I’ve heard people refer to Taiwan as a utopia, a place where you go to make your dreams come true. I’ve also heard it called the most stagnant place in the world. For Leo Shia, better known as LEO37, either could be true. It just depends on your confidence and ambition. Shia says he’s living proof of this because living in Taiwan has allowed him to live off his music.
“I’m blessed that The Blast has allowed me to make music and events a living out here,” he says referring to the music collective of which he’s part.
For the record, Shia was doing all right before he arrived in Taiwan. But he left his home country of Canada because the hip-hop market was oversaturated. Even friends signed on to major labels struggle to make ends meet, he says.
Photo Courtesy of Tiantzer
Between the release of his first EP in 2005 and settling in Taiwan in 2011, he released another EP, toured 10 countries, made an album and pushed two singles. Today, his slew of YouTube music videos average around 15,000 hits.
Shia says he promotes himself but avoids the in-your-face over-and-over promotional tactic common to the scene.
“Post[ing] my video every day [would be the] equivalent of posting a selfie. You get unfollowed. I hope that people have started to associate my work with a certain quality and that they know that I take this seriously as an art and not just as a tool for my ego,” he says.
Taiwan isn’t for everybody, it’s true, but it’s definitely a launch pad for many careers depending on how you play your hand, Shia says.
Over the past three years, The Blast has created a hip-hop scene seemingly out of nothing. They brought music to Nike’s Summer Nights event, cofounded the Under Bridge Foundation which provides kids a free and safe environment to enjoy hip-hop culture, and created DYWM (Do You Want More), an event that was one of the hottest on last year’s live music calendar. They’ve succeeded on the international front as well, having brought over hip-hop legends The Beat Junkies and Ghostface Killah and Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan, among others.
Though based in Taiwan, Shia maintains contact with out-of-town collaborators such as Toronto-based DJ Agile, Detroit-based duo W. Draztik and Sleepy Biggs and Yokohama-based Takuma the Great. On the ground, he works with local artists such as J. Sheon, with whom he collaborated with on the song and subsequent music video Getit.
“The best part about [working with Taiwanese hip-hop musicians] is that [it] happened organically,” he says.
Still, Taiwan has its own pace, Shia says.
“I hope we can start to be more ambitious and aggressive with our ideas and pace,” he says.
“We get a lot more opportunities to test the waters here, [so] we might as well take advantage of it.”
Leo Shia plays with the Coach and the Funky Brothers tonight at 9:30pm at Riverside Music Cafe, B1, 2, Ln 144, Roosevelt Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (北市羅斯福路三段244巷2號B1). Admission is NT$400.
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