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DJ-MC Sherol, Asian Female Christian Rapper

Posted on December 13, 2010 by Sherol Chen

This is a prophetic painting by Eric Zwierzynski, that I'm going to be making beats and droppin rhymes.

With all the Asia hype in the last few days, I started wondering if I could cut it as an Asian female Christian rapper. I mean, if anything I could do spoken word. Writing poetry is something I started doing when I was in grade school. In high school, it helped me use metaphor and capture deeper meaning in rhythm and rhyme that I could not express through conversation. I stopped when I got to college, because I started being able to write people actual letters. As I mature, I find myself becoming less cryptic, but it was nice to flex my flow muscles once more.

Read the full post (398 words, 19 images, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)
5

Stalking Jaeson Ma, But Not Really

Posted on December 9, 2010 by Sherol Chen

I probably shouldn’t joke about that, but I mean, as a journalist, it’s just good journalism to get a well informed story. However, I hesitate to call myself a journalist, because I’m trying to get PhD in Computer Science and already trying to be a musician at the same time, while being some evangelist and missionary to the communities I’m part of. With that said, I feel like God wants me to be a journalist too (just don’t tell my advisor).

I just remember the ride to San Jose State University on Friday night where I was praying with my friend and I promised God that if he lets something crazy happen (which He usually does), that I’ll write about it so that the experiences aren’t lost on me and available to countless unknowing Googlers. Man, I owe God a lot of blogposts.

Read the full post (2405 words, 27 images, estimated 9:37 mins reading time)
9

Asian Pop Stars, Bible Studies, and Jaeson Ma

Posted on December 3, 2010 by Sherol Chen

About 2 years ago, I was watching Charice Pempengco on YouTube, as she sang on a Korean variety show. On the show was a series of guys called Super Junior, and I was drawn to how sentimental they got as they talked about their hard times. I looked them up and fell in love with this video. I had the sort of reaction I had to the Japanese Yatta! video. I then started learning about them and watching their lives, as Korean pop stars seem to make a brand out of every minute and talent of these idols. If anything, I’d say that the k-pop industry would be like if the Disney channel also did reality TV with their headliners being a little older.

Asian pop culture permeates throughout the eastern and southeastern nations (often, with interesting collabs), and occasionally, I’d get the experience Super Junior from the venue of a Chinese variety show, as the guys (all but one, who was Chinese) awkwardly communicated with their audience in China and Taiwan. On one instance they were asked to sing a song in Chinese, and this one great singer, Ryeowook, sang this song called “Kiss Goodbye.” It was beautiful, and I looked it up to find out about Lee Hom Wang. This is important, because that was the moment I got interested in Chinese-Americans who’d made it big as singers in Asia. I learned about Lee Hom Wang, Coco Lee, and Vanness Wu. When the Olympics happened in China, I was already keen to a number of their celebrity performers.

Read the full post (1097 words, 25 images, estimated 4:23 mins reading time)