jason chu’s Music Is For the Next Generation

Rapper and activist jason chu creates music that explores Asian American history and identity. “I’m very aware of where I stand in history,” he says in this interview.

It’s almost impossible to define jason chu’s work in one line.

Instead, he is perhaps best defined by the word “multi-hyphenate”. As a Chinese American activist, writer, poet, rapper, educator and social historian, his work transcends boundaries. Superfluous words like “influential” barely touch what jason has accomplished in ten years. He’s a revered and sought-after historian on the Asian American experience; an activist deeply committed to community building; a musician who intertwines history and identity; a man of faith who works to weave his experiences as an Asian American Christian into a religion that has largely been taken over by White Nationalist narratives. 

A native of the Delaware suburbs, jason has spent the past ten years building a home and community in Los Angeles. “People ask all the time, ‘Do you think you’re gonna stay in LA?’ I absolutely think so. This is where my friends and network are,” he told me this week in an interview. “This is where my community is and I’m really happy to be here. As somebody who grew up in Delaware without this deeply rooted racial community, being in LA really does feel special.” 

In Los Angeles, jason has created five albums, and worked from the ground up to trace his history as an Asian American. His life’s work is exploring this identity, giving it shape, and muscling a narrative that is often thought-provoking for his listeners, many of whom come to him looking for answers about their own lives.  

His latest album, We Were the Seeds, which released to streaming services in September, is the culmination of this work. This album is two years in the making, bringing together stories of faith, self-doubt, and a lineage of Asian American ancestors whom jason sees as the forebearers of his career. 

The album’s title came to him almost serendipitously, he remembered. “I was sitting in an airport on a layover and that phrase just came to me. We Were the Seeds,” he said. “It just felt like it encompassed the themes that had naturally been coming up in my writing. I wanted to make stuff that felt right. That title seemed to capture that.”

There is, he said, some “ambiguity” to the title. But it’s largely conceptual, which jason’s work has always excelled at. “I’m gesturing towards this inter-generational sense of being where there’s ancestors, current generation and those who are yet to come,” he explained. “But it also can be me and my sister. It can be my music and the art that I put out in the world. It gestures that nothing exists on its own - a community, an album - it all comes from something and carries that DNA in there.” 

“What I hope people hear is these breadcrumbs that leave these trails for people to see what’s out there,” jason says.

Listen to enough of jason’s music and you’ll hear a recurring theme of faith that loops throughout his elastic work. This is by design: long before jason set out to be a musician, he was trained as a theologian. jason received his training from Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, a seminary that is one of a few, he pointed out, to teach Asian American theology. “It’s not by demographics because by demographics, there’s a ton of Asian Americans in theology,” he observed of why there are so few seminaries that teach this subject. “But if anything, it speaks to the colonial influence on Christian theology.” 

One of my favorite tracks off We Were the Seeds is “Pray 4 U”, where jason writes about his faith – and interrogates a whitewashing of Christianity that has excluded Asian identity.  “I grew up religious in a very White-normalizing version of Christian faith,” he told me. And in return, he said, “I rebelled against that and had this long spiritual journey that culminated in a master’s degree in Asian American theology.”

“Pray 4 U” is unique, namely because very few Asian American rappers are talking about their faith with jason’s level of candor. He attributes this to his hip-hop education, where Black and Latino rappers set “so many precedents” for recontextualizing faith for their listeners. 

Importantly, he reasons, faith is also what has carried him this far. “My faith has evolved. I’m ten years into pursuing music. I’m still housed and insured and making dope shit with cool friends,” he offered as he thought about how unique his position is. “Not everybody gets to do this.” 

jason’s energy and passion is tangible when speaking to him. He’s an engaging presence; someone whose warmth is almost immediately felt. He’s also radically intelligent, a trait that was instilled in him by his parents.

“My parents raised me with a value of knowledge and that intellect is very precious. It’s more important than money. Systematically going through and having awareness was important,” he told me. When jason began college, he was drawn to philosophy and the theories about the meaning of a good life. “There were all kinds of different things that I was interested in and when I got interested in something,” he noted before adding, “I tend to dive in in a systematic fashion, to really go deep.” 

