Meet the artists spearheading Thailand’s underground club pop circuit

On a recent sweltering Bangkok night, a young Sparo jumped in front of the crowd on a party boat, performing his unique brand of club pop, singing about love and pain over dnb-lite beats as the three-storey venue swayed with the currents of the Chao Phraya river. The artist is part of a new generation of underground rappers and singers staking a claim within the country’s music scene; one that finds a new interest in experimenting with dance music beats like house, Jersey club, hardstyle, and more. These are genres rarely explored within the mainstream here, proving that the scene is ready for a change and that many artists are more than willing to make it happen.

This new wave of Thai underground rap only started bubbling in the past couple of years, and features hundreds of artists from all around the country. They’re much more willing to try out new styles than ever before, and using dance music beats is part of this wider openness to experimentation. “Thai rap never had many subgenres before, but now there are a lot of them,” says S4EED, an experimental rapper often considered one of the earliest artists of this new wave. “People are really starting to do weird stuff now.” Although the club pop tracks are usually just a couple of the releases out of an artist‘s larger catalogue, it‘s a consistent trend and they‘re not hard to find once you start looking.

Thai rap exploded at the end of the 2010s, with artists hitting streaming numbers that outpaced much of the rest of Asia. This was the first time that a fully-fledged rap scene had developed in the Southeast Asian nation, but the only real path to stardom at the time was to either come up through the battle circuit or to perform on reality TV. Now, artists are bypassing these well-worn routes to success and creating a new way forward. “To make it to the mainstream now, you have to pass through the underground first. It’s fresher and newer. Most of the new mainstream artists came from the underground,” says Win, who runs the popular Hip-Hop Culture Thailand blog. “They don’t have to battle or go on TV anymore. Now they just do music and go mainstream themselves.”

SoundCloud has been central to the rise of this new era, with artists gravitating to the platform around 2021. Thai rap previously revolved around YouTube, but this new wave of artists found the ease and immediacy of SoundCloud fit their needs better. In 2022, Win hosted a party called SoundCloud Rising, featuring many artists in the below playlist. But that was a peak, and many artists say that while the platform is still important, YouTube is once again the dominant space.

While most of these dance music genres are non-existent within the mainstream here, Jersey club is a clear exception – it’s taken over much of the world. It first showed up in Thailand a couple of years ago on a track by Senegalese-Thai artist Eskiimo called “Talk Sh!t” released on the very successful Hype Train label. BaebiBetti, a standout name within the local underground and one of the scene’s very few women artists, was a near second with her kawaii-club track “Remedy”. And it‘s now widespread in Thailand, within the wider appropriation of drill music aesthetics. Even more poppy artists like Gena Desouza and Jarvis dropped a recent Jersey remix for “Call Me”. (One related sound that‘s so far been overlooked within the underground is vogue, but JRBUBBLEGUM making sure it‘s not forgotten with “สวยเริ่ดเชิ่ดปัง (PRIDE)”.)

The gender imbalance of artists in the underground is pretty significant. “It‘s just a few female artists. We support each other, but the audience doesn’t seem to get it,” says BaebiBetti, who got her start as an influencer and transitioned into music during the pandemic. “It can be hard to get exposure when building your audience from scratch. I talk about drugs and stuff, it might be a bit too dark for girl fans. My fans are mostly guys.” She points to popular artists outside the scene like IIVY B, who has a cuter sound that seems to have made acceptance within the mainstream easier. The underground audience is split between girls and boys, depending on the artist and event. While BaebiBetti has mainly guy fans, CHXID! – who’s part of the Dha Vision team and calls most of his music ‘sexnb’ – says the majority of his fans are girls.

“Artists know how to reach people now, they‘re aware of trends and how to make music that people really want to listen to. And dance music is a solid part of that” – Win, Hip-Hop Culture Thailand

Although the underground is climbing up the ranks in streaming numbers, finding places to perform remains a major barrier. Red Corner was the main venue for the movement and was where the SoundCloud Rising event was held, but it just closed down this month. Events continue to pop up in other locations, but there’s no regular space to cultivate a live presence.

Despite these challenges, it’s clearly accelerating – and club pop’s presence within the scene is a sign of its potential. “Artists know how to reach people now, they‘re aware of trends and how to make music that people really want to listen to. And dance music is a solid part of that,” says Win of Hip-Hop Culture Thailand. “They're more focused on the listeners now. It used to be very niche. New artists tend to be the most experimental, trying many different styles in order to find as big an audience as possible.”