TOKiMONSTA unifies stylistic opposites

The L.A. producer self-releases latest album, Desiderium

The childhood nursery rhymes underpinning Western morals often rely on breaking down the world into well-defined opposites: Cinderella and her stepmother, Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, Jack and the Giant. All of them get painted as adversarial representations of innocence and danger. Producer Jennifer Lee defies that separation and embraces both archetypes in her music. Even her TOKiMONSTA alias references that collusion of contrasts. “Toki” translates to “rabbit” in Korean, providing a cuddly foil to her “MONSTA.”

Her beats embrace both ends of this spectrum. Often her boom-bap percussion hits with a physical intensity similar to trunk-rattling trap beats. Yet her melodies and harmonic structures are undeniably sweet, incorporating jazzy chord changes and soulful samples that range from Aaliyah to bossa nova songstress Astrud Gilberto.

Lee’s love of hip-hop’s darker corners plays the monster in her production. Both R&B and rap were some of the main catalysts for her entry into electronic music. “I believe that music should carry some feeling or soul to keep it real — I don’t mean ‘soul’ music as a genre, but just the actual essence of what a soul is,” she says. “Hip-hop and R&B were the first types of music that conveyed feelings of power for me.”

Lee’s influences are so vast and divergent that even she seems daunted by the act of clearly defining her inspirations. For her latest album, Desiderium, Lee can’t say for sure what artists influenced her songwriting. “I was just at a really good place, producing songs that even surprised myself,” she says. “It’s always on and off for me in terms of music. Sometimes it can be really difficult to get into the studio and make music that really makes me happy, but this album just came together seamlessly.”

One might attribute Lee’s stylistic mishmash to her journey through labels that embody different sides of electronic music. Her debut, Midnight Menu, was released by the leftfield powerhouse Brainfeeder, headed by producer Flying Lotus, who has enjoyed a vast sphere of influence among trip hop producers. Her second album, Half Shadows, jumped ship in the opposite direction, onto Ultra Records, home of mass-produced, radio-tailored electronic music of festival favorites David Guetta and Fedde le Grand.

For Desiderium, Lee drifted away from the conflicting pulls of contemporary electronic music and released the LP on her new label, Young Art. Self-releasing her material has afforded newfound opportunities to bolster her music and promote other producers she appreciates. “I figured now was the time to create a platform for other artists that I believe in,” she says. “There’s also this looming waiting game you have to play with other labels — for example, three months of press before you release the album. By the time my album would come out, I would have mentally moved on.”

Despite her straddling the contradictory ideologies of electronic music, Lee asserts that her production owes only to herself. “The labels haven’t affected any part of my songwriting,” she says. “Over the course of time my music has progressed. The labels were more of a conduit to expose my music to different audiences.”

The diversity in her audiences is another reflection of Lee’s patchwork of conflicting styles and philosophies. Lee gained prominence performing in the storied L.A. weekly showcase known as Low End Theory, a springboard for the careers of countless experimental producers. “I think of Low End Theory as this cesspool of talent,” Lee says. “So many people that attend the night end up becoming such talented musicians. I’m really proud that I was a part of it from such an early stage.”

Lee performed for last year’s edition of the sprawling TomorrowWorld festival. Her sound was the most notable outlier in the festival’s lineup, which relied on the pull of commercial successes such as Skrillex and Diplo. “It’s always interesting for me to play in an electronic/rave environment because I think my music is fairly different than everything else being played at these events,” Lee says. “I always get blown away by how open-minded people have become about music.”

Even her collaborations are a testament to her readiness to unify contradictions. On “The Force,” a cut from her sophomore album, Lee recruited Kool Keith, a godfather of hip-hop’s most eccentric and polarizing possibilities. The track is anxiety-inducing, relying on the visceral impact of earthshaking bass lines and tense percussive buildups.

She has also released a recent collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto, a pioneer of avant-garde electronic music and a member of the hugely influential Yellow Magic Orchestra. Their collaboration, “Odakias,” casts off the club-ready beats of Lee’s most popular tunes in favor of grating noise and rhythms that are more likely to inspire panic attacks than dance moves. “I work with people I respect or admire,” she says. “Kool Keith has his own distinct breed of craziness and grand visions, and Ryuichi Sakamoto was able to do electronic pop, contemporary piano, and amazing technologically based super-intelligent music.”

As the head of her own label, Lee now has unprecedented control over the distribution of her music. “I was able to dictate my own release schedule, which was fantastic,” she says. “I just want the music out there so I can make more music, and waiting around to release content always made me antsy.”

Now that she is the Alpha and Omega of her music, Lee’s inner rabbit and monster can find sonic companionship.