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Interview

Dough-Boy’s ‘POWER’ lies within collaboration

His new 10-song album collabs with 12 different artists

LiFTED | Marcus Aurelius | 9 Apr 2021


In the early 2000s, Dough-Boy was flipping through channels and caught a video of Jay-Z on TV. This was the first time he heard Hip Hop and really liked what he was seeing, but at that time, he never thought he’d make a 20-year career out of it.

“I was a kind of shy kid with glasses in high school,” Dough-Boy said in an exclusive interview with LiFTED. “No one looked like me in the video, but I was feelin’ it.”

Twenty-some years later, Dough-Boy has spent most of life making Hip Hop beats, rapping as a solo artist and in crews, as well as producing music that would go on to win prestigious awards in Hong Kong. On April 9, Dough-Boy releases his third album, ‘POWER,’ and is having a listening party to celebrate.

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A lot of producers got their start with Fruity Loops, and Dough-Boy is no exception. He got interested in making beats on the software and was eventually asked to produce an album for a friend in Hong Kong, KZ. Soon, Dough-Boy got introduced to freestyle legend Jin at a party and flew to Shanghai to make his album in a week. While his music was starting to take off, his parents became slightly worried that he was getting too involved in Hip Hop and had two words for him as advice. “Finish school,” they said.

He did.

He also started getting a lot of love from MCs in Taiwan including MC Hot Dog, MJ116, and Barry Chen. Dough-Boy considers Barry Chen’s Low Life his favorite album he’s ever produced because of their ease of working together. “That was creatively my favorite. We are different but a lot alike so we work very quickly together. One day, we’d talk and I’d make a beat and send it to him. When I went and ate dinner, Barry would write the track and record it and we’d have it done by midnight. Then we’d repeat the process,” Dough-Boy said.

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In the modern Hip Hop world, collaboration is the name of the game. On ‘POWER,’ every song is a collab with an artist from somewhere different. Barry Chen and Karencici pop in from Taiwan, Joe Flizzow is there from Malaysia, and even Lil Yachty from the US makes an appearance on ‘MAMA.’

“The story about how I did a song with Lil Yachty is a good one,” Dough-Boy said. “I had a friend named Tony who would take pics at all the shows. One day he tells me he’s living at Lil Yachty’s house because he didn’t have enough money for Airbnbs. He told me I could just come there and Yachty would do a song with me. I wasn’t sure if Tony was telling the truth but I went there and sure enough, I explained the song to Yachty and he got it right away and did it. Thanks, Tony.”

Dough-Boy has been revving up the promo engine for the past few weeks as he’s put out ‘So Cold’ with Mongolian swagmaster Ginjin, got on the Asian remix for Whoopty, and is now having a listening party from April 9 to 11 at Womanboss in Hong Kong. Instead of just a regular party, this one is curated by Ghost Style from the legendary group 24 Herbs, who has created a painting for each song. Dough-Boy explained, “People can easily lie or filter what they think through the internet, so what we’re doing with the listening party is at each painting, there is a QR code. People put that up to their phones and can hear the song and look at the painting. That way, I get to see their reaction first-hand face-to-face and it will be much more honest.”

As for the future, Dough-Boy stays busy. “If I’m chilling, I’m nervous.” He wants to put ‘POWER’ out and get to some new things since most of this project has been done for a year. He’s even teetering on the edge of being finished with Hip Hop for a bit.

“It was cool before, but now everything just sounds the same. I might just do a rock album. Maybe go pop punk for a bit and then see what happens.”

Listen to Dough-Boy's Power below.