Q&A: min.a Shares Her Musical Journey As A Korean American Artist
☆ By NORMA SORTO ☆
EXPERIMENTING WITH NEW SOUNDS OF ELECTRONIC POP — New York-based min.a does not follow the traditional sound of pop music. Instead, she invents her own. Her songs encapsulate the futuristic and glitchy musical elements that make min.a’s artistry unique and expressive. Gathering inspiration from artists like Rina Sawayama, Phoebe Bridgers, Mitski, Billie Ellish, and Charlie XCX, min.a naturally finds the electronic pop feel she incorporates in her music. Her stage name, min.a, is a derivation of her Korean name, “minah.” The 21-year-old Korean American is constantly pushing cultural boundaries through her music. “I try to incorporate Korean lyrics as often as I can,” min.a said. “And speak about the diaspora of being Korean American and also being first-generation.” As an artist, min.a is not afraid to express the identity struggles that she faces throughout her life.
In 2018, min.a released her first single, “Sage,” and continues to release singles on various music streaming platforms. She’s also released two EPs, Glitch and Hi-Fi, which garnered her artistic identity. In the early stages of min.a’s musical journey, she participated in a Korean TV competition show called K-pop Star 3, where she was one of the finalists. From her experience, min.a decides to take complete control of her music creation by producing, writing, performing, and engineering. A recent graduate from Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University, min.a majored in Recorded Music, where she learned everything about the music industry.
Read on to learn more about min.a as an artist, as she talks about her musical inspirations, creative process, and what’s in store for 2021. Be sure to check out her latest single, “everyone is greedy,” featuring Laiko.
LUNA: When did you start your musical journey? Who has inspired you to pursue a career in music?
MIN.A: I grew up in a family of musicians. My mom majored in the flute and minored in the piccolo and went to school for that. My grandpa was a violinist and was very passionate about that. He was my absolute hero growing up, so I definitely took a lot of inspiration from him. I started off doing violin lessons when I was very young, and piano lessons and guitar lessons, and unfortunately, none of them took. I’ve been singing forever, but I started producing and songwriting junior or senior year of high school, and then went to [university] for it.
LUNA: You participated in K-pop Star 3. What did you learn from that experience? What was the most memorable moment?
MIN.A: I was really young. I had just transitioned from middle school to high school. I was a freshman in high school for most of the program; I auditioned when I was in eighth grade. It helped me [become] a lot more comfortable and confident in my abilities as a performer — not as a vocalist — because I was gaining recognition and validation from industry veterans. It really helped me convince my parents that it was something worth investing in and that I really did want to go to school for it and pursue a career in music.
Unfortunately, it contributed to a lot of body image issues because I didn’t necessarily tier to Korean body standards when it comes to being a public figure. I was a bit chubbier and was kinda more on the quiet side. When you’re a K-pop idol, you’re expected to be good at everything and be able to entertain people in every sense of the word. In that case, it also helped me recognize that I necessarily didn’t want that. I didn’t want to be a K-pop idol … I wanted more control over every aspect of my music, which is what helped push me into producing music.
LUNA: How is 2021 treating you so far? What does your typical day look like?
MIN.A: Now that I’ve graduated college, I have so much more free time. Every day is a little different. For the most part, I try to work on something every day, whether it be sending in a demo that I’m working on with another producer or another artist, or starting something from scratch. And trying to make as much content as possible, whether that be scheduling photoshoots or scheduling video shoots for different songs. Then also scheduling different sessions with different producers and artists.
LUNA: In 2020, you released your EP, Hi-Fi. How was the creative process?
