Whitney Wei: The compilation asked artists to loosely interpret the theme of “a sense of nostalgia surrounding familial and ancestral connections.” How did you and Alexis [who is also of Asian descent] interpret this theme in your music? How do you interpret this more generally in your own life?

Why Be: Specifically with this track, there is, for me, a longing and a great nostalgia in the music. For people like Alexis and me, it’s not like we don’t talk about things, but I think when you grow up with a sense of displacement, a lot of it is not articulated. It’s some phantom pain or something like you both know that this arm is missing, but you can’t quite put words on how it feels. It is often more about sharing a mutual feeling.

Whitney Wei: What can we anticipate from the new Bruce Beverage alias?

Why Be: He definitely thinks way less. He’s way more of a doer. He does everything way faster than Why Be, so that’s why I really love this Bruce energy right now.

Whitney Wei: When you changed from Yung Bukkake to YB to Why Be, was there also a new way of working?

Why Be: It allowed me to live as close to what I wanted—in terms of what I do with my time, what I wanted to do with the project, and my ambitions. In that sense, Why Be was a change for sure.

Whitney Wei: With your new project and a new alias, does this impact your work on the label Yegorka?

Why Be: Well, yes and no. I’m still doing what I’ve always done for the label, but my time gradually becomes more divided as I’m getting deeper into my personal projects, but it’s always been like that. I’m good as long as I can stir all the pots simultaneously.

Whitney Wei: A series of tumultuous life events, including not knowing where to go after splitting with a partner, led you to Berlin. What about the city has made you stay for almost a decade now?

Why Be: I would say the number one thing is that it’s very gridless here. There’s not a certain way to do things. There’s not a specific thing you have to do. German society, weirdly, is really about rules, but it’s more so about some rules, and then if you follow those, you can sort of do whatever you want. This ideal that most of us have for moving here is also constantly challenged, either by global politics or whatever is happening in the world. But the main reason why me and a lot of other people have come here is simply the pursuit of trying to live as—it sounds so cheap—but trying to live as freely as possible.

Whitney Wei: Post-pandemic, I’ve noticed a massive uptick in new Asian diaspora, East Asian and South East Asian immigrants into the city. There’s a sense of pride in being Asian that seems especially prevalent with the start of community projects like SAL and then ESEA-specific parties like An(8)x. Have you noticed this as well, and what do you make of it?

Why Be: When I started coming to Berlin, I would hear rumors about Vietnamese or Filipino hip-hop clubs every now and then, but that was the closest you would get to anything in terms of community for anyone who identifies as Asian. It is new in that sense, I would say, and I think it’s very, very, very beautiful to see.

I think it also took people a long time to—I mean, it’s so hard to talk about these things without talking on behalf of a lot of people. This obviously says more about me, but I do sense that it has been very hard for a lot of displaced Asian people to figure out how they wanted or wished to represent themselves or what they should identify as until a lot of people realized that they can be whatever they want.