On the stage, Lee Young Ji excites audiences with her rapping. On TV, she makes audiences laugh. On her YouTube channel, she plays host to her guests. And everywhere she goes, she’s a Gen Z meme machine. Artist, entertainer, content creator, Gen Z icon—while she may be all these and more, Lee Young Ji remains defiantly indefinable. In her words, “There’s no substitute for my name.” Let’s dive deeper into the image of endless shapeshifting Lee Young Ji has cultivated since first stepping out into the spotlight—the life of someone who defies categorization as she continues to discover new interests at which she can excel.
Lee Young Ji, the hip hop reality show winner
Lee Young Ji broke onto the stage with unstoppable energy. Bucking the trend of her competitors on the third season of the Mnet series High School Rapper, she appeared in a neatly pressed school uniform, complete with jacket and tie, confidently biting back at doubts around her authenticity with an incredulous, “I’m not hip hop?” Some thought she wasn’t there to take the show seriously, but the second she jumped into her first freestyle cypher, she won the so-called hip hop experts over to her side with her tough-as-nails delivery and untouchable lyrics. She later went on to be crowned winner that season. In an interview with The Kyunghyang Shinmun following her win, Lee Young Ji said it’s “more important that I won using the name Lee Young Ji than that I was the first woman to win or the youngest ever.” Eschewing any kind of stage name because “there’s no substitute for” her name, her debut was a loud and clear introduction to the one-of-a-kind, inimitable rapper that is Lee Young Ji. But being known as a reality show winner came to take its toll on her. With fame came unwanted negative attention and criticism, plus pressure to put out universally appealing songs. In light of that, her decision to be on season 11 of the Mnet hip hop competition series Show Me the Money and put herself through the wringer again wasn’t an easy one to make. After coming out on top of her second reality show, Lee Young Ji faced ever higher expectations while also becoming the target of criticism yet again. She recently spoke out on I.M ON THE BEAT about how winning “the first of this and that” on those shows has affected her. “I mean, I’m thankful,” she said of the honor, “but I don’t want to be stuck in those titles forever.” For her, those competitions were less about winning titles and more about the singular Lee Young Ji personally challenging herself. “One of my strengths is that, unless I’m forced to, I won’t stop at anything,” she told THE CELUV. “I’m going to build on that strength and never stop making music. In fact, I’m going to push forward even harder.” Rather than rest on her laurels after winning competitions and breaking records, she throws herself head first into new challenges. It’s this attitude that’s led her to do everything from audition on these programs to branch out and try new things. While some people busy themselves trying to define her style of rap, she resists classification and can’t be restricted from expanding her horizons. That’s what makes her so hip hop.
Lee Young Ji, the variety show sure thing
First appearing as a guest on a number of variety shows, like Radio Star and Hangout with Yoo (MBC), Lee Young Ji went on to cohost Come Back Home with Yoo Jae-suk on MBC and found plenty of fans as the resident wild card on Earth Arcade (tvN). Yoo Jae-suk recognized her talent early on, advising her to “do everything you want to do in life, within the limits of the law,” and she’s been praised for her hard work on variety shows, as when producer Na Young-seok said she “works harder than anyone else on set.” The energy she brings to such shows is new and refreshing, as though she represents the next evolutionary step in entertainers. She breezes past her mistakes with cheeky confidence, giving viewers something they’ve never seen before, like when she excitedly asks for more games to a crew exhausted by her endless energy. Her witty banter with others makes for endlessly watchable TV and she even makes her own fun videos on her phone when the cameras are off, all of which really makes her a next-generation entertainer. She truly enjoys the whole process of putting on a show, not just being in front of the camera. She makes Na Young-seok cry on an episode of Earth Arcade’s Vroom Vroom when she pulls a prank on him on his birthday while hidden cameras capture it all, never once breaking character. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll have my own Ellen Show one day,” she said in an interview with Vogue, touching on her future ambitions. “I’d like people who find out about me from my TV appearances to eventually end up listening to my music.” For her, variety shows are a natural extension of her music career, and it’s the combination of the two that makes the indefinable Lee Young Ji so enthralling. During a live stream with the title “ASMR with Father Nah,” when “father” Na Young-seok asked her if she finds doing both variety shows and music at the same time to be a good balance, she replied, “It’s 2024. At a time when you could line up all the celebrities there and they would stretch out longer than Gocheok Sky Dome is wide, I think you have to show people everything you’re good at and ask them to check out at least one of those things.” It’s 2024, and as a rapper-and-entertainer, Lee Young Ji knows she’s good at entertaining people on TV and YouTube and uses every ounce of her energy to make them laugh.
