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Ryan Celsius

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Ryan Celsius
Personal information
Occupations
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2011–present
GenreMusic
Subscribers598,000[1]
Total views182.5 million[1]
100,000 subscribers2017

Last updated: January 30, 2024

Ryan Celsius (stylized as R y a n C e l s i u s °) is the pseudonym of a Washington, D.C.–based music curator, disc jockey, video artist, music producer and YouTuber.

His YouTube channel features visual mixtapes, combining underground hip hop, phonk and lo-fi tracks with nostalgic anime and movie visuals. Trappin in Japan, which began in 2017, is among the channel's most popular series.

Career

[edit]
Screenshot of a Ryan Celsius YouTube video, showing a first-person perspective of a Japanese highway

Based in Washington, D.C., Ryan Celsius began producing music and making videos in 2005.[2] The same year, his production hardware was stolen, and he lost all the music and videos created.[2] Celsius stated that the event made him stop producing music for eight years.[2]

In the early 2010s, Celsius got interested in the vaporwave culture, including vaportrap and simpsonwave.[3] He opened his YouTube channel in 2011 as a "personal project".[2] The channel's video mixtapes combine underground phonk, trap and hip hop music with nostalgic visuals from popular anime clips and movies.[2][4] Most of Celsius' tracks come from independent artists.[4]

The Trappin in Japan series, which began in 2017, is among the channel's most popular,[5][6] featuring visual mixtapes with first-person footage of people driving or walking through Japanese streets,[4] coupled with clips from nostalgic films such as Akira,[4] and imagery from The Simpsons.[6] He cites YouTube channel Emotional Tokyo as an inspiration for the series.[3] The series, among others, was key to popularizing the phonk genre.[7] Celsius' channel also holds 24/7 live streams of visual mixtapes.[5]

In January 2019,[2] Celsius was hired by indie record label Amuse to build their lo-fi music division.[8] In summer 2019,[9] Celsius' YouTube channel was demonetized and several videos were "shadow banned" due to "misleading thumbnails" in his videos.[4] Celsius stated: "the YouTube policy team cannot understand the link between Japan, trap music, anime, The Simpsons, so since they don't understand my content it must be misleading".[4]

In 2020, Celsius worked with Westbrook Media to create a lo-fi mixtape for Will Smith's YouTube channel.[10][11] In 2021, he performed with Flying Lotus in New York,[12] and was the visualizer maker for the official music video content of the TV series Yasuke.[13]

References

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  1. ^ a b "About RyanCelsius° Sounds". YouTube.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Andronicos, Leni (January 9, 2019). "Interview: Ryan Celsius". Amuse. Retrieved October 31, 2021.
  3. ^ a b Ryan Celsius Interview – Artist Spotlight [Open Doors]. Open Doors Entertainment. November 26, 2020.
  4. ^ a b c d e f "Demonetized: YouTube Destroys Trailblazing Musician's Income Stream Over 'Misleading Thumbnails'". Grabien. July 22, 2019. Retrieved October 31, 2021.
  5. ^ a b LaJenuesse, Nicole (March 1, 2019). "RyanCelsius° Sounds taps into personal experience to deliver emotionally resonant mixtapes". Creator Handbook. Retrieved October 31, 2021.
  6. ^ a b Yamamoto, Akihiro (March 6, 2020). "【コラム】ローファイヒップホップ現象を再考する" [[Column] Rethinking the lo-fi hip-hop phenomenon]. FNMNL (in Japanese). Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  7. ^ yokai (September 30, 2020). "how dj yung vamp got 20k followers in a year". YouTube. Retrieved December 6, 2020.
  8. ^ Zarczynski, Andrea (December 23, 2020). "How Lofi Hip-Hop Will Inspire New Music In 2021". Forbes. Retrieved October 31, 2021.
  9. ^ Celsius, Ryan [@RyanCelsius] (June 18, 2019). "Demonetized and countless videos shadowblocked, not for Copyright but because YouTube doesn't understand what my content is. Keep your ad money, just unblock my videos" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  10. ^ "DonVayei featured in Will Smith's "Chill Beats to Social Distance To"". DONVAYEI. Retrieved December 3, 2021.
  11. ^ Lo-fi Summertime Beats to Social Distance To. Will Smith. July 10, 2020.
  12. ^ "Flying Lotus + Reggie Watts at Brooklyn Mirage, New York ⟋ RA". Resident Advisor. Retrieved October 31, 2021.
  13. ^ Yasuke Original Soundtrack (Official Album Stream). Flying Lotus. April 30, 2021.