Artist Profile: Yonqi

Yonqi, the LA-based hip-hop producer who reigns from the sullen plains and swooping peaks of Idaho, has been making music within his community, which includes rappers of such quality as ZekeUltra and Elijah Bank$y, for almost a decade now. Yet, as he continues to progress in his nuanced understanding of the unpredictability of sound, his instrumentals, and the manner in which his collaborators are able to embody them, have become more and more singularly advanced.

As a child, Yonqi listened primarily to the cassettes that were laying around his house: a collection that contained a box set of Grammy-winning songs. From this set, he heard artists such as Michael Jackson and Earth, Wind and Fire for the first time. In fact, the music played around his house throughout his childhood very much fell in the vein of soul and funk.

Yet, when he picked up guitar for the first time as a teenager, it was the indie and grunge influences of the Pacific Northwest, including groups like The Halo Benders and Modest Mouse, that informed the sound he attempted to emulate. This, in some sense, served as the first step in a number of musical evolutions he would undergo in the coming years, following his inclination toward musical creation wherever it would take him.

When he heard Laurel Halo’s 2012 record, Quarantine, for the first time, his sensibilities underwent yet another transformation. In addition to the interests in mixing and engineering he had already picked up, he became fascinated with the potentialities of electronic music. He picked up a drum machine and, slowly but surely, found his way into producing hip-hop.

“I’m an artist or a musician that sometimes just throws paint at the wall, and not every day for me is always hip-hop. Most days, the reason why I do what I do so much right now is because of the people that I'm surrounded by… If I wanted to make dance records or ambient records and stuff,  I might be in a more, not a lonely place in my life, but a place where I'm more isolated… That's music maybe I'll make when I'm 70 or something… but I just love making bodies of work with people.”

This unique approach to both genre and sound has made Yonqi an exceedingly fascinating creator of hip-hop instrumentals, layering dusty, vinyl-embedded samples with natural field recordings and intricate, dilating drum loops: all held together in a tenuous simplicity through his enmeshed style of mixing.

For artists such as ZekeUltra, this style of production serves as both an ideal and idiosyncratic bed for toned-down flows and subdued lyrics. The duo, across the years they’ve worked together, have combined for multiple EPs and albums, and, as the two artists have progressed in tandem, it’s easy to see the manner in which their distinct oddities work in harmony.

“I grew up in a unique place… and I try to put a lot of natural noises and birds and creeks and just kind of weird organic noises that I record out and about[into my music]. I think, sometimes, the style of the music that we make with hip hop is almost like a predictable pattern and feeling, but I think my stuff gets a little unpredictable at moments or some type of little nuance reveals itself a little later in the track…”

From his work with ZekeUltra, to his mellow tape with Maryland-based artist ICE9, to his work with lo-fi British rapper Domtavlor, Yonqi’s instrumentals have repeatedly shone new lights on others’ artistry, elevating their voices at the same time as they thrust forth their own singular sound.

Now, having moved to LA, in part, to be in closer contact with his collaborators, Yonqi has multiple tapes on the shelf ready to be released and feels as inspired as ever to continue building within the community he has forged for himself.