11/25/2025
On a random day at Florentine Tutoring after school, our tutor pulled out a laptop and showed us something mind-blowing: clips of Jin destroying people on 106 & Park. Before the days of Youtube, social media, and going “viral” became a formula for fame, 13 year old me would have never imagined meeting in person.
For the first time, all of us ABC kids who loved hip-hop saw ourselves in the culture. Jin’s parents had a family business that struggled, he delivered, he helped out, he translated, he had humble beginnings—just like us. I became a full-on Jin stan: spending red envelope money on Enyce to go with my Ecko/Rocawear/Sean John fits, buying his album in 2004 even though I was already deep into Napster/Kazaa/Limewire. If you paid for the real CD back then, you REALLY loved the artist.
Fast forward 20 years. MangoTV reaches out to film a segment on my mom’s journey at as part of the 60M-strong Chinese diaspora… and one of the hosts is none other than Jin himself. 🤯 Now he’s a newly minted co-founder of .asia , using everything he’s learned to mentor the next generation while still staying true to who he is.
Full-circle moment doesn’t even begin to cover it. 🙏
Check out the interview – link in bio📹
Big shout-out to & the whole crew for making this happen.
