As a certain "calculative" pop star once sang, it's all in the timing. Rich Brian's cinematic turn as an Olympic figure skater - while seemingly nodding to anime series Yuri on Ice and Black Swan - in his first official music video from his debut album Amen (February 2, 2018) could not be more well-timed. The closing ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics will be taking place in a few days, on February 25. Figure skating has definitely captured the lion's share of the audience's attention, with Nathan Chen and Mirai Nagaisu's historic athletic achievements, Adam Rippon's unapologetic queerness, Yuzuru Hanyu's second Olympic gold medal, and Tessa Virtue and Scotty Moir's performative eroticism. There was a triple axel and a quad lutz, but also dramatic falls and slips amongst those hard-won moments of ecstatic elation.
There is also a lyrical twist, as the New York Times reported earlier this month. This is the first Winter Olympics where singles and pairs skaters can compete to music with lyrics. Many figure skaters have taken advantage of this rule to depart from the expected classical music scores in favor of popular music, but the most unexpected song choice - given Rippon's decision to not skate to his cover of Rihanna's "Diamonds" - has to be Jimmy Ma's decision to perform his short program at the United States championships in January 2017 to Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady.” Aesthetic class boundaries collapsed as an Asian American danced to a song about the white rapper's alter ego. The subtext seems to be that authenticity, a lust for rule-breaking, and a swaggering ego is not bound to any skin color.
Apart from its title, "Cold" has nothing to do with figure skating. But with Ma himself serving as his skating body double in the video, Rich Brian places himself within a relatively short legacy of East Asian men performing extraordinary athletic feats center stage of the American mass consciousness. Nagaisu can look towards Kristi Yamaguchi and Michelle Kwan as role models, but Nathan Chen, Jimmy Ma, and Vincent Zhou have to look to other sports (basketballer Jeremy Lin or tennis player Michael Chang) to find that same sense of intergenerational affiliation. The stream-of-consciousness song is mostly about self-knowledge and personal relationships, but it is also about pushing yourself and surpassing what people think you can achieve: 'Expectation high, I feel like a drone/ 2018, I got some new goals/ Not checkin' my statement 'til I got 4 mill/ Rushin' all year like I commit roadkill/ Killin' everybody like I'm in a wrong deal'.
On its own, the song is not singular enough to match the lasting viral infamy of his breakout hit “Dat $tick”. By placing his body in the lineage of Asian American bodies who have defied expectations and stereotypes, however, Brian credibly signals his intentions to make his own mark on American popular culture. In Rich Brian's, Jace Clayton eloquently argued that to ignore him is to turn a blind eye to how "the rise of Asian hip-hop is decentering genre and aggrieving context in strange new ways." Regardless of whether he soars or stumbles, we are being enticed to pay attention with baited breath.
