Kris Wu, William Chan, and the Desperate Desire to be Cool

Kris Wu has just dropped a new single, Juice. In it, he pays tribute (presumably; hopefully) to the imminent Chinese New Year by wearing a rooster-like hairstyle. Its spikes spill out from the top of his head like the soggy shell of a châtaigne in the autumn. Behind him, weird automobiles zoom by a wall full of childish drawings that remind me of a hipster burger joint, or those "edgy" Converse designs from 2009. It's like his role in Mr Six all over again, but also not, because that movie was actually quite nice. He crouches in front of a white object and looks up towards the camera from beyond his browbone. Below his hairline, he has a (fake?) tattoo of some kind, which I cannot be bothered to zoom in and read, but it's probably even lamer than Kylie Jenner's "sanity" tattoo that makes her thigh look like an egg from the supermarket. I fast-forwarded to the end because it's pretty much just frames from the same few shots over and over again intercut with flashes of the new Vin Diesel movie, and because the song is just too mediocre to stay on longer.* It's a generic rap song with a rather oddly high-pitched first verse (which Kris' expressionless delivery makes even more discomforting**), some standard fare autotuning and a catchy chorus thing.

In July, from November 2016, has more of an RnB feel with synthetic sounds and more of that autotuned-sounding voice. It sounds like a dollar-store mix of  The Weeknd and Drake, with a sort-of bass drop as the hook. The music video shows him dancing in some kind of corridor with ugly bright blue lights, and sporting (oh, God) a nasty, sludgy-rat-looking bleached 'do reminiscent of Draco Malfoy, if Draco Malfoy was a heroin addict who was forbidden from ever taking a shower. He hangs out with a cute black girl who has cool hair. And in the main dance routine, he wears a cap with "KW" inscribed on the front (which I assume stands for Key West, Florida), underneath which are... six skinny, lizard-tail-like blond braids. Oh, and he's wearing grills, too. And a full orange outfit that is oddly reminiscent of a prison jumpsuit, but I don't know what that's meant to imply, so that might be a reach.

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww

These two videos mark Kris' true launch into the international (specifically, American) pop sphere –– after about a year and a half of very blatant trying and failing*** ––– and it's obvious he's set to crack it. He's starring in Valerian alongside Dane Dehaan (whom I absolutely love despite his pasty-white-boy-ness), Cara Delevigne (who has a "BACON..." tattoo on her foot. Need I say more?), and Rihanna (who once called Karrueche Tran "rice cakes" and also sounds like an overrated goat), in a role that was allegedly created specifically for him by Luc Besson (who made the very racist Lucy. Hm.) He's also in xXx or whatever that new movie is called. He's definitely left behind that post-K-Pop, sparkly-lights-and-piano romantic guy from Somewhere Only We Know. He's cool now. He's hip. He's got black friends. He's got foreign producers. He sings in English. He's probably gonna make it big in the US.

But that's the thing. How did Kris become cool? By passively appropriating African-American culture. I say passively, because I don't know if he's even aware that that's what he's doing. For him, he's just making pastiches of the trends he sees, which originate from black people in the USA but pass through non-black Americans, general Western culture, and perhaps also Korea before he gets wind of them. What Kris is doing is what G-Dragon and Justin Bieber are doing, which is are what The Weeknd, Young Thug, and A$AP Rocky are doing.

a comment on YouTube for "JULY"

I'm totally for Asian stars going to the West. Western media needs more Asian faces, and if diasporic Asians are often trapped that vicious cycle of not-enough-famous-diasporic-Asians-because-they-never-get-hired-for-anything-(partly)-because-they're-not-famous-enough-because-..., then at least already-famous people in Asia can help, even if they're often blind to race relations due to having grown up in Asia and are only really in it for the money. I really like Jane Zhang's Dust My Shoulders Off, for example. It is fun and cute and creative.

But like Iggy Azalea, Kris Wu is appropriating black culture –– black coolness –– for his own American success. But unlike Keith Ape, he's not going to be a one-hit oddity. Everything he does is a calculated move to turn him into the dearly-needed East Asian face in Hollywood and at the Grammys. Hip hop is a genre created by black people specifically for black people, and non-black participants need to be aware of the legacy of slavery, segregation, and institutional racism that led to the creation of hip hop in the first place. Obviously, we aren't forbidden from listening to and creating rap music, but we shouldn't appropriate markers of black culture like wearing grills and braids and saying the N-word. While such actions are casual for us, and seen as "edgy" and "cool" when we commit them, black people are at the receiving end of discrimination. They can be fired from work for wearing natural hairstyles like afros and dreadlocks, which are seen as "unprofessional" because they're associated with negative stereotypes of African-Americans. But these are all things you've probably read before. It's 2017. We all know what cultural appropriation is and why it's bad. But people still do it –– from the Kardashian-Jenners who are thankfully going to be going away soon because their heyday is almost over, to people like Kris Wu who probably hasn't been called out on it that much yet. Considering he's Canadian, it's disappointing. He should know better.