It wasn’t until after graduation, though, that jason began to think critically about race and the impact his racial identity has had on his life. Today, he describes this moment as an “awakening”. “I started reading authors like Frank Wu and other Asian American voices,” jason recalled. “These people who are like me or had experiences like, struggling to find and articulate what it means to be like us.” 

“I realized it could help me understand so many experiences that are confusing or troubling or have just felt off,” he continued. “But I had no schema to explain why that interaction went the way it did or why that statement was troublesome.” 

“I’m gesturing towards this inter-generational sense of being where there’s ancestors, current generation and those who are yet to come,” jason explains.

In 2020, during the height of Covid-19, jason released what could be his most impactful release called Face Value, a collaboration with the rapper Alan Z. That year hate crimes against Asian Americans had risen to new heights and the sitting American President was fanning the flames of racism and xenophobia by referring to Covid as “the Chinese virus”. 

“We wanted to create something that would address anti-Asian hate; that would show strength, power and confidence and bring our community together,” jason stated. As the lockdowns rolled along, jason and Alan Z began to make music.

“I’m super proud of that project because not only did we touch on most of the core concepts of Asian American history but we did it with collaborators who were all Asian Americans,” he said, commenting that they were intentional to equally distribute the production team among gender expression and Asian identity. “It was a project that reflected, inside out, what I find compelling and attractive about Asian America.” 

Face Value is an album that I find so overwhelmingly important, both in the period of time it was made and for the sheer determination it took to create. It speaks directly to a history of American colonialism, the model minority myth, and the violence perpetrated against Asian Americans. “This is not a privilege/ This is not political,” they write in “Model Minority.” “We are America/ And we will never again be invisible.” 

“What I hope people hear is these breadcrumbs that leave these trails for people to see what’s out there,” jason told me as he thought about the goal of his music. “This is how it worked for me: When I listened to the Clipse or Nas or Ms. Lauryn Hill, I’d hear mentions of figures. It’s not Schoolhouse Rock. It’s giving you this glimpse into this larger world that you don’t necessarily have access to.”

When he first started making music, many of jason’s fans were grateful just to see an Asian face in hip-hop. But jason has watched as the profile of Asians in entertainment has risen: K-Pop has become globalized. “Parasite” won an Oscar in one of the biggest upsets in Academy history. Messy, vulgar, fantastic films like “Joy Ride” are being greenlit and directed by Asian women. 

”People will still come up and say it’s so cool to see you doing this. But now it’s more specific,” he reflected. “Instead of saying, ‘Wow, it's cool to see an Asian doing this period.’ People will say, “It’s cool to see an Asian Americanist doing stuff that’s rooted in racial education or community heritage.” He paused and gave a slight smile. “Which frankly I like because carrying the weight of ‘Asian’ is heavy. No one can represent Asians globally. But now I’m at a point where I’m representing and speaking to something that's a little more specific than just Asianness. I’m speaking to a socio-cultural urgency that’s around Asian American identity. That feels more precise.” 

jason is grateful to the ones who paved this road for him: the Mountain Brothers, who he told me were the first Asian American rappers signed to a major label, MC Jin, or Beatrock. I never knew these names before I talked to jason – and that’s particularly why his work is so urgently needed. We Were the Seeds is, in many ways, a way to memorialize these heroes and the glass ceilings they shattered for rappers like him. But jason hopes that by finding his music, listeners will be inspired to go deeper, to find this hidden piece of history that is often not taught in schools and that has, for so long, evaded mainstream recognition. 

“I’m very aware of where I stand in history. It goes back to the title of the project: Knowing what’s come before, investing in what’s going to come after, but doing a good job at what’s in front of us today,” jason said in a statement that could very well symbolize the meaning of his entire career.

 “I think that’s something that’s been potent for me,” he added. “Just to synthesize the Asian American histories that have come before us and to pass it on to the next generation.”