Nine Nine Nine: From Playing The Cucurbit Flute To Releasing My First Album
Musical Instruments, Rapping, Coming-of-Age, Healing, First Love, and Moving Forward Together. Nine Nine Nine (Album) by Feifei Z, Out Now
Hello everyone! I am currently writing this from a cozy little cafe with the aroma of coffee beans wafting under my nose and the laughter of diners echoing in my ears. On the wall to my left, a white neon sign glows, surrounded by decorations of fake leaves.
Today is a beautiful day. The sun is beaming overhead. The flowers are nodding in the breeze. I hope all of you are taking the time to go outside today, even if it’s just taking a few minutes to stand outside your apartment or house.
I am excited to announce that my first album, Nine Nine Nine, releases today. It is an alternative hip-hop album of nine tracks about growing up, healing from undeserved wounds, falling in love with my soulmate, and moving forward after the storms.
I have created accompanying visuals for each song in the form of either a music video, a lyric video, or a visualizer that are all available now on YouTube as a playlist.
The album itself will become available on all major music streaming platforms in the upcoming weeks.
I also give a Chinese title to every single one of my projects. For Nine Nine Nine, it is 玖玖玖.
I feel great joy in putting this record out into the world.
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My First Exposure To Music
In the summer of 2009, blazing sunrays scorched the city of Chengdu in Southwestern China. I was seven-years-old at the time, playing a game called 盒子世界 (Box World) on my grandma’s laptop. There were guests in the living room, two of my grandma’s former colleagues who had been talking about their granddaughter’s upcoming music recital. Intrigued, my grandma asked a series of questions that eventually led her to an epiphany.
“Old Lady Kang’s granddaughter can play the hulusi and guzheng, so I’m going to enroll you into classes for one of those.”
I had wanted to play the guzheng. But instead, I was sent to the same music academy that Old Lady Kang’s granddaughter attended with a hulusi in my little hands. For those of you who are unfamiliar, a hulusi (葫芦丝), or the cucurbit flute, is a Chinese woodwind instrument that can best be described as a wooden gourd with three pipes attached to it. The hulusi hails from Yunnan Province (云南), which is also the home of another Chinese woodwind instrument called the bawu (巴乌).
So I ended up taking hulusi lessons from the summer of 2009 to the start of 2011. My hulusi instructor was a sweet man in his late-thirties. One time, he brought cups filled with water to one of our sessions alongside some paper straws. We inserted the straws into the water and blew bubbles. He told me it was so I could learn the technique of circular breathing (循环换气). I still think about him sometimes.
In the middle of 2010, my grandma also enrolled me in piano lessons at the same music academy. I studied piano for six months with a recent college graduate. She liked to smack my hands with her pencils when my fingers didn’t lift high enough for her liking.
At the time, I didn’t enjoy playing the hulusi that much. My cheeks often cramped after practice. However, after moving from China to America, I find myself yearning to pick up the hulusi again. One day, I will get a new one. But for now, I’ll focus on playing the piano.
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Rapping and Middle School Gym
In the autumn of 2015, I was sick and tired of middle school gym. It was the fall semester of eighth grade, and everyone was ready to leave the whole place behind. Our coaches forbade us from sitting on the wooden bleachers, so I walked laps with a few other kids who didn’t like to exercise.
We chatted about our hobbies while we paced, keeping an eye out for random basketballs that loved to bonk us in the head. Our two coaches played sentinel by the exits, ready to punish slackers with sentences of fifteen push-ups or five burpees. I didn’t like doing burpees. My dainty arms could not handle the cruelty of push-ups.
One of the kids said that he was into rapping. For the next few weeks, I asked him about his raps. He was rather shy about it at first, but then he started performing a bit of original material in front of everyone.
Seeing him rap in gym further ignited my interest in hip-hop. I had already begun rapping a while back in 7th grade, during which I rapped Anaconda by Nicki Minaj in science class to a few classmates. I did it behind the teacher’s back, of course.
I also really enjoyed rapping Can’t Hold Us by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis as well as a few of the pop hits at the time that featured verses by Iggy Azalea. At one point, I was spitting the fast verse of Rap God in eighth grade with a blonde girl.
I taught myself more and more rap songs in the following years. One of them was Truffle Butter by Drake + Nicki Minaj + Lil Wayne. I wasn’t aware of what exactly the title and lyrics meant at the tender age of 15, so I rapped it to a good friend of mine at the time. Her parents were super religious, and her mother overheard us. Good thing she couldn’t understand English very well. Phew.