William Chan**** is a dollar-store version of Kris Wu. If Kendrick Lamar is Nintendo, then Justin Bieber is Mario, and G-Dragon is Luigi, and Kris Wu is Wario, and William Chan is Waluigi. (Not a perfect analogy.) He's a reflection of a reflection of a reflection, and is therefore extremely faint. In the music video for W企劃, his only real song (by which I mean it isn't a song written just to celebrate his own birthday (who does that?), or a movie OST, or something from 5 years ago), the main storyline, as I understand it, is a traditional story of good vs evil. The "good" William Chan is a rich man living a life of luxury who is bored by the day-to-day running of his company. His "evil" alter ego wears eyeliner, really cheap-looking dirty blond cornrow-ish things, and black leather. Evil William (i.e. hip hop William) torments Good William (i.e. Asian pop William), who decides to break out into song and dance in the middle of company meetings. In the end, Evil William and Good William have a dance-off, but neither wins and they end up just standing back to back, because yin and yang, I guess. So blackness is implicitly associated with evil, though the video ultimately argues that Evil William is not Evil, but just wild and unconventional and oozing with alternative coolness, and that without him, there would be no Good William, either. I bring William Chan up because, first of all, Kris also had this Hip-Hop-VS-Asian-pop internal struggle, except Hip Hop Kris won, obviously, and now he's wreaking havoc everywhere. William is not diasporic, and probably doesn't know anything about anti-blackness and cultural appropriation, but he acts this way because he learned from his buddy Kris that this is what "cool" looks like, and Chinese people will know that this is what "cool" looks like.

I do not want 2017 to be the year of Chinese people wearing cornrows and listening to rap music but simultaneously: bleaching their skin because dark skin is seen as ugly, being horrified at the thought of their daughter bringing home a black man, holding their breath because black people apparently smell bad, etc. etc. etc. Although China is a country with very low immigration and most Chinese have never even met a black person, the black community is growing in China, especially in the South.

Not only is Kris encroaching on hip hop, he is also ruining the sanctity of Chinese music. His cover of Cui Jian's Greenhouse Girl is an absolute abomination. He, and many other young and "edgy" Chinese musical guys I have seen, feels the urgent need to turn everything into mediocre rap. Why? Why? Why? Kris did that to Cui Jian! The father of Chinese rock, whose music rang across Tiananmen Square! It's so utterly different from the original song... he could have just made up a new one!

Please forget about Kris Wu. He's like the kid who changes every aspect of his personality and his wardrobe just to get in with the cool crowd. Although the popular kids have accepted him, he's always going to be slightly inferior to them. And it's not because he's an ex-nerd. It's because he is oozing desperation. You can smell it on him. He wants to be cool so bad that it makes him pathetic.

Instead of listening to July, I recommend the exquisite Run From Your Love by Khalil Fong, featuring Chinese-British artist Fifi Rong. It's got that Weeknd vibe, but is also so quintessentially Khalil. In fact, all the songs from his latest album are great. He's innovating, becoming more pop-y, but staying creative and interesting. This man isn't trying to become best buds with Joey Bada$$. He's effortlessly cool. He's just like that. He does his own thing. He's really into Journey to the West. And he's better than Kris Wu in every way.

Instead of listening to Juice, I recommend Bohan Phoenix's entire discography. (His new EP drops soon.) I met and wrote a profile on Bohan for issue 2 of Sine Theta Magazine. He's a Chinese-American rapper and his music is fantastic. Not to mention he's super nice. Although his tracks are all standard length –– between 3 and 5 minutes (except 3 Days in Chengdu, which is 12 minutes long and amazing) –– whenever I listen to them I still feel like they end too early. And he's aware of the racial implications of what he does, though he preaches that "we're all one race, the human race". He's a bona fide hip hop artist, unlike Wu, who just jumps on bandwagons. Bohan, too, is better than Kris Wu in every way. Support independent artists.

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*I gotta admit, though, after hearing it so many times to write this... I'm starting to warm up to it. A lot.

**Kris' face pretty much does not move as he delivers these lines. It is really making me very uncomfortable. Every time I see him he looks like he's been dead inside for years and is doing all this half-heartedly. Maybe it's just because he's trying to give off that nonchalant vibe, but even when he smiles it looks like part of his soul has exited his body.

***I mean, GOD, have you seen Bad Girl? Gross pseudo-2000s fashion, weird electro sounds, weird color correction... not to mention a disgustingly worthless song that could easily have come out of TFBoys. Whose idea was that? No wonder it's not on his official channel. This was the first song by Kris I heard, back when he was less annoying and I actually thought he seemed pretty cool. Then I heard this, and was utterly repulsed. I never stopped giving him the benefit of the doubt, though. Now that his music sounds more like how I originally thought it'd sound, I like him less. I thought he'd be effortlessly Zayn-like, but he's really not.

****My boyfriend. I love him on a purely aesthetic basis. I mean, look at this: