jackzebra626 has known since he was 17 that he wanted to make music — and that he’d be good at it. “I didn’t like studying,” he says. “I’ve always just wanted to create something, to be an artist or singer.” Growing up on a diet of Billboard-charting hits, these tastes diverge radically from the kind of music he’s making now, genres he encountered not on the charts but on Weibo, which he checks every day, and SoundCloud. “I loved the beats and the visuals,” he says about discovering rap music. “I remember, when I was young, [I loved] watching A$AP Rocky videos.”⁠ ⁠ In 2018, after watching YouTube videos, he set up his own bedroom studio where he still makes beats today. His earliest songs — which were actually freestyled in English — caught the attention of bloodzboi, a pioneer of the Chinese cloud rap scene who took him under his tutelage and invited him to perform live for the first time in Guangzhou in 2019. (“I was wearing stupid sunglasses and a stupid hat.”) ⁠ ⁠ Soon after, Ameri...