Sometime in the 2000s, the Chinese pop vanguard (Wang Leehom, Jay Chou and David Tao) began fusing international R&B, hip-hop and dance music with traditional aspects of Chinese culture for a new C-pop sound—one that has laid out the perfect path for LAY. The Chinese artist may be best known as part of K-pop group Exo, but his 2017 solo debut, Sheep, 2018’s NAMANANA and LIT prove he’s got plenty more to give. The six-track EP was co-produced by Murda Beatz, who, having worked with Drake, Travis Scott and Migos among others, brings a heady, trap-infused intensity and precision to this impressively diverse release. On opening track “Lit”, LAY revels in how he’s “taking china to the world” over pi’pa riffs and other traditional instruments that ping through a dark abyss of beats. And almost every track seems to make good on that statement. “Jade” uniquely mixes hip-hop with Peking Opera masterpiece, “Farewell My Concubine”. There’s the bamboo flute hook on the swaggy “Eagle”, guzheng glissandos that ripple through the balladic “H20”, and the haunting excerpts of millennium-old poetry on “Soul”. What’s particularly interesting is that LAY’s traditional tilt goes far beyond the music. Lyrics invoke cultural imagery at every turn, drawing on Taoist associations with water, jade as representing purity and incorruptibility, and above all, the title track’s lotus—a flower able to blossom in the dirtiest waters associated with rebirth—which LAY adopts as his personal totem to keep growing and “step to the next level”.