Some other songs that I rapped in school were Sucker For Pain by a bunch of artists (Imagine Dragons, Logic, Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, Ty Dolla $ign), Calm Down by G-Eazy, Bodak Yellow by Cardi B, and I Like It by Cardi B + Bad Bunny + J Balvin.
For that last track, I would love to learn Bad Bunny’s and J Balvin’s verses one day. But for now, I just rap and sing the Cardi B parts. As for Bodak Yellow, it was very nice to rap the entire thing with the aforementioned good friend in our high school gym after a rigorous pre-calculus test.
I also love RM’s verses in Fall Out Boy’s Champion remix and the collaboration he did with Wale called Change. Years later, I taught myself some songs by Lil Nas X, Jack Harlow, and Lisa. (Just want to give a quick shoutout to Jack Harlow’s song Dark Knight. I really like that song and the MV too.)
With all that being said, it was not until October 2021 did I start making original music and my first album.
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Making My First Album
From October 2021 to September 2024, I made 42 songs that I would later consider for my first album. Most of them are alternative hip-hop tracks. For some songs, I would compose melodies on my 88-key keyboard piano, then move to my DAW where I synthesize everything. For other songs, I would piece together dozens of royalty-free loops to concoct a beat. Sometimes, I would collaborate with a few producers. One of them is a good friend of mine who I met in college.
Regardless of how I make the beats or the instrumentals, I always write my own lyrics. I also record on my own and do the mixing myself. I find great joy in creating not just music, but also books, poetry, podcasts, games, music videos, book covers, book maps, and more.
I took a bottom-up approach for this first record. Though I made roughly 42 songs prior to finalizing the track list, I didn’t initially set out to make an album. I just turned to music for lyrical catharsis. And eventually, I selected 9 out of these 42 songs to be on my first album.
The album is called Nine Nine Nine.
It’s named after the angel number 999, which signifies closure and the end of a major life cycle. The album is melancholia, yearning, resilience, anger, grief, hope, and healing. It pays homage to my past selves who had fought for a brighter tomorrow despite the sneering shadows. It is a journey toward love. It is moving forward without looking back. The night has finally yielded to a New Era.
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Track List
Nine Nine Nine (Album)
by Feifei Z1 - Soldier Since Birth
2 - Descendants of the Dragon
3 - Farewell Industry
4 - Gap
5 - Cut Through The Noise
6 - Heart
7 - Sea Sky Serenade
8 - I Made It To 22
9 - Moving Forward With My Love
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Behind-The-Scenes
Here are some behind-the-scenes content on the making of these tracks and the music videos. I also included a few personal notes.
“亲爱的, te quiero mucho.
亲爱的, te quiero mucho.
亲爱的, te quiero mucho.
亲爱的, te quiero mucho.”
— Feifei Z (Sea Sky Serenade)
I really enjoy the bridge of this song. The Chinese part of the sentence translates to “my darling,” and the Spanish part translates to “I love you so much.”
I took this photo on the day of my 22nd birthday, which fits the vibes of the 8th track, I Made It To 22.
And lastly, I want to give a shoutout to one of my good friends, Producer Kidnxtdoor, who made the beat for the 9th and final track on this album. He actually created it back in December 2021 / January 2022 around the time when we had first met. I didn’t end up recording and finalizing the song until June 2024.
It’s so incredible how we would sometimes create bits and pieces of a thing, and it would sit in our notebooks or on our computers for years before it finally reveals to us what it’s meant to be a part of.
Truly, a full-circle moment.
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Listen Here
Nine Nine Nine (2024) is available now on YouTube. The release date is September 29, 2024. Each song is paired with either a music video, a lyric video, or a visualizer. Song and visual credits for each track are in the YouTube video descriptions. The tracks have all been added to a YouTube playlist in the proper album order.
Click Here For The Album On YouTube
Nine Nine Nine (2024) will also become available on all major music streaming platforms in the upcoming weeks.
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What’s Next?
I finalized my first book and memoir titled Scarlet Butterfly. I will keep the project to myself since it’s highly personal. But I did share many snippets in a previous blog post on my Substack.
I’ll be finalizing my first three poetry books in the upcoming months. Then I will release them as free ebooks with print options available. Stay tuned!
That’s it for now, everyone!
Here is a song recommendation that might make you feel better: Wrabel - Turn Up The Love.
Love yourself! You deserve to exist aloud, take up space, and speak your truth!
I am rooting for you and me, and all of the people who choose to stand for the light.
Take care! Until next time.