Neu Alice Longyu Gao: “We Have To Fight For Everything We Want”

The China-born, LA-based hyperpop star making social statements as strong as her explosive musical imagination.

Words: Lisa Wright
20th April 2023

Alice Longyu Gao doesn’t want to be known just as a burgeoning music star, but as a rising CEO. “I think great art is great business,” she begins, on a Zoom from LA. “I went through stages where I would romanticise struggle but I’m just over that now.”

Born in China to a “very regular, normal family - they hate what I do,” Alice’s business brain is one born of necessity. When she talks about trying to carve out a creative path, she’s erudite about the struggles of finding her own space within a landscape that, until very recently, has held Western music up as the only standard. “I see Western artists posting photos with K-pop bands because of the clout they have now and I just laugh, but also, alright, it’s about time!” she shrugs. “It’s very hard to survive in America because the world wasn’t built for someone like me’s success. When I started releasing music, some people thought I was just a socialite who had started to rap. But I wasn’t born in this country; none of my family are here; I’m a queer, pansexual woman - all the connections I have, I’ve had to make them myself.”

Those connections now include the likes of 100 gecs, Alice Glass and Bring Me The Horizon’s Oli Sykes - all collaborators of hers, with the BMTH frontman lending his scream to recent EP track ‘Believe The Hype’. Lady Gaga has gone on record as a fan, choosing the musician’s 2019 single ‘Rich Bitch Juice’ as part of a female-led playlist, while recently, notorious fake heiress Anna Delvey got in touch to recruit her DJ skills for a party (“That hustler energy, that hard-working, go-getter spirit - I saw that from her story and I saw a piece of myself in her,” Alice notes).

“It’s very hard to survive in America because the world wasn’t built for someone like me’s success.”

Fusing a technicolour smash of pop, metal, electronic and more, the hyperpop world is one, she says, that’s intrinsically indebted to the culture she grew up in: “I know how many creators in this hyperpop circle were inspired by J-pop and K-pop, and C-pop still isn’t being recognised but I am here to be recognised and get the credits I deserve.” As her newest bid for those rightful plaudits, recently-released EP ‘Let’s Hope Heteros Fail, Learn and Retire’ - a sentiment that she says “comes with peace and love and means no harm” - should see them racking up further, with a run of gigs appropriately dubbed the CEO World Tour due to start next month in support.

Across the release’s eight tracks, Alice splices a dizzying array of ideas; on ‘Make U 3 Me’ alone, she hops between full on metal screaming and a bouncing pop line that recalls a ride on the Vengabus. All of it, she explains, is a completely honest portrayal of herself.

“People see me when I’m literally just being me and they think it’s a character,” she says. “With Asian culture, with anime and cosplay and how popular those things are, it gives people this reinforcement, which is dangerous because if they think we’re characters and we’re too dumb, then people with power in entertainment will think they can reshape us in any way they want to.

“I’m intentionally trying so hard and putting in so much effort to change my life and my community’s life, and I don’t want to pretend everything is easy because it might be for some bitches but it’s not like that for me,” she continues. “Oli [Sykes] said to me, ‘When people say they’re punk then they’re not punk’, but I am punk! I have to fight for this. For everything that we want, we have to fight for it and that process is really punk so, call me cringe if you want to, but I’m gonna name it.”

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