Wubi on Vulnerability, Creative Friction, and Finding Confidence in Sound

By. Alicia Zamora

Wubi Is Learning to Sit With the Noise

Meet Wubi through this exclusive interview for Alicia’s Studio, where we sit down to talk about his recent releases Ride or Die, Velvet Chemical, Love Alone, and more. In conversation, the focus quickly expands beyond the music itself into the emotional space it came from—where creativity, pressure, and real life begin to blur in ways that feel uncomfortably honest.

Since the last time we spoke, a lot has shifted for Wubi. He describes a stretch of life that hasn’t been especially clear or stable, and that uncertainty has quietly shaped the direction of his recent work. These songs, he suggests, weren’t created from a place of resolution—but from being in the middle of things: processing, adjusting, and trying to stay grounded while everything feels slightly off-center.

As the conversation moves through his latest releases, a pattern emerges. This is a body of work leaning into more introspective, emotionally heavy R&B textures—even as he admits he naturally gravitates toward more energetic, confidence-driven records. That tension becomes central to how he talks about this era: not as a defined chapter, but as a push and pull between who he is and who he’s trying to return to.

What follows is a conversation about sound, but also about control, expectation, and what happens when making music stops feeling purely instinctive.

Pressure, Precision, and Velvet Chemical

When asked about Velvet Chemical, Wubi describes a process shaped by experimentation and external pressure in equal measure. The track became a space to push his vocal approach—textures, pitch shifting, layered processing—more deliberately than before.

It was also a session defined by who was in the room. Working with producer Isaac, known for collaborations with HYBS and a range of respected Asian artists, shifted the stakes.

“I needed to impress this person,” he says simply. That awareness doesn’t overwhelm the record, but it does shape it—turning the session into something sharper, more intentional.

Sonically, the influence of an R&B track he was referencing at the time is still present in the DNA of the song. Emotionally, though, he admits it doesn’t fully align with where he was internally. The result is a track he respects for its sound design more than its emotional clarity—a distinction he’s becoming more aware of in real time.

Catharsis in Real Time: Ride or Die

If Velvet Chemical is controlled experimentation, Ride or Die is its opposite.

Made in roughly two hours, the track came out of what Wubi describes as a moment of frustration—an emotional breaking point rather than a structured session. There was no attempt to refine the feeling before it became sound.

“I was so fed up… I was just like, fuck it,” he says.

The song is also tied to something more personal: his cat’s health struggles, and the helplessness that came with it. That lack of control translated directly into the record’s energy—aggressive, unfiltered, and instinctive.

Built around a 2000s-inspired sonic palette, the track channels anger as momentum rather than resolution. Even for Wubi, it stands slightly outside his usual emotional register—but that distance is part of what makes it work.

Interestingly, he notes it may also sound the least like him, even if it felt the most like him at the time.

Cringe, Hesitation, and Love Alone

If Ride or Die arrived quickly, Love Alone lingered.

Wubi describes making the track relatively fast, but sitting with it far longer than expected. The hesitation wasn’t about production—it was about perception. On playback, his first reaction was doubt.

“It felt a little cringe,” he admits—not because of the music itself, but because of what it revealed.

That discomfort, he explains, came from honesty that felt exposed. There’s a moment where vulnerability stops feeling abstract and starts feeling audible.

Still, he ultimately chose to release it.

“I ended up liking it… so I just put it out.”

That decision sits in a larger shift he’s navigating: learning to separate discomfort from dismissal, and recognizing that emotional honesty often arrives slightly before confidence does.

Rebranding, Direction, and the Search for Cohesion

Beyond individual tracks, Wubi is also thinking in terms of identity—how his work exists as a body, not just isolated releases.

He describes recent decisions to remove older songs from his catalog, not out of rejection, but because they no longer fit the visual and emotional direction he’s trying to build toward. There’s a growing awareness of aesthetics, cohesion, and how sound and image begin to inform each other.

“I think I’m getting closer to finding my color,” he says, cautiously.

It’s not a fully formed identity yet, but an emerging one—less about reinvention, more about alignment.

Away from music, something quieter has been reshaping his perspective.

Wubi describes meeting someone who shifted how he thinks about everyday life—someone who notices small moments, carries an easy sense of positivity, and moves through the world with a kind of stillness he admits he lost along the way.

That contrast hits him sharply.

He talks about how easily creative work can become all-consuming, to the point where living starts to feel secondary to producing. In that space, even silence becomes something to fill rather than something to sit in.

What’s inspiring him now isn’t just ambition—it’s relearning how to exist outside of momentum.

Spark, Pressure, and Misalignment

When asked whether he’s lost his creative spark, Wubi pushes back on the idea.

The spark, he says, is still there. Constant. Unshaken in its existence.

What’s changed is access.

External pressure, emotional shifts, and environment have all made it harder to reach that place with ease. It’s not absence—it’s obstruction.

That distinction matters to him. Because even in periods where output feels uncertain, the impulse to create has not disappeared.

As the conversation widens, Wubi returns to a theme that runs beneath everything else: communication.

He speaks about wanting to become more emotionally articulate—not just in music, but in life. For him, songwriting and speaking are connected through the same challenge: translating internal experience into something others can actually understand.

“I just don’t want to say things wrong,” he says. “Or without meaning to.”

That awareness extends into his creative process, where emotional clarity becomes as important as sound design. The goal, increasingly, isn’t just expression—it’s accuracy.

Not perfection, but honesty that lands as intended.

By the end of the conversation, what lingers isn’t a project rollout or a defined artistic era, but something more unresolved.

Wubi speaks openly about wanting his listeners to feel part of his process—not just as consumers of finished work, but as witnesses to something unfolding. Growth, in his view, isn’t linear. It’s shared over time.

He also acknowledges the tension between criticism and support—how the closest voices can sometimes be the most skeptical, while strangers often respond with unexpected understanding.

That contrast becomes part of the story itself.

Because at its core, this isn’t a conversation about completed answers. It’s about an artist moving through uncertainty in real time, learning to trust the parts of himself that don’t yet feel fully formed.

And in that space between doubt and direction, the music continues to take shape.