Formerly known as Rich Chigga, Brian Imanuel is an 18 year-old teenager from Indonesia who is going places with his dope beats, hard lyrics, and music videos with clever use of juxtapositions. You certainly don't see a scrawny Asian dude sporting fanny packs and pyjamas everyday, swearing and rapping like he's Ghostface Killah.
Also, his team does it without any need for make-ups and photoshops to cover his acne in the music videos. Breaking conventions in every sense is clearly a good way to stand out. Anyway, I think the art goes deeper than that. To better understand this phenomenon, check out one of my ancient Steemit posts on The Rise of Vaporwave & New Age Aesthetics. Well, at least that's what I think from a curator's point-of-view.
It's amazing that he learned most of what he's using today just by consuming loads of Youtube videos, from speaking the English language to grokking American humour. Some might get turned off by the explicit lyrics, but that's just the rap game, yo. Also, I love his deep and deadpan vocals. It's working wonders for the cloud-rap genre.
Below are some of my favourite music / concept videos with Rich Brian in them. The last two videos - a documentary and a hot-wings interview are pretty interesting too.
The last that I really dug into rap beats was one of Drake's mixtapes back in ~2010. Rich Brian's tight tracks certainly makes me wanna dance on the streets again with loud music banging.. but I think I might be too old for that now lol. How about you?