‘You just have to be real and do what you really want to do’

It was the same week that the Franklin, New Jersey upstart released his song and video for “On God.” Directed by Jason Ano and produced by B-Rackz, the video is a walk through memory lane, as vintage photos of his family and friends personalize his lyrics written through positive affirmations. “On God” is a phrase used to emphasize the truth, but the Chinese-Vietnamese American artist flips it to describe his resolve and all the blessings he’s received from praying to a higher being. He pays homage to his late mentor Chino (“Looked back I got a little spooked ‘cause I thought I seen Chino in the booth”), shouts out mom (“On God I don’t care about none of these bitches, I do all this shit for my mom”), and boasts about his career highlights (“I been setting the trend since I was 16, you could ask Virgil/Did the fashion show with Yeezy/I make it look way too easy”).

With “On God” as another statement of having faith in yourself, Spence evolving artistically from Shotta Spence (though it is still a nickname he goes by) is all rooted in family. “Lee. It’s just that my family name is powerful to me,” he says. “My grandparents came over here from China on Ellis Island. They paved the way for my dad to even have me. They had a tough living situation when it was just my dad and his parents. He had a hustle so that he could have his own.”

“For this next music, there is no other name that could encompass everything and all the different waves that I’m coming with. I just gotta use my name,” he continues.

In that same announcement on Instagram, Spence revealed he had officially partnered with Mike Will Made-It’s Ear Drummer Records and 88Rising “to bridge cultures and manifest my full vision as a global artist and leader.” His follow-up single is just as potent, titled “Foundation,” with a pounding trap beat that sounds straight out of Atlanta. “God is my family, my foundation,” Lee raps, followed by more boasts about being a breadwinner.

Reached by email, Will described Lee as “Ear Drummer to the core.”

“If we were to partner with anyone it would have had to make sense with our vision,” he writes. “88Rising was the perfect partner. I met [88Rising CEO] Sean [Miyashiro], we had some conversations and had similar views on how Spence could be the bridge for many cultures, being from Jersey [and] into fashion, understanding his history, having principles and morals.”

After introducing Lee to Miyashiro, Will says 88Rising naturally took a liking to him. “They understood what he was trying to do and where he was trying to take it,” he adds. “I’ve been paying attention to what 88Rising has been building over the years and always respected it. I’m excited about this partnership because it’s unexpected and organic and there’s nothing better than that combo.”

Since Lee started making music in 2008, he has been forward with sharing his parents’ story as immigrants, hoping it relates to his fans with similar stories.

Since Lee started making music in 2008, he has been forward with sharing his parents’ story as immigrants, hoping it relates to his fans with similar stories. As he tells it, his father’s parents fled their communist country to start anew in the United States. Similarly, he explains his mom went through a traumatizing experience of being separated from her family for more than 20 years after she left Vietnam to the United States, only reconnecting with her biological parents when Lee was 2 or 3.

Being authentic is a value that was instilled by his parents. From his mom, he was taught to “give thanks and pray every single day,” and he picked up his fashion sense from her. From his dad, he was taught to never quit and always stay curious when it came to exploring new places. “He opened my eyes to things and my mom opened my heart to things,” Lee says.

Lee was exploring a nontraditional career path, handcrafting clothing, designing, and modeling before his music took off. As a determined teenager, Lee traveled to New York from New Jersey to sell his shirts to people like Heron Preston and the late Virgil Abloh, whom he’d seen DJ and ran into at concerts. It was a full-circle moment to be able to model in Kanye West’s Yeezy Season 1 fashion show, chosen by Abloh to represent the youth.

It may be hard to describe the tangible value of hustle like this to Asian parents steadfast in their appreciation of higher education exclusively. His father only wanted Lee to go to college, which he did before dropping out. However, his mom understood her son’s path to success wasn’t going to be the same as hers. “She wasn’t about to tell me, ‘Oh, you have to do this. You have to do that.’ You just have to be real and do what you really want to do,” Lee says. “Live for your own dreams and ambitions and not what anybody else put in there or took out from your light. That's why me and my mom are super close. A lot of the big songs I have I recorded in the house. Like, bass beating the walls and everything. My mom was like, ‘Man, that shit sound good.’”

After meeting Mike Will through an opportunity to style Rae Sremmurd for their “Up Like Trump” video in 2014, Lee began to make inroads and build connections in the music industry with the guidance of Will and his current manager Aubz.

“I took a liking to Spence because he stands for what he believes in and that's an important trait for an artist,” says Will. “I have been his corner coach for a few years now, helping develop him as an artist organically. Letting him grow into being the natural born leader he is. He’s easily an artist that kids would want to be like and the ladies would love: he’s talented, smart, humble, fly, focused, and his work ethic is unmatched. I feel he has a bright future as a creative, from music, art to fashion. His lyrics are powerfully pure and true to him.”