[INTERVIEW] XENZU’s Sassy “Jelly” Ignites a Post-Pop Movement.
XENZU on the set of “Jelly”.
Who’s doing it like XENZU?
She’s one of the most innovative forces to come from mainland China in the past decade, but on “Jelly” (果冻 ) she’s bringing next level visuals and music. “JELLY” is the latest single from XENZU, a dynamite pop singer who sounds like the future. Her music weaves together bravado, swagger, and sexuality into arresting pop tracks that are starting to ignite on streaming. Like XENZU’s best work, “Jelly” demands you find your inner bad bitch and run with her.
“Are you jealous?” XENZU purrs in the chorus.
You should be.
In the highly fun video, XENZU wears several high fashion looks. She’s covered in sparkles and in one striking look, a pearl headpiece. The bold, colorful fashion is like expensive desserts.
“Jelly” is a song XENZU wrote herself. “My friend WD and I arranged it,” she told me this week. “I literally was just free styling in the studio on this beat and the beat had little sassy vibes. I was like, “Cool, let’s go with this vibe [for the song].’”
XENZU wants the song’s boldness and message of self-love to be amplified to her fans. “I want my audience to feel loved and confident within themselves when they listen to the track,” she said. “I want them to enjoy the funny and trippy parts here and there in the record too.”
Like a jelly cake, there’s more than meets the eye with XENZU. She might seem tough and strong in interviews or on stage, but there’s a sensitivity to the artist, too. She’s fought hard to gain the confidence she touts in “Jelly”. She allows zero disrespect – from men, from haters, from people who doubt her – but there’s a divine femininity to her style, too. She asks you to look deeper.
XENZU wants her fans to think after listening to the song, “Yeah, I can do what I want and everyone can do what they love, too.”
“Jelly” continues a narrative of self-love and being gloriously over the top. XENZU’s brand of femininity is one that pushes autonomy above everything.“You can’t hurt my feelings, baby,” she spits at a man in the excellent single “Dom Perignon”. “I’m the one.” If her art, her beauty, her excessiveness unnerves you, well, that’s on you. XENZU warned us that she doesn’t fall in love.
Behind the scenes of Jelly
“Jelly” is just the beginning of post-pop culture for XENZU.
“I would say post pop is a mixture of all urban elements and pop elements that have influenced me,” she explained to me. “It’s a genre that doesn’t limit the creator and the audience” XENZU, if you can’t tell, doesn’t work well within parameters or limits.
“It’s like jelly cake,” she explained about this art movement. “There are different flavors but you never know the flavor until you taste it. When you take a bite, it gives you surprises and melts in your mouth.”
Post-pop exalts artistic freedom. It’s performance art at its finest. There are no limits, no boundaries that can’t be crossed. And for a singer who is artfully blending Beijing glamor with Los Angeles opulence, this kind of music is one that allows XENZU to create her own lane. It also allows her to give “sparkles” to her listeners and to future Chinese women who might want to create. If XENZU’s being a badass and not letting herself be confined to one genre, so can they.
With post-pop, XENZU’s competition is herself.
Next year, XENZU will play SXSW in Austin, Texas for the first time. She is one of the first Chinese women to play the festival as a pop artist, and the lineup addition reflects the singer’s growing profile.
But XENZU’s eye is on expanding her art. “2023 is basically just a year of creation,” she reflected. “My goals are to drop more music and collaborations with different artists. Hopefully shows and festivals, if possible. I would love to see my listeners in person and bring my live energies to them.”
Plans are in store for an album, her first, “and it’s gonna be done fresh,” she teased. But for now, XENZU is perfecting her artistry. She wants this movement to extend far past her. “We will extend this post-pop to it’s finest.”
