Tokimonsta went through a lot in making her new record, Eternal Reverie.
Inspiration for the record’s sound — sunny and joyful, but with an edge — struck at an unlikely moment. Toki was travelling in São Paulo, Brazil, with her friend Regina Biondo, when they spotted a street vendor.
“It’s just this young guy with crates and crates of vinyls, with a very beat-up record player and beat-up headphones, just waiting for people to buy these records,” said Tokimonsta, whose real name is Jennifer Lee. “It felt very serendipitous.”
Rifling through the collection, the Los Angeles-born-and-raised musician — who also goes by Toki — came across a worn-out old record by Brazilian artist Jaime Além, featuring a catchy, disco-inflected track with a soulful vocal called “Disco Fevers.” The song immediately fired up her imagination.
“There’s something special about finding a very dusty sample and being like, ‘How can I give this new life again?’” Toki said.
When she got back to her studio in California, Toki put the sample in her music software and cut it up, intuitively picking the best snippets, then rearranging them. Then she programmed drums, followed by synthy chords and strings.
“I was like, I want this to be like a banger. And I created [it] with that sense of freedom,” she said. “I wanted it to sound vintage, nostalgic, gritty, and to have a lot of energy and power behind it.”
The track, which she called “Corazón: Death by Disco Part 2” and features on the new album, took on more meaning than Toki could have predicted when she was making it. Regina Biondo — Toki’s best friend who was with her in Brazil and helped her find the sample —died of cancer last year. Toki postponed the release of her album so she could care for Regina in her final days.
“I will never regret that,” she said. “I am happy that this album is out in the world, because it’s important for this journey of mine to share it with people, because it is the way that I can celebrate Regina, but also a way for me to process her loss, because it’s a long road and it hurts a lot.”
“I am so grateful, because without her, I would not be the person I am today,” Toki said. “Her legacy and her impact on my life is the way I carry her forever.”
Toki grew up in Torrance, a coastal city in southwest L.A., and was mostly raised by her mother, who owned a small business. She started piano lessons at around 6 years old, but she didn’t really love practicing classical pieces. It was a very different sound that captured her imagination as a little girl.
When Toki was in the fourth grade, a classmate turned up at school with a CD in his backpack: Dookie, the third album by the pop-punk band Green Day.
“He was just showing it off to all the kids, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is really cool.’ It was exuberant, it was wild. It also felt very L.A.; there’s this freedom and sunniness. This punk attitude resonated with me as a very young kid.”
But Toki didn’t stick to just punk music: soon after, she discovered hip-hop and R&B. She listened to TLC’s iconic “Chasing Waterfalls”, “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio and even Enya — strains of which can all be heard in her music.
As she was growing up, Toki absorbed all of these sounds and musical textures like a sponge. She also listened to house music and more experimental electronic artists like Aphex Twin and Squarepusher.
This moment, in mid-2000s L.A., was at the beginning of what became known as the Beat Scene: a collective of musicians exploring leftfield electronic music and underground hip-hop. In her late teens, Toki began going to beat ciphers: competitions where musicians play a beat or rappers freestyle.
“You had 15 seconds to 30 seconds to play a beat, and it had to hit within that amount of time,” she said.
“Everyone looked at me like [I was] a crazy person, because I didn’t look like someone who’d make heat, like I wouldn’t come with the fire, the bangers or whatever. I was just this Asian girl in South L.A. [But] I played my beats and everyone recognized at that time that it was possible for someone that looked like me to make music that was really authentic and real and also pretty good.”
Toki went to club nights at influential venues like Project Blowed and later Low End Theory — using them to sharpen her production skills. “Without being in L.A., I don’t think I would have the gusto to be as experimental as I was when I was younger,” she said. “The city and the community is a very integral part of [who I am] as a musician.”
Around 2009, she started making music under the name Tokimonsta. “Toki means rabbit in Korean, and monsta … I thought that was a cool way to say monster. I was in high school; it was my iChat name.”
At the time, she didn’t think the name would stick. “And yet, I’ve grown to also love my name because it represents who I am. I am this soft thing and this hard thing. I am this lightness and I am this darkness, I am this uplifted and strong, and I am this sensitive person.”
Toki continued to hone her signature, shapeshifting sound and went on to make five full-length albums, collaborating with Ty Dolla $ign, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Anderson .Paak.
“I’ve always wanted to push the limits of who I am as a musician — forward, backwards, every direction. That meant being the weird one for a very long time, for making music that people didn’t really understand but somehow resonated [with them].”
Toki points to a track on Eternal Reverie called “Say Tell Me” as an example of her reflective side.
The song starts out gentle, but shifts halfway through, the tone mirrored by a heavy arpeggiating bass line.
“I always like to think of all my songs as a ‘hero’s journey,’ and to follow that path of, where is this melody taking us? Where is the song taking us? And [so] when the bass comes in, that is the peak moment in that song,” she said. “That is the hero accomplishing its big thing.”
Toki has been on her own epic journey, one with an unimaginable hurdle and a surprising twist for her musical career.
At the end of 2015, Toki was diagnosed with Moyamoya disease, a rare and life-threatening blood vessel condition where some arteries become blocked and affect blood flow to the brain. She needed surgery immediately.
“The surgery itself comes with all these side effects, which was how I came to have aphasia, how I lost my ability to understand music,” she said. “Those were all because someone tinkered with my brain.”
After surgery, music sounded like noise in Toki’s ears: There was no rhythm or melody.
“It was very disheartening. … I was alive, which is the most important thing. But what is a life without music? What is a life for me without being able to create, which is what brings me joy in life?”
Slowly, Toki’s brain gradually began to heal and music started to make sense. After just a few months of recovery, she produced a song called “I Wish I Could,” featuring Belgian artist Selah Sue.
“It just felt like a heroic feeling,” Toki said. “It was relief. It was joy. It was like, oh my god, ‘I’m back.’”
Soon after, Toki was back on stage. During her recovery, she made an album called Lune Rouge, which was nominated for a Grammy in 2019, making her the first female Asian American producer to be nominated in the dance/electronic album category.
“I would love to think that I’m superhuman now, but unfortunately, not. I’m just me, but with less headaches and still alive. So I’m pretty happy with that.”
Despite having a singular vision for her work, being in the music industry for decades has taken a toll on Toki. Early last year, the pressures of social media and the demands of touring prompted Toki to take a break from performing.
“I was starting to feel a bit jaded,” she said.“When I sensed that cynical feeling creeping into me, I knew it was time to take a step back.”
To regain her energy, Toki spent time with friends going to clubs and underground raves in L.A., focusing on rekindling her eternal love of music.
“It’s important to remember that that dreamer exists, and sometimes I need to be reminded,” she said. “I hope for the rest of my life I remain this inquisitive dreamer forever. I hope that spark never goes away.”
