How ‘the first Asian woman in hip hop’ went from misfit to managing Wu-Tang Clan members

Dubbed “the first Asian woman in hip hop”, Sophia Chang has led a life filled with colour, adventure and empowerment. Having managed members of rap groups such as the Wu-Tang Clan and A Tribe Called Quest in the 1990s and 2000s, the Korean-Canadian life coach and content creator shows no signs of slowing down at 60 years old, and is as physically active and fit as ever. Chang’s fitness is linked to her self-discipline. She found the gym boring throughout most of her twenties, but discovered Shaolin kung fu at age 29, and stuck to it. Her shifu, or teacher, was Shi Yanming, with whom she would go on to share her life for 12 years. Chang gave birth to their two children at 34 and 36. They are partly the reason that she wants to stay in shape. “I want to make sure to be as strong and powerful for as long as possible [for my children],” she tells the Post. Exercising gradually became a lifestyle. Now she goes to the gym for three hours a day, six days a week. But she is also impossibly healthy outside the gym. “I’ve never been drunk, I’ve never been high, I’ve never smoked a cigarette. I don’t drink caffeine. I drink 10 glasses of water a day. I eat very clean and very healthy. I don’t eat junk food. I sleep seven hours a day and nap every day,” she says. “My body is my temple. I have never abused my body.” Despite being involved in the underground music scene in the late 1980s and ’90s, Chang was strong-willed and never partook in any debauchery. “I’m a control freak; I hated the idea of being out of control. I also have so much energy. People used to say, ‘Are you on cocaine?’” she says, laughing. “No, that’s just who I am. I’ve never felt the need to anaesthetise myself, which means that everything I’ve ever felt, I have felt. I’ve had to learn how to self-soothe and to find that sanctuary in my friends.” Born to Korean immigrant parents in a predominantly white neighbourhood in suburban Vancouver, Chang recalls she grew up “very much a yellow girl in a white world”. “I came of age in the mid-to-late ’70s, when every image of power and beauty and sex appeal and allure was white. It was burned into my eyes and shoved into my ears and down my throat,” she says. Feeling like a misfit, Chang turned to music and discovered hip-hop. One of her favourite songs was “The Message” by the New York hip-hop group Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five. In 1985, at age 20, she visited New York for the first time. There she befriended Joey Ramone, the late lead vocalist of the punk band the Ramones, who introduced her to people who would later help her land a job in the music industry. “I’m fearless when it comes to meeting people. I’ll just walk up to anybody,” she says. The year after that fateful meeting, at 21 years old and armed with a degree in French literature from the University of British Columbia, she moved to New York, where she felt like “a fish to water”. “The energy really matched my energy. It was the home of hip hop and the centre of the North American music scene. It was so exciting and vibrant. As soon as I hit terra firma, I could just feel at a cellular level that this was home.” During the day, she worked with rock and punk musicians. At night, she went to underground hip-hop clubs and built her own network at a time when the hip-hop industry was just beginning to emerge. She became close with many hip-hop musicians, including the Native Tongues collective – which was made up of groups and artists including the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and Queen Latifah. She crossed paths with the Wu-Tang Clan in the early ’90s. Her friendship with the legendary hip-hop group’s nine members gave her “the biggest boost of confidence”, she says. “I felt like I was coated in Kevlar because they were so formidable – not just their talent but their presence. They were so intimidating to most people, but when they took me under their wing, it was like I had nine bodyguards.” She went on to manage members RZA, GZA and Ol’ Dirty B*****d, alongside A Tribe Called Quest and the late singer D’Angelo. She worked in marketing at Atlantic Records and in A&R (“artists and repertoire”) at Jive Records and Universal Music Group, as well as doing work at smaller hip-hop labels. Outside the music industry, Chang says that “the greatest, strongest pillars of the village that raised me” were her friends – many of whom are black feminists. In 2020, she founded Unlock Her Potential, a mentorship programme for women of colour seeking careers in film, television, music, marketing and media in the United States. Chang sees community as a very important source of nourishment in life. She talks to her friends on the phone for at least two hours every day. “It’s really important to me to connect, because we don’t always get to see each other in person. Creating that emotional, psychological and spiritual connection keeps me very lively,” she says. “Social connection keeps us alive. It’s like eating well; it’s like exercise. You can’t be an island. I think I inherited my mother’s tremendous capacity for joy and my parents’ capacity for building community and love.” Chang is now working on her second book – her first, published in 2019, was a memoir called The Baddest B***h in the Room – in which she writes about dating, sex and pleasure for women of all ages. She says that both her mentorship programme and her work-in-progress book are things she wishes she had had in her twenties. “[Confidence] involves taking risks, putting yourself out there and being more vulnerable. We have to learn how not to let things knock us off our centre,” she says.

How ‘the first Asian woman in hip hop’ went from misfit to managing Wu-Tang Clan members

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Sophia Chang moved to New York at 21 and worked with some of the 1990s’ biggest rappers. Now 60, the Korean-Canadian’s aim is to stay strong

Sophia Chang moved to New York at 21 and worked with some of the 1990s’ biggest rappers. Now 60, the Korean-Canadian’s aim is to stay strong