Yaeji - WHAT WE DREW 우리가 그려왔던

April 2, 2020 - XL Recordings

We were all on board with the Yaeji craze when she first appeared on the scene a few years back. Her perspective as a female Korean American producer was exciting, her sound offered a new take on club music, and her lyrics were laid back, spoke of the more mundane parts of modern experience with a “yeah, so what?” attitude. The music bounced like a bounce house, she spoke to us casually, and we in our cynicism of the world at large questioning the institution of music itself were addicted to the effect. It was cool to dance unencumbered to something more relatable after carrying the baggage of music-as-a-vessel-for-only-“important”-feelings. Many of us were too young to know what “important” feelings are. 

But once the initial high wore off, I did start wondering what direction Yaeji would take moving forward, whether she would take the plunge and find something beneath the surface of the too cool post-internet dance-floor ironies of today’s Brooklyn artist. She was so popular so early on. When I last wrote of her, I was beginning to question the ability of her sound to withstand the test of time and the vagaries of the art world’s hunger for trends. 

Then Yaeji took a short break from the hype she was swimming in. Some time for introspection. The result is a new album titled WHAT WE DREW, a body of work that shows us the mood behind the party curtain. Pensive exploration of the creative’s isolation in a riskier, more personal realm. To commit to a life as an artist is to commit to periods of intense loneliness and to actively seek out exposure to the truths of existence. In order to make something out of nothing that offers you something from its creation, you have to peel away the blankets people bury themselves under to keep the horrific real from touching them. We’re living in a moment that thinks it values intellectual pursuits, stemming from a highly educated young culture that skims the surface of more information than they can chew and talks openly about mental health. We appreciate looking at the appearance of the artists. We’re a big audience of consumers for creative work that finds irony delicious. We wear it on our lapels like a candy badge of honor, an external declaration of status and also an empty snack. 

WHAT WE DREW still holds onto that irony for those who need it as a gateway. It’s full of Yaeji’s signature loose slouchy intonation and fluid oscillation between languages, along with a fearless cacophony of sounds and sound effects which would sound silly in other contexts. Different voices appear in each song in conversation, sometimes supporting each other and other times asking each other difficult existential questions. (Sometimes these are the voices of collaborating artists, sometimes they are just Yaeji talking to herself.) Like meme culture for your ears, though, these songs are powerful because they are layers deep, rooted in something authentic and very personal to Yaeji—her inner dialogue, her journey choosing a tough path, grappling with her identity, achieving popularity, experiencing a sense of “other,” dealing with depression, and still facing the blankness as a maker. She’s painted a self-portrait of the inside of her inner mind using only smiley face stickers. 

Each track is delightfully different from the next. As you move through the album, Yaeji unravels her musical decisions one at a time to see what happens. These decisions are the threads that wove the pattern of style and taste that got her famous. It was a risk to dismantle that tapestry. I’m very impressed and excited to find that she created something deeper, darker, newer and more interesting in that dismantling and reconstruction of her former identity. She’s still Yaeji, but she has grown. The rigorous creative practice has paid off. You can still dance to it in the club if you want to, but you might go home with more questions than you arrived with. ☔