Hey everyone, it’s Julie Young for Korean American Story and Not Your Average
Today I’m sitting down with Danny Chung,
formerly known as Decipher
Sometimes still known as Decipher, right?
Yeah, I don’t uh
I don’t mind either or
A lot of people will still come up to me and uh
call me by Decipher and um
I guess other rappers or people who have a stage name or use monikers
would be like upset Like, ‘Ugh, you don’t know me by my new name yet’
But nah I’m…
I’d uh… embrace it all, haha
Nice
Alright, cheers!
We’ve been um
trying to get Danny on Not Your Average for about
two years now
So I had to chase him out to LA to do it
(I’ve been) elusive, to say the least
Yeah, this is a little bit strange because I thought this would happen in Philly
Yeah, but like we can’t be easy
Can’t give in on your first call
But let’s start from the beginning
Cause I really wanna know your story - I think it’s so interesting
You were born in Philly?
Born in Philadelphia, yes
Moved around a lot
I think within like my first year I moved to Chicago for a little bit
then moved back to the East Coast - Jersey
I pretty much moved around like literally every single year of my childhood
until about fifth grade or so
And then I stayed in this house umm…
moving back and forth from
rags to riches, riches to rags
Talk about that a little bit, cause I was listening to an interview you did
and you were talking about how there was a certain point in your life
where your family was pretty well-off
Yeah, I mean um…
And that suddenly changed
Right
My parents were pretty well-to-do
They came to America just like many immigrant families
Coming from Korea for that American Dream
They were relatively well-educated
My mother came form Yonsei University with a nursing education
so she came to America looking for a, you know, a nursing job
My father was a computer engineer
But when they came to America they quickly saw that the fastest way
to achieve you know, those goals of
a big back yard, and white picket fences, and that whole thing,
was to start a business, you know
They had a Dunkin Donuts, they had a 7Eleven
But then, they did it kind of haphazardly
They just wanted the American Dream faster than a lot of people wanted it
They wanted the biggest house on the block
Cause they came from a really poor background
My mother, she used to tell me stories about how her mom, her grandmother
would, you know, make like dak-dori-tang
-spicy chicken stew, and then it would literally have to stretch out for a week
to feed like five people
And then they would literally be like chewing on the bones and stuff
So they came from the dirt
They came from nothing
And then to come to America and still be broke
That was just unacceptable… to her
You had a pretty interesting experience when you went to go for your driver’s license
Do you wanna share that story?
So this is where, like, everything kinda turned around
In terms of how I defined family
And how family became contextualized in my life
So when I went to go get my driver’s license
You need your social security and birth certificate to go get your driver’s license
and at that point I realized,
‘Oh, I’ve never seen my birth certificate’
So I was curious
So while we were on the way to the DMV- with my dad
and I was like, “Oh, can I see my birth certificate?”
And he just got really like weird and shaky, and he wouldn’t make eye contact
And he’s like, “Uh, no. Don’t worry about it.”
And that made me super curious - I was like, ‘Oh, okay’
‘Imma keep that one in my head’
Like, I’m not gonna ask about it now, I’m not gonna bother you now-
but I will figure this out
And then eventually
like that day or the day after, I just snooped around
my parents room to find that birth certificate and I found it
and I took a look at it and then
I looked at the mother’s name and the father’s name,
and I recognized the mother’s name was actually my aunt’s name
So the woman I grew up calling ‘ee-mo’, calling my ‘aunt’,
was my actual birth mother And the father’s name was a name I completely did not know at all
It was this stranger
So everything just kind of… flipped upside down
And then I just put pieces and pieces together and I realized,
my birth mother was actually my aunt
Which made a lot more sense, just thinking about it in hindsight because
the person I call mother- and I still couldn’t to this day call her (aunt) mother
because that’s the person that raised me- that’s my mom
If you do the math, she was about 42 or like 45 or something
when I was born
So it didn’t make much biological sense
But I never thought about that, ever, because
why would you think about that?
Cause she took me in when I was literally born
It was pretty much- I was adopted
I was adopted by my birth mother’s older sister
I was kind of like a ‘miracle child’ in a sense because she
my “mother” never had a child prior because she miscarried a bunch of times
And she just couldn’t have a child
And her younger sister got pregnant - it was an unwanted birth
Like when she was really young, she was like,
she was probably about like… 20 or something like that
And it kinda all just fell into place… per se
What was that like as a 16 year old finding that out?
And did you like, did you go to your parents and say..?
No no no- I didn’t even tell them I knew
Oh really?
Yeah, I didn’t even tell them I knew at all
Till when? Ever?
Ever.
I never told about it
But your birth mom, your aunt, she knows you know now?
They know I know now because my uncle listened to one of my- listened to my music
And he understand English, and he understands rap
He’s the one that got me into rap
He’s the one that was a DJ when I was a little kid
and like putting me onto Kid ’n Play, and Ultramagnetic MC’s and all these
things that he didn’t even know I was really soaking in
And I was just in the corner playing with my toys,
but he was into hip hop
So you’re 16 and you figure this out- what was that like for a 16 year old?
