In Conversation with El Chi

If it seems like it has been a long time since you last heard from me, you are correct.

The intrepid journalists at WhoWhatWhere have been investigating a tip we picked up. The grapevine has been alive with whispers of a person of interest gone missing. #WhereisElChi? has been the word on everyone’s mouths, and so our star reporter took it upon himself to get to
the bottom of it. It seemed like more than one year ago, she just disappeared without a trace. Countless dead-ends, dead bodies and deadlines later, my sources finally came correct and I managed to track her down, and before she slipped from my fingers, I got her to answer a few questions.

First things first, where is El Chi?
El Chi currently is at [redacted] in [redacted].

Where have you been loca? Your recent campaign, hashtag where is El Chi has taken social media by storm. Tell us a little about what inspired that and what's gone into it since.
Okay, so last year I kind of went off the radar especially on Instagram and it was a bit difficult for me to do because I'm very much someone that enjoys being on social media platforms but I was going through a bit of a weird space and yeah I just was having kind of like a bit of a battle with my mental health issues, and I just wanted… I hate being perceived. I think the image that people tend to project on social media is very fun and very positive. Yeah, very cutesy. And I wasn't really feeling that way, so there was kind of like this friction between what I was feeling and what people were perceiving me as. And I just didn't enjoy it. So, I decided to take my stuff offline. It was funny because I knew that I wanted to do the rap
thing. So my friends were like, how are you going to come back? You’ve been out for so long, how are you going to do it?
And Valerie was like, “you should start this ‘Where's Joy’
thing.” because everyone was in my DMs like, girl, where you been? What's going on?
And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna alter that a little bit and make it ‘where is El Chi’ because that's my rap name. That's the industry name that people have come to know.
So yeah it was very much like a thing that me and Val kind of came up with and then I took it and ran with it honestly because I like the foundation of it all and I think I can build on this.
I had asked my friends like send me videos of you guys asking ‘Where is El
Chi’ and I was like, have fun with it and we came up with these crazy ideas, and everyone just sent in their thing and we compiled them.

I'd been sitting on that for like a minute actually. Yeah, I think at the beginning of the 2023. And I have a really good friend, David, who does graphic design and is an editor. So, I told him my idea for the missing persons poster. He
was like, I can work with that. So yeah, we're here now.

Okay! Let's get into the weeds. Where did you get your name from? The
name El Chi.
Growing up my mom would call me Chi-chi. My middle name is Achieng. Hence Joy Achi on my Instagram and everything. So she'd call me Chi-chi which is a very sweet name. Then in high school, I started rapping, but not professionally or anything. I would find those beats that were going viral on YouTube then I would write a little song and then call my friends to the common room and rap for them. I'm not really a fan of being given nicknames. I like to be identified by what I want to be identified by and at that time I was really obsessed with these rebellious figures. I had just
started watching Narcos and I was learning about El Chapo so it's kind of derived from El Chapo (laughs) …which is not fun this week because El Chapo is how we’re referring to Zakayo. That kind of sucks cause like, don't fuck my shit up, you know? You're already fucking my shit up. Like, enough!
Fuck that guy.

Real.
But yeah, the real El Chapo kind of inspired it and I just borrowed it a little bit and then changed it to Chi, then I dropped the first chi my mom gave
me because it's too cutesy. And I was like I'm a rapper, I'm gonna be rebellious, violent, whatever.
I also discovered, though recently, that chi means the energy that flows through everything, I think in either Japanese or Chinese, Eastern Philosophy basically.

Oh, is it? Okay.

Yes. I discovered that and it was a really pretty reference for me because I
do feel like a bubble of energy. I’ve become more grounded now, but yeah, I like it.

Okay. That's really good. Are there any surprising differences between El Chi and Joy Achi?
A hundred. Especially now. For one, I'm sober and I think that the major difference is that El Chi is at a hundred all the time. El Chi is very much always energetic, always ready, always on time, she's just always pumped and super locked in all the time. Joy is not always locked in, sometimes Joy needs a minute, sometimes Joy wants some peace and quiet, sometimes Joy is a bit sweet while El Chi is very reckless and likes to do the most.

I think that's something that I've developed for myself lately. Being offline has helped a lot actually because I think I always had an anxiety that I would be forgotten. That if I wasn't lighting up the room and making everyone laugh at every moment, I wasn't valid. I always just felt I had to perform 24/7 and it just it gets fucking exhausting. It can be really draining to constantly be on your toes and feeling like you have to make everyone feel good you know?
So, I've just kind of taken a bit of a step back from that and I'm like, "you know what? I'm not feeling it. I'm just not feeling it. I'm not gonna be outside all the time. I'm not gonna be posting all the time and I'm just gonna be me and feel good in what I am.”

Okay, so I've seen you being compared to Doechi a lot; self-professed and also from other people. What do you make of the association to Doechi? Even the names rhyme: Doechi, El-Chi!
I know! I made that tweet actually a couple months ago. I was like, El-Chi featuring Doechi has a nice ring to it.

Yeah, what do you make of it?
The thing about it is I have followed Doechi’s journey since probably 2019-2020. I've been tapped in for a very long time. She's one of my favorite artists. It's been really fun to watch her grow and so obviously it is a very sentimental thing to have these parallels kind of drawn with someone who has inspired me as a person and as an artist.
But, I think it does get a bit tricky sometimes, especially lately. I've been seeing a lot of negative connotations that has been piled on to the discourse. I don't know, but there has been a bit… More like I have been a bit timid because I think there are things and people that I am inspired by, definitely.
But at the end of the day, I'm still my own artist, and I still create stuff that is pulled from within. And I don't really intend to follow someone's journey, and you know, in their footsteps bar for bar. I'm just out here trying to do what I want to do, and that's rap. I love to rap, I love hip hop. And so, it's a bit of a dichotomy of feeling, a little.

Dichotomy of feeling. I like that.
Yeah, because I think it's a beautiful thing, but I also don't want to be pigeonholed into that, you know? I want to be free to explore my artistry and my creativity in the way that I intend to. And people are kind of like, “oh yeah, this is Doechi.” And I'm like, no, no, this is El-Chi. It doesn't help that we sound the same. (Laughs)

Yeah, so I'm still fleshing out how I feel about it exactly. I might get to a point
where I'm like, "actually, please don't refer to me as that." But for now, I don't mind it. I don't think it comes from a malicious place. I just worry that that maybe what people identify me as and I don't want for that to be the case.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So Rank ’em, which Doechi experience do you relate to more?
1. Dating a DL nigga,
2. the need to document your creative journey; and
3. the need to turn a nigga's guts into soup beans?
Oh, that is good. That's a good question.
I think definitely the need to turn a nigga’s guts into soup beans first and then the need to document and then dating a DL nigga.

Yeah? Never happened?
I've never dated anyone. Period. It's so funny to tell people because they're always like, what?? I'm like, yeah, I'm just out here living my life. And I think it
was definitely something that I kind of craved as a younger person because everyone around me was getting into relationships. But now I'm so comfortable with myself and my space. And I think it would take like a really phenomenal kind of connection with somebody to change that. For now, I'm doing me and I'm good with that and it's just fine.

So yeah I've never dated anyone and um what was the second one? The need to document your journey? Yes, but only because I went offline forever and I wasn't really documenting myself. I was getting documented because my friends were outside of me. Or these events that people see you at.
For some absurd reason, last year I was getting invited to mad events. And I think it was just like this air of mystery that everyone was like, what is she doing now?