MIN.A: I didn’t go into that thinking, “Oh, I want to make an EP.” It kinda just naturally formed. I went to study abroad in Berlin the first semester of my junior year. I think that was in 2019. I guess just being there with all the electronic music and dance music … it didn’t necessarily highly influence what the songs off of Hi-Fi sounded like, but there was a lot of motivation to create as much as possible because I was studying abroad with my program. While I was there creating music, it kinda just came out organically — which was a really nice process because a lot of the time, for me personally, when I’m going [into] something, I think, “Okay, I have to make an EP.” There is an insane amount of pressure and you don’t know how the songs are going to correlate with each other or if they [will] go well together. Fortunately enough, it was a pretty smooth process with making the EP, because it was so organic.
LUNA: The music video for your single “24 hours” is so dreamlike and calming. What was the inspiration behind the video?
MIN.A: One of my best friends, Grace Zhang, is a director, and I kinda just asked her, “Hey, do you want to film a very low-budget, very casual video with me?” We didn’t really have a concept. It was kinda just me lip-syncing on the roof while it was raining. She is incredible and kind of came up with the whole editing process herself.
LUNA: Would you say that the pandemic helped you create more music?
MIN.A: It’s a bit of both. I do think that having all this extra time does allow me to sit down and create as much as possible. But at the same time, there’s so much pressure to be making as much as possible. I think that has caused a lot of burnout, not only in myself, but amongst a lot of my creative friends, because it’s just not normal or sustainable for someone to be making as much as possible all the time.
LUNA: Do you feel like your Korean American identity has influenced your music?
MIN.A: I think [rather than] it influencing my music directly, it’s more so highly influencing my persona as an artist because there is a very specific and beautiful way that K-pop idols perform. It’s very put together. It’s very well thought-out — especially their music video and things like that. The different sort of content that K-pop idols create based off of every release is really innovative. I think I try to take as much influence from that as possible to put in my own visual aesthetic. As a Korean American, that identity helps inform my public persona and the way that I want to talk about different social issues; the way I want to mold my trajectory as an artist.
LUNA: What do you like most about producing your songs? Also, what is the challenging part?
MIN.A: I really like how much control I have over the vision because I’m creating actually what something sounds like in my head. Granted, that’s not always the case — like, it can be difficult to put together different ideas, and sometimes when it becomes something tangible, you’re like, “Oh, I don’t really like how that turned out.” The most challenging part is sometimes you feel like something isn’t sonically complete. In those situations, I usually end up reaching out to different producers that I know and working with them to create a more complete sonic picture. Sometimes it’s difficult to feel like things are complete or that you’re heading on the right track, but I think it’s a really beautiful thing that I get to be directly a part of the vision that I have for different songs.
LUNA: How has your artistry evolved since your first single, “Sage”? How have you grown since then?
MIN.A: Yeah, definitely. I think I have gotten better at songwriting. It’s definitely a lot faster when I’m writing songs, and also I think I have a better and clearer view of what I want to make — like the type of music I want to make, and how I want to project myself as a person. As an artist, I have a much more detailed view of what that means. I think, at the beginning, I didn’t fully understand that people don’t just listen to your music. They also look at you and your social media and what you’re like as a person and that often influences people to stay.
LUNA: You recently released your single, “everyone is greedy.” What was the inspiration behind the track? How was it like collaborating with Laiko?
MIN.A: Jake and I have been making music together for around 6 months, and we’re definitely still making music together. We started working together and immediately felt like there was really good chemistry going on and that we both had similar influences and wants for what we wanted our music to sound like. So it started off as this demo I had, and I didn’t really have a verse down. It was just the lyric “everyone is greedy,” and that came from feeling like a lot of people that I encounter in the music industry and just in life are very transactional.
LUNA: Lastly, what are your goals for 2021? What do you want to achieve as an artist?
MIN.A: Right now, I am working on an EP. It just kind of turns out that I have a bunch of songs and an EP made sense. I personally don’t like making concrete plans when it comes to my career, because the music industry is so unpredictable. Whether or not you like it, things will happen. I didn’t want COVID to happen but then it happened. A bunch of things had to get canceled but hopefully, in the fall, we will be able to do shows again. I think just making as much music as possible, putting out an EP, and playing shows if the world goes back to normal.