It’s a lot- it was a roller coaster actually because
at first I was like, ‘Wow, this is huge. This changes everything.’
But then I was like, ‘Does it really change everything?’
It does what it doesn’t
Yeah, does it really change everything? Because
I’m not gonna stop calling mom ‘Mom’
Like she’s the one that raised me, she’s the one that changed my diapers,
she’s the one that put me through school
These are the people that drove me an hour out to the suburbs every day so I could get a better education
But then I was like, ‘Damn. Biologically, this changes the whole narrative’
This changes my whole story
And then, do I bring it up to them?
Like, do I make it weird for them? Do I make them decide?
And then I started remembering- again, hindsight
Remembering these things in time, I remember this one point in third grade when
I was like living with my ‘aunt’, which was my actual birth mother
And I think there was a shift there during that period of time
where, like, she was getting older
Her biological clock was ticking, she never had a “child of her own”
She actually did, which was me,
but she never got the chance to raise a child
She got to that point, and she kinda wanted me back or something
And then there was kind of like a tug of war at that point
Which I didn’t realize at all
But then I remembered like, my dad picking me up from her- from my aunt’s house
and just them fighting, and there was a literal tug of war
I think I settled on
‘You know what? It doesn’t matter as much as I think it does’
It matters in a sense that that happened,
and it’s good that I know
I’m just- I’m glad that I was ignorant of it
Cause like to me, I think of you as an adoptee You know, your mother is who raises you
And there’s no animosity either to my aunt giving me up to my mother
I mean, I think it worked out better for everybody in the grand scheme of things
Your biological mom is still in Philadelphia, right?
My biological mom is still in Philadelphia, my aunt
So do you ever think of any part of your identity as an adoptee?
Yeah, yeah.. technically
Cause technically you are,
but it’s sort of like because your whole life you didn’t really think you were
until you were 16
How does that come into your identity?
Yeah technically I would definitely have to say I’m an adoptee
cause i was raised by not-my biological parents
I don’t know, like you said, I never grew up thinking that way or knowing it
and I had to find out myself
But I guess a lot of adoptees would share that same narrative
Right? I mean, a lot of times you don’t get told that
I don’t know, what do you think? What do you think is the better avenue to take?
I think it’s so personal
I think every adoptee has their own journey, and it’s very personal
Do you ever think about your birth father?
Now that my birth mother knows that I know,
she confronted me and asked me like,
“Do you want to meet your birth father?”
And then at that time I said, “No”
Not because I was angry or distant from the situation or anything
because, like I said, I was just happy how it was
And I guess I just didn’t wanna disturb that
and why make it more complicated than it has to be?
That was around when my mom,
the one that raised me, passed away
I was about 20 to 21, something like that
She asked me if I wanted to meet my birth father, like he was…
I don’t know if she was still in contact,
I don’t know if she was actually able to put me in contact with him
but I just said no right off the bat
And honestly, I’m more curious if he has other children
So I’d be more curious if I had half-siblings more so than actually meeting him, per se
So even to this day I’m still more curious about that- if I have siblings
Cause I grew up as an only child
Cause that- that’s another thing
That’s like, being an only child your whole life,
if you were to find out you had siblings, it’s this other identity
You know what I mean?
Like, even in my adopted family, I’m the second oldest of six,
so I’ve always thought of myself as older, as one of the older children
In my Korean family I’m the baby, and it’s a totally different identity
and like, place, in the family
I kinda like being the baby, hahaha
Yeah, me being the only child definitely played its part in my life
The stigma with being the only child is that you’re spoiled, you’re this, you’re that
but again, I don’t think I grew up like a normal only child
Like I said, I was back and forth from being poor and like, being really poor
and being like, really well off or whatever
So I never got a chance to be like, fully spoiled
And I barely cried, my parents said, which was a weird thing
But I think that came from a place of just
I don’t know, seeing that back and forth:
from being a have, to a have-not, like all the time
Did you ever struggle with your Korean-American identity when you were growing up?
Yeah, absolutely
I think when most- I mean, that’s the general story
When you’re a hyphenated American,
you tip-toe, and you have to tightrope between that hyphen
of Korean and American, the hyphen is literally like a tightrope
where you’re trying to balance where you stand
You know, I’ve visited Korea a lot- even throughout my childhood
I’m sure it’s almost like a cliché at this point,
but being in Korea, you don’t feel Korean enough
In America you don’t feel American enough
So you’re stuck on that hyphen
You’re just trying to balance on that hyphen- you’re tightroping that
And you grow up in school, like I said, I didn’t get taunted as much or whatever,
but ask the other kids-
Asian, and good at math, or take karate and get picked on or shit like that
That’s why maybe I adhere to hip hop more
because it’s more about machismo, and bravado, and being tough
Like I didn’t have a good literal-father figure raising me so like, you know
Tupac, Biggie, Bone Thugs- these were my father figures and stuff like that
They raised me to be a little bit tougher, or whatever
Well, Danny, I just want to acknowledge you because you know I love you,
and you’re such a creative, ambitious, hard-working, and kind person
and you’re like, so humble
and I just wish you all the best
Thank you for doing this
Thank you so much Cheers