Artist of the Month: TOKiMONSTA

"Making music is such a vibe. Once you start, it can be as simple as a great sample and the right drums. It's not even really a song yet, but you know where that song can end up, you know it's gonna be a banger," TOKiMONSTA tells us from her Los Angeles home studio.

"That hype fuels the energy until you take it as far as you can take it… It's such a rush when you're making a song and you can carry that energy."

That enrapturing creative flow (fueled in part by ADHD hyper-focus) propelled much of the process of making her seventh studio album, Eternal Reverie, which comes across in its exuberance and playfulness. The joyful project, which she dropped on March 7 on her Young Art Records, sees her embrace her roots while expanding and blossoming. The album is euphoric, confident and filled with dreamy, buoyantly lush beats, exploring more dance-floor-oriented BPMs while coming full-circle by collaborating once again with Gavin Turek and Anderson .Paak and celebrating sampling.

There is no title track, instead, the opening track "Eternal" moves from atmospheric to propulsive, hinting that the album will be both dreamy and danceable. "Reverie," on the back half of the album, is the chill wave soundtrack to walking through a dreamscape or, perhaps, assuredly making your dreams come true, step-by-step, as TOKiMONSTA has in her 16-plus year career. “Reverie is this idea of being in a constant state of dreaming. Music has this way to take you away from your reality, just like a dream,” she explains in the album's press release.

While TOKiMONSTA has offered a unique, recognizable sound from the start, Lee is ever-moving, ever-evolving and ever-curious. As the long-time Los Angeles-based artist born Jennifer Lee aptly claims, this is "a new chapter in TOKiMONSTA." She took time off the road to create Eternal Reverie, and during it, reconnected with what first got her excited to make beats. This reignited the creative flame within her and has led her to a voracious musical output which hasn't slowed down.

"I'll never feel like I've come into my own. It's a constant evolution," Lee says. "Stylistically and creatively, I don't want to land anywhere. I want to keep moving and evolving on my quote, unquote creative journey and, and it sounds really cliché, but that's what keeps me excited about music. Just like all my hobbies, if I stay stagnant, it will not be something that brings me joy anymore, it will start to feel too much like work. The great thing about music is you just change a few elements about your approach, and you're doing something completely different. A good example of that with this particular album is occupying different BPMs than what I have historically."

Despite its joy, the project's release was also marked with deep personal tragedy. When Lee's best friend and sometime tour manager Regina was diagnosed with cancer, she canceled her 30-date tour and postponed the album release so she could help care for her friend. Tragically, those were the last moments Lee got to spend with her, during which she was also mourning the sudden loss of her beloved cat Misha.

"The thing I find is really important about sharing my art is a sense of being vulnerable and sharing that through music, whether it's explicit or not," Lee reflects. "If this album is cathartic for me, I hope in some way it is for someone else."

One of the happiest tracks and full-circle moments on the album wouldn't exist without her late friend. The sunny sample that is core to "Corazón / Death By Disco Pt 2" came while record shopping in Brazil, her first visit to a country whose music has been deeply impactful on her since she first discovered joy-maker Sérgio Mendez as a teen. While walking in São Paulo during a quick trip for a festival gig, her best friend pointed out a man hawking records on the street, with an encyclopedic knowledge of each vinyl. Her friend, who spoke Spanish, did her best to translate his Portuguese to English, and Lee came home with a treasure trove of Brazilian records.

As she does with all record digs, she listened through them at home, pulled potential samples and organized them into folders to use later, should they spark sonic inspiration. The sample she pulled from "Disco Fevers" by Jaime Além on the 1978 Brazilian funk album, Commanders As Supernovas Vol. 5 did just that and led her to build "Corazón" from it.

"Brazilian music—bossa nova, samba—is such an integral part of who I am. I remember discovering it being like, 'Woah, what the fuck is this music? I love it!' It's made a major impact on me, and it's subtly perceptible in a lot of my music," Lee reflects. "The percussive elements of Brazilian music, as well as the soul and the heart, are something I like to incorporate into my own music."

Eternal Reverie's "Lucky U" playfully flips the "I'm lucky you're mine" love song trope on its head and sees Lee reuniting with long-time collaborator Gavin Turek (they first linked up for two tracks on TOKiMONSTA's 2011 debut Brainfeeder EP, including the memorable "Darkest (Dim)"). Their longstanding, fruitful collaborative relationship enhances the ease and confidence of the record: "I'm the only one can give you what you need / Lucky you to be with me," Turek reminds with angelic yet rich cotton candy vocals. A subtly sampled drum loop from the James Brown-produced Lyn Collins classic "Think (About It)" adds extra punch throughout the track.

