Jon Stojan
Image credit: Jia Kai
It’s been a tough decade for creatives, from COVID prohibitions on film sets and music concerts to the WGA and SAG strikes of last year. This, followed by increasing interest rates and falling digital ad revenues, led to huge layoffs in the creative industry.
One such entertainer caught in the firings was Jia Kai. But the producer & songwriter has bounced back, turning his hardships into “an anthem for the underemployed creatives out there” that serves as a rebuttal to “the economy and the CEOs making these callous cuts,” with his new song, Fuccboii.
Jia Kai has been a music producer for over five years and a working DJ for over six years. He has DJ’d at clubs across the globe—everywhere from Seattle to San Diego to Shanghai. He’s also DJd a monthly event called Switch at Mickey’s in West Hollywood, which was featured in the LATimes.
Image credit: Jia Kai
After COVID, it was one of the first spaces to provide a safe space for queer Asians. As a self-proclaimed “gaysian American” (a gay Asian American), his club events have always been a refuge for his community, which often gets overlooked by the club scene. He was also selected to be a part of the Recording Academy University’s Class of 2021 for music production.
As a producer, he cut his teeth on other people’s backing tracks, producing instrumentals for other artists to sing over. But with Fuccboii, Jia Kai is stepping into the spotlight and using his own voice. For the first time, he is writing his own songs and singing on them too.
“There aren’t many gaysian (gay asian) musicians out there—publicly at least,” he says, and he plans to change that. But while Fuccboii blends his personal influences of pop and electronica into a single track, the song is less about personal relationships and more about professional struggles.
“This song is about my personal experience getting laid off from Southern California NPR and the subsequent job struggles… it’s been a bloodbath for everyone in the media and pretty much all creatives. So this song is not just about my experience, but about a lot of people struggling with the economy… it compares the experience of finding a job in media to being in love with a fuccboii—one day he wants you, the next day he doesn’t. Meanwhile, you’re left to wonder, should I stick with this guy even after all the abuse?”
With Fuccboii’s release, Jia Kai captures the dire economy in which creatives live. It’s a song about how creatives across the country right now are “in love with what we do but we hate how it makes us feel.” It is a quintessentially of-the-moment banger, and it is streaming on Spotify,Apple Music, YouTube now.
Image credit: Jia Kai