Morgan Yang has a lot in common with wolves: beautiful, free-spirited and strong-willed alpha leaders that come to life with the moon. It’s only fitting her moniker is Wolfbitch. The San Francisco-based trap DJ recently returned to her native Taipei and played two back-to-back shows last weekend, schooling a region almost entirely unfamiliar with the genre or the hyphy sounds of Bay Area bass music.
Yang says that trap music stems from Southern rap but also contains diverse influences which make the genre more accessible and appealing. She says that after commercial EDM drowned out dubstep and brostep got out of hand, people still craved that big-room sound — so rave elements were layered over trap.
“I think for me, trap has become an all-inclusive style with drums that are generally arranged in a ‘rap-oriented’ style with buildups and breakdowns happening in the same way EDM does,” she says.
Photo courtesy of Collin Young
Yang got her start in the music industry handing out fliers and later promoting parties. After taking up deejaying, she hit the west coast festival circuit and now she’s kicked off her own Bay Area party-rocking crew called Trap City.
It should be added that Yang is drop-dead gorgeous, a model in her own right. She’s also been well immersed in both the American and Taiwanese fashion scenes for much of her life, running her own online company called Eros Mortis and working with Taiwanese brands like Damage by AMPM Studio. The combination undeniably sells a controversial image of sex, in a scene supercharged with testosterone.
Yang says that when she was younger, she felt more like she had something to prove to the music industry and her behavior reflected that. She would tiptoe and walk around the sexist eggshell, ensuring that she was never booked for the wrong reasons. But today, she says she is on a path that instead celebrates her gender.
“Now I am older and I have started to realize, who cares?” she says. “It’s my body. I should be able to do whatever I want and, to be honest, the female form is sexy and beautiful and it should be showed off.”
Yang had little to prove when she played the May 15 launch party for local lifestyle brand OIT (Only in Taiwan) at Vicious Circle. It was raining sweat in the basement bar and the almost entirely local crowd was far more interested in moshing than sexualizing Yang. And lo and behold, Taipei knows a thing or two about rap. And not just any rap — the dirty underground southern kind of rap.
Her show at Korner on Saturday night was a bit different — a bigger space with more of a foreigner vibe, which was great because Yang had the freedom to delve into new blends of bass music.
“It was great because I don’t feel as pigeonholed here as I do in the States,” she says. “I love playing here because I feel like the culture is so new that people are really thirsty for whatever you want to show them.”
And that’s got her amped for her next show at Korner, in which she promises music that is “booty bouncing titty twirling sweaty drippy bass heavy turn up with a twist of gangsta goodness.”
■ Wolfbitch plays with Mochipet on May 30 from 11:30pm to 5am at Korner, 200, Roosevelt Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路四段200號B1). Tickets are NT$500 in advance and NT$600 at the door. Admission includes one drink.
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