Her style blends elements of house music and hip hop with mellow, quiet vocals sung in both English and Korean.
[2] Kathy Yaeji Lee was born August 6, 1993, in Flushing, Queens, as a single child in a Korean family.
[2] While living in South Korea, Yaeji switched between different international schools on a yearly basis, leading her to find friends on the Internet, where she would first discover music.
[5] She embraced DJing as a hobby while attending Carnegie Mellon, crediting the afterhours electronic music dance party Hot Mass with her "indoctrination into nightlife.
She DJed for two years before learning Ableton, making her own music[8] and debuting on Carnegie Mellon's college radio station WRCT.
[21] The music video for the single "Drink I'm Sippin On" was released on 88rising's YouTube channel in October 2017, quickly gaining over one million views in two weeks.
[29] In 2021, "Raingurl" made it into New York Times's T magazine Spotify playlist, "Right Here: Asian Women Artists in the West.