2021-04-05
1 小时 5 分钟My guest today in this best of conversation is Sophia Chang, or as she calls herself, the first asian woman in hip hop.
Back in the nineties, she became entrenched in the work and lives of the iconic nine person hip hop phenome Wu Tang clan, becoming not only family, but also, over the years, managing a number of the members individual careers, as well as those of a tribe called Quest, Rafael, Sadiq, Deangelo, and so many others.
This was a huge departure from the place and the way that she grew up.
Raised in Vancouver, the youngest kid of korean immigrants, Sophia loved music, but never imagined she would actually build a living and a life around it.
By high school, she was into new wave and punk.
But the moment she heard grandmaster flash and the Furious fives, the message.
It was like something inside of her.
A primal urge came alive.
She was hooked by the beats, the lyrics, and the artists who were tapping the power of music to speak with so much truth.
Sophia headed to New York and soon after found herself immersed in the music scene, befriending punk legends like Joey Ramon, working with the legendary Paul Simon, and then quickly dropping into the hip hop scene in the late eighties and nineties, where she'd not only build a decades long career in music, but also build a real family.
In the middle of all of this, Sophia stepped out of the music business for about a dozen years to train in kung fu and manage a 34th generation Shaolin monk who she'd helped build into a global name while also becoming partners in life and work and raising two kids.
And that relationship would eventually end, leaving Sophia in her early forties, as she describes it, broke and stepping into a new season where she'd reclaim much of what made her come alive, rediscover music, and really reimagine what this next season of life would look like.
A season where she stopped telling the stories of others and, for the first time, start telling the story of her own remarkable life.
Much of this incredible story is detailed in her audiobook, the baddest bitch in the room.
I sat down with Sophia in the studio in New York in before times, but this conversation is as timely and relevant as ever.
So we wanted to share it with you in this best of episode.
So excited to share the conversation.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project.
So my mother, Tong Suk chang, was born in Kiang, North Korea, in 1932.
We share a birthday, which is kind of extraordinary.