The album's track, "Enjoy Your Life" is more of an edit than a sample, a euphoric ode to the Oby Onyoha's 1981 Nigerian boogie gem, sped up for the dance floor, its radiant joy and universal message amplified and reflected by deep grooves begging your soul to move. It’s a worthy thesis statement for the album, and for Lee's clear-eyed life purpose, to make music that makes people feel, to uplift under-sung artists, especially women and people of color, and find celebration in everyday life, even when grief threatens to drown everything else out.

"For me, albums and projects are diaries. I don't journal, but when I listen back to an album, I'll be like, 'Oh yeah, that was the era where my ex-boyfriend cheated on me, or the era where I survived brain surgery.' But this one, I'm not on the other side of it yet. I'm hoping this album will coincide with my processing of grief and celebration of life. Even though I didn't go into this album knowing that any of these things were going to happen, hopefully seeing this album through and putting it out into the world is going to be therapeutic for me because grief makes you very stagnant, and life moves on, music moves forward."

Her 2017 album Lune Rouge was triumphant in many ways. Not only did it earn her her first GRAMMY nomination, it was her first project after undergoing two brain surgeries in 2016— which caused her to lose her ability to speak and hear — for a rare disease called Moyamoya. In a way, it was like having to start over, as she had to regain her ability to hear and make music. In the process, she realized her purpose was to make and share music that made her happy.

When asked what artists are exciting her in dance music right now, she names camoufly, SHIMA and ROZET, the latter two whose music she released last year on Young Art Records. Lee launched Young Art in 2014 to release her excellent Desiderium EP. That was followed by her dreamy seven-track collab project with Gavin Turek in 2015, while 2016 saw the first solo release from another artist, the debut from Montreal's CRi. Young Art has become a home for exciting, fresh voices in electronic music, including Rochelle Jordan, Cakes Da Killa (including his underrated 2024 album Black Sheep), ROZET, Bad Tuner and Keys N Krates. She will be celebrating a decade of the label with an anniversary party during Miami Music Week on March 27 with Cakes Da Killa, Keys N Krates and other Young Art artists.

"The mission has always remained the same, for Young Art to be a place where I uplift new and emerging creatives," she explains. "I release them on my label hoping they're going to do bigger and better things. Rochelle is doing bigger and better things than Young Art, and that makes me happy. I'm also mentoring and nurturing their creative energy and spirit. Some labels are not super nurturing, but I can offer that, insight and any support they need to make the best music that they can."

While Lee has carved out a name for herself in electronic music since her early releases on Brainfeeder, didn't set out to be a DJ professionally, nor did she see herself in dance music. She initially made beats as a hobby, and got her start DJing in the heady, very-male Los Angeles beats scene alongside the likes of Flying Lotus and Nosaj Thing.

From the beginning, people didn't know where to place her on lineups. She cites Flume coming along with his "swung beats" in 2012 as being part of the reason her music and scene were then accepted into dance music. Prior to that, it was seen as more hip-hop adjacent. Lee has always had an omnivorous music taste, and is glad things are moving more in that direction again instead of siloed, strictly policed subgenres. "Now we're seeing this cross pollination happening because people are less pretentious about it, but I've always been that way. It only feels natural to be able to explore," she says.

When she was getting booked for dance-centric festivals, she was among a small number of women DJs on the lineup, undeniably influencing the next generation of genre-expansive femmes to pull up to the decks.

"I don't see myself as a role model, but I am one. There's responsibility in that, and it is important for me as a female person [who also is] Asian. I did not have role models that looked like me. My role models were J Dilla or Aphex Twin; they're all dudes. My female role models are incredible musicians, like Björk and Missy Elliott, who are amazing creative forces, but they're not specifically in electronic music or mainly producers," the "Realla" producer reflects.

"So, I didn't have a lot of people to turn to for inspiration or as a roadmap, like, 'Oh, they did this, I can do that.' …If I can shortcut this for other people so that they don't have to deal with the hardships that I did, the better for the entire community of music lovers. The more musicians that find a way to get out in the world, the more amazing music we all get to discover."

Once she decided to make music full-time, there was no plan B. She's beyond grateful it's worked out for this long, and she hopes to do it for years to come and become an active dance music elder, like DJ Harvey or Giorgio Moroder.

"I hope I can do music for the rest of my life, that would make me very happy… Giorgio Moroder is 84 and he was still DJing for a very long time, but we don't see female examples of that. So I volunteer to be the first one," she says with a laugh.

When asked what lessons from her career thus far she'll bring into her next eras, she doubles down on staying connected with her love of making music.

"Tomorrow is never guaranteed, so are you happy with how you live life today? I want to make sure that's the way that I operate from, by thinking about music and all my actions as a source of joy, not of obligation," Lee asserts. "I make music because I love it, and I share music because I love community and sharing. So as long as I move into the future understanding that music is a gift and not an obligation, I think I'll be okay."

Listen to TOKiMONSTA's 'Artist of the Month' chart below or check it out on Beatport.