and that’s wonderful. But what about the masses? What about my friends and classmates I see on a daily basis who’ve never enjoyed or even heard any Asian American talent? I want to reach them. I want them to know that there’s plenty of dope Asian American talent in hip hop. This infographic seemed like an effective way to accomplish that.
How did you go about creating it?
In terms of the creation of the graphic, I actually laid out every Asian American musician I could find with (1) at least 4,000 followers on any social platform, and (2) a latest release no earlier than 2015. So at first, it was electronic artists, singers, instrumentalists, and rappers. But that list got way too overwhelming to manage, so I cut it down to just rappers. I listened to all of these artists over the past few years, and I did the best I could to categorize them in a way that an outsider could easily digest!
You can see more of his design work on his website.
