Lyrics Born and Cutso will donate all proceeds raised from the sale of the single to Stop AAPI Hate.
In a New York Daily News article from April 18th, actress/comedian Margaret Cho reported 3,795 anti-Asian violent physical assaults and that "The latest anti-Asian numbers, as of April 11, 2021, saw 54 anti-Asian hate crimes reported to the NYDP, compared to 12 by that date in 2020 - an increase of 350%." While animosity towards Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) has been an unfortunate part of the fabric of racism in the US, this thread of prejudice and hate has only gotten thicker in the recent years. With May being AAPI Heritage Month, attention to this rash wave of oftentimes violent racism is being highlighted by Bay Area AAPI artists LYRICS BORN and CUTSO.
"I was called Chink, Gook, Jap, Nip, Slant-Eye, Fob, Chinaman, Immigrant, every day from age three until about 20... and then it went to maybe every other day," confesses Japanese American rapper/actor LYRICS BORN (real name: Tom Shimura) about his experiences with anti-Asian hate. Instead of standing silently while this discrimination and, in many cases, violence continues, he joined forces with Filipino-American musician/DJ Cutso for the incendiary and provocative new single "ANTI" which was released earlier this month (San Francisco Chronicle called the track "cathartic and visceral, blowing up the stereotype that Asians are meek and quiet"). Adds Cutso (real name: Paolo Bello), "Growing up, I've been called names, got bullied and had generalizations and stereotypes tacked onto me, all throughout my life.""'ANTI' is a song I wish we never had to make. Unfortunately it was also the easiest to make," he says. "Firstly, I think [the number of reported incidences] was always higher than what has been reported in the past because culturally and historically, we don't snitch. Hateful rhetoric is such an everyday occurrence for Asian-Americans. Sadly, it's become normalized in our community. As such, we have a tendency to (try and) shrug it off, put our heads down, and keep it moving. That said, I think the skyrocketing numbers in the past year are a direct result of the former president using phrases like 'The China Virus' and 'Kung-Flu' with reckless abandon, thereby sanctioning racist behavior and the scapegoating of Asians in the COVID era."
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Photo Credit: Eugene Kim
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