Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings album - more than a movie soundtrack | Sunday Observer

Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings album - more than a movie soundtrack

19 September, 2021

The writer highlights the importance of ’Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings: The Album’ and talks to some of the artists in the project.

I wish I had a song like NIKI’s “Every Summertime” when I was a love-struck teenager. From its bouncy opening chords to NIKI’s syrupy crooning, the track is custom-made for nights spent pining after a crush or the effervescent first months of a blooming relationship. But what truly drew me to “Every Summertime” isn’t just that it’s a love song to soothe the overly romantic in me. It’s that the track feels like a head nod, an inside joke. NIKI’s playful references and witty turns of phrase are a subtle wink to our shared experience.

“Every Summertime” is the eighth track in Shang-Chi and The Legend of Ten Rings: The Album, the auditory companion to the latest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Produced by 88 Rising, the album is a fitting tribute to the highly-anticipated film, which features Marvel’s first Asian-American superhero. And while it exists chiefly to soundtrack a superhero movie, the album has grander ambitions than merely being a musical score.

“I think I just wanted to get at the Asian diasporic experience,” NIKI explains over Zoom. “What it would look like for two first-generation Asian Americans, going to college and falling in love—that was the inspiration.”

I saw myself mirrored in her lyrics, from references to Richmond, a Bay Area city with a historically robust Asian community, to the imagery of blooming magnolias, a familiar symbol in most Asian cultures. NIKI, who moved to the United States from Indonesia to pursue music, was inspired by the stories of young Asian Americans as they navigated the angst of burgeoning adulthood while adjusting to a new country’s cultural complexities. “A common theme throughout the process of creating the album was: What does it mean to be Asian in America?” says NIKI.

Shang-Chi and The Legend of Ten Rings has been a box-office hit, making over $90 million over the three-day weekend, breaking the box office record for Labor Day weekend premieres. Globally, it brought in an estimated $127.6 million. The music, accordingly, had to have the same level of reverence and reverie as the film.

After all, the Asian diaspora, though historically pigeonholed under a single homogenous label, contains a multitude of cultures, ethnicities, and experiences. But while the album isn’t exactly a dissection of race in America, it still serves as an apt musical representation of the Asian-American experience.

The album’s premise is exciting to behold: a major music project headlined by Asian artists and produced by an Asian-American recording label. On it are artists like NIKI, Audrey Nuna, Rich Brian, Guapdad 4000, and Saweetie, who are among the next generation of young Asian American artists breaking boundaries in the industry.

It’s a noteworthy milestone, especially when confronted by the severe lack of representation in the American music industry. Until recently, only a handful of Asian-American musicians have found mainstream success in the West, like Bruno Mars and Nicole Scherzinger, who are of Filipino descent; Jhené Aiko, who is half Japanese; and Sri Lankan artist M.I.A. It wasn’t until 2010 that an Asian-American group, the Far East Movement, and their hit “Like a G6,” charted at number one in the Billboard Hot 100 for three non-consecutive weeks in a row. Then, K-pop icons BTS broke into the scene, becoming the first act from Asia in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 to debut at number one—and that was just in 2020.

“For decades, there was little room in mainstream Western pop for women who were discernible as Asian,” wrote Ligaya Mishan in a recent article documenting the rise in Asian American female pop stars for The New York Times. There has been no one reason cited for this lack of mainstream Asian representation, but anecdotes have pointed at a racial bias against Asian American artists. “I was told over and over again by countless label execs that if it weren’t for me being Asian, I would’ve been signed yesterday,” Paul Kim, a top 25 contestant in season six of American Idol, said in 2007.

Today, Asian American artists seem to be hitting a new high. K-pop groups have cultivated a rabid fanbase in the United States. Earlier this year, Filipino American singer Olivia Rodrigo surpassed Ariana Grande in having the most songs on the Billboard Global 200. And multi-genre artists like Audrey Nuna, are showing that Asian artists are more than just industry anomalies. Her song “Clocked Out!” adds her characteristic wordsmith mastery of rap and alchemical approach to composition to the Shang-Chi soundtrack.

“I didn’t really see myself represented in media my whole life,” says Audrey, who remembers being just one of three Korean American students at her elementary school. “I think that just perpetuates certain boxes that people feel like they need to be in because they’re not empowered by their own reflections in media.”

Although, Audrey admits that thinking about the significance that her artistic success carries “is a little bit overwhelming,” she says, jokingly adding: “It’s just so surreal that I think my brain decides not to think about it too much.”

Applauding Asian representation is complicated. After all, increased visibility in mainstream media is only a surface-level accomplishment, particularly when Asian Americans still experience institutional racism and, as troublingly evidenced by the past year, violent hate crimes. Yet, it’s difficult to downplay the buzz I felt hearing Masiwei on the soundtrack, his whole verse in Mandarin for “Lazy Susan,” or Warren Hue rapping about MSG, fish bones, and an over-attentive mother in “Always Rising.”

Many of the artists on the soundtrack felt the same spark of recognition. NIKI points to “Diamonds + and Pearls” as among her favorite tracks on the album. “They’re literally just talking about tea,” she says of the song, a collaboration by DPR LIVE, DPR IAN, and peace, which references the ubiquitous beverage. “But it was such a cool way to pay tribute to Asian-American culture. I’ve never heard a song that explicitly talks about tea in a cool and almost menacing way.”

Comments