Lee Young Ji, the content creator
Lee Young Ji’s also a content creator. Her YouTube channel simply bears her own name as its title and a description line that reads, “I’m still hungry.” She’s got a variety of different videos, each with its own vibe—everything from diet progress and daily vlogs to a 10,000-calorie challenge and a good mix of dance videos. “I told my agency right up front that I was going to do things my way, or else I wasn’t going to do it at all,” she explained in Vogue. “You won’t last long if you fake it.” She takes the same approach she has when it comes to YouTube and applies it to TikTok. Posting under the handle @youngji_02—again, keeping it simple with her real name and the year she was born—she has over 3.5 million followers checking out her videos she makes herself of trending dance challenges, everyday updates, silly filters, and hilarious memes, making her account feel like a cross between a diary and a playground. This open, real, and straightforward approach is what makes her content so engaging. Another perfect example of how she follows her heart when creating something new is her talk show Nothing Much Prepared, which leaps up the list of trending videos every time she posts a new episode. Inviting guests over to her little apartment for a talk over food and drinks, she sometimes gets tipsy before her guests ever do—at times no longer able to wrap up the show properly—but she’s always her genuine self and shows a knack for getting her guests to open up with meaningful conversation. During an Instagram Q&A, when asked why she doesn’t do her makeup for the show, she revealed it to be another decision catered toward producing the kind of content she’s after: “I want to create a more comfortable atmosphere for my guests.” In other words, it’s a choice she makes for reasons beyond simply keeping it real. “I’m extremely proud of my YouTube show Nothing Much Prepared,” she told News1 in an interview. “I’m dedicated to it and never stop developing more. I don’t want to just chase after trends—I want to make content that people will talk about forever, and that’s entertaining and makes people feel good.” She effortlessly interprets the trends of the day through her own lens, and what we get at the end is a content creator who’s never afraid to be herself.
Lee Young Ji, the musical artist
After she won Show Me the Money, some people began to doubt Lee Young Ji really had what it takes. “If that’s how people feel, it looks like I haven’t given them enough yet,” she said during an interview with Newsis. “I’m not worried. I still have a lot more to show people.” She wasn’t defensive—rather, she was resolute. During a live stream on YouTube channel Fullmoon with Na Young-seok, she spoke candidly about the delay in her album coming out. Once she “decided to start making” it, she realized she hadn’t “made a lot of full-length, three-and-a-half-minute songs,” and the more she “struggled to make an album,” she only “felt less confident.” She released singles like “Dark Room,” “Just,” and “Compromise,” and featured on several songs, including “Fighting” by BSS. Then, finally, in June this year, she dropped her first EP, 16 Fantasy. She earned a number one on M COUNTDOWN with the lead single “Small girl” (feat. D.O.) and the song performed well across the various streaming services. With an aim to rediscover the recklessness she had had when she was 16, the album became a turning point and taught her to just get out there and do it. But even before releasing 16 Fantasy, Lee Young Ji already shined whenever she was on the stage. She once explained on X (formerly Twitter) how much she loves the stage by writing, “I love the stage / I want to die onstage.” When she gets up there, her deep, powerful voice—so booming that the sound director for Earth Arcade is said to turn off her microphone at times—fills the space around her. From competitive reality shows to big year-end events like the Melon Music Awards (MMA) and MAMA Awards, she can always be counted on to fill the venue with a voice equally full of confidence. During the opening of the 2023 MAMA Awards, she reflected on how people often ask her “why I’m so weird, why I look the way I do, or how I keep accomplishing so much with such mediocre talent. Well,” she mused, “there is no reason. I’m just always myself in everything I do.” Then, unaccompanied by any music, she started rapping until her voice echoed all throughout the Tokyo Dome. Performing that night was the same Lee Young Ji who tweeted, “The stage is my life / The stage saved my life.”
