— Oh yeah, that’s the logo, right?
— Did “Higher Brothers,” did it really come from that?
— The Higher Brothers,
four-man hip-hop group named after a Chinese appliance company,
is based out of this apartment in Chengdu.
This is where they eat, sleep, and record songs.
— Despite being from China,
they’re way more known abroad because of YouTube.
But YouTube is banned in China,
so they have to use proxy software just to see people’s reactions.
— What kind of reactions do you get?
— The Higher Brothers have a large U.S. audience
thanks in large part to their manager, Sean Miyashiro,
who’s based in LA.
They’ve never met in person,
and have to rely on video calls to communicate.
— I promise you, bro. I promise you.
I promise maybe, like…
after the Asia tour,
we bring you to America in October.
— It’s possible, bro, yeah.
Everybody loves you here.
— Sean started working with the Higher Brothers in 2016,
through his company, 88Rising.
— How did you get hooked up with Higher Brothers?
— One of our employees who showed me their “Black Cab” video:
— I just immediately got, like, a Rae Sremmurd vibe,
they were killing it.
And I was like, this is the first time I heard Chinese rap sound good.
I just was like,
“Yo, can we, like, bring this to the world over here in America?”
— I mean, Chinese artists don't typically do well in the mainstream, period, of America across genres—
we’re not even talking hip hop.
— That's what we're trying to change.
— This isn’t the first Asian act his company has worked with.
— We just moved in.
And, uh, we’re just gonna, like, have a bunch of motherfuckers making shit in here.
That’s what we’re gonna be doing.
This is the epicenter.
— This is this a media company, though.
It’s not a record label—
it’s kind of hard to wrap your head around what this is.
— It's everything, it’s everything.
We literally have artist management, record label, people editing a video…
yo, what’re you doing, bro?
— Just making, like, little clips and memes.
— See? That's actually exactly what people are going to be doing here,
is making clips and memes, bro—
we’re a meme factory.
— And you don’t wanna fuck with a Chigga like me…
— 88Rising is also behind the viral success of Rich Chigga,
who is from Indonesia,
and they’ve also been working with Korean rapper Keith Ape.
The one thread holding everything together is that their main talent pool is all Asian.
— I kind of just naturally saw
that there was all this talent, all this culture, expression,
coming from all the different countries in Asia.
But there is no central place and to celebrate.
You see a lot of people griping about the whitewashing of Hollywood
and very little Asian representation in entertainment and stuff like that.
And I think that our philosophy is the way to break out of that
is be really fucking good at what you do.
Be undeniable.
And do it yourself.
— The Higher Brothers are undeniably good at what they do.
At the Shanghai stop in their last tour, the venue was packed.
— If you’ve ever been to a hip-hop show in the U.S.,
this scene might look familiar.
Everything, from beats, to the dance moves, to the hairstyles, is pretty much the same.
Except… everyone’s Chinese.
— I’ve seen this on some of the YouTube comments,
people saying, like, here’s some Asian dudes, they’re stealing black culture…
what do y’all think about that?