Lee Young Ji, the Gen Z icon
With her extensive knowledge of popular memes and ability to memorize the latest K-pop choreo as soon as it’s out and teach it to her fellow castmates on Earth Arcade, Lee Young Ji has earned herself another set of titles: the president of Gen Z and the president of culture. The entertainer doesn’t follow trends—she starts them. In late 2020, during the pandemic, she posted a video saying, “If they say don’t go out, don’t go out, don’t eat out, don’t get together—just order in, eat nothing but tteokbokki,” and it spiraled into a much-imitated meme. The way she engages with her Gen Z fans on social media makes her feel more like a close friend than a celebrity off living in a different world. She’ll respond to literally any question on Instagram and tries to make people feel better while she’s at it, like when someone asked/told her, “Am I living my life okay?” and Lee Young Ji responded, “It’s the ones who do their best who tend to worry the most.” When she’s on Earth Arcade and talking with the much older Na Young-seok, she calls him hyeong—usually only used by men to address other men slightly older than them—and admonishes herself by saying, “Sorry, hyeong, I’m still wet behind the ears.” On a Channel Fullmoon live stream, she even lets Na in on the latest Gen Z trends like eating tanghulu and malatang. In an interview with Maeil Business Newspaper’s Star Today, she says, “I know I might represent what’s good about Gen Z, but I think I also represent what’s bad about Gen Z.” But it’s exactly this humility that allows her to embrace every side of herself that makes her such a beloved figure among her generation. Gen Z is often perceived to be social media savvy, individualistic, and, at times, self-interested, but Gen Z icon Lee Young Ji proves time and time again that you can’t judge an entire generation just by covering a few of its traits or its members. As she told The Electronic Times, “Gen Z and hip hop have indefinability in common, and they’re both free and rebellious”—just like Lee Young Ji herself. And that’s what makes her so captivating.
Lee Young Ji, the girl
Lots of people refer to Lee Young Ji as Young Ji the girl. Fans gave her the nickname after discovering an old comment she left in her teens on a video of SEVENTEEN member HOSHI as a play on how CARAT, the group’s fandom, sometimes call each other “girls” as well. True to the nickname, before Lee Young Ji the rapper, the entertainer, the Gen Z icon, or any of her many labels, there was Young Ji the girl. In the “ASMR with Father Nah” live stream, she talks about how, in the movie Inside Out 2, “there’s a character who’s perpetually anxious,” adding, “That’s me.” In other words, although she always looks confident and reassured, on the inside, she’s dealing with anxiety. She also discusses the pressure that can accompany the expectations people put on her and opens up about the overwhelming sense of inferiority she feels, despite appearing to have it all. The things she grapples with will ring familiar with anyone in their 20s: fretting over whether or not to diet, occasionally hating the fact that she’s tall, and fearing that she’ll never be loved. “I’m 175 cm tall,” she says, “so I’m taller than almost everyone. But,” she goes on, telling a story of when she was out with her boyfriend, “one day, we were walking down the street” when “this small girl stood next to my oppa, and I felt so bad. … All my life, I was proud of the tall me. But seeing that small girl, I’ve wondered what it would be like to be the shorter one in a relationship at least once.” Worrying about her height led her to write the song “Small girl” (feat. D.O.)—including her favorite line, “Though I got a big laugh, big voice & big personality / Would you guarantee?” Not only is 16 Fantasy her first EP, but it’s also conspicuously honest, exploring a spectrum of emotions. That line looking for a guarantee is really posing a question to listeners: Would you still love Lee Young Ji, even when she lacks confidence, or feels jealous of someone, or has a dark side? The lyrics to her song reveal a woman with low self-esteem, but Lee Young Ji explains she really loves “the tall me,” clarifying exactly what those lyrics ultimately mean. “Sometimes you worry and doubt things about yourself even when you normally like them,” she recently said on X. “It’d be so nice if there was someone by your side to lovingly bandage you up in moments like that, wouldn’t it? Even better, let that someone be you!” Lee Young Ji has become the kind of person who can tend to her own wounds and bring comfort to other girls as well. Na Young-seok’s been there with her for a very long time, and he went on the record during their live stream when he said, “I want Young Ji to just be Young Ji.” Even if someone calls her clueless, too loud, or too reckless, she’ll always be that 16-year-old who kicked the soccer ball around in the mud in her bare feet.