Photographs by Evan Wu and Jodie Hitosis
Audrey Nuna is a Korean-American artist from New Jersey, known for her bold sound blending R&B to rap to EDM. She’s written music for the Shang-Chi soundtrack and most recently, Kpop Demon Hunters, which achieved #1 on Billboard as the highest-charting soundtrack in 2025. Her sophomore album, 'TRENCH,' was released in October 2024. I interviewed her backstage when she performed at UC San Diego’s ‘Horizon’ music festival.
NICOLE
AUDREY
I think my brain feels very comfortable in that space, of blending things. I think growing up Korean American with a lot of different cultural influences in the household., my mom moved to New York when she was 11, so she's obviously very much Korean, but she also very much, has the spirit of a New Yorker and an American person. So that was basically the everyday: going to school and learning about US history, and then coming home and, you know, eating rice and seaweed, kimchi, or whatever. I think my brain just became accustomed to seeing things in a very blended way. I feel really comfortable with that. I also think it's so hard as a person to just like one type of thing and be excited by one type of thing, right? So I think that just follows me into music.
NICOLE
AUDREY
I think your point of honesty is really interesting, because I had a conversation about this today, but I feel like when you write and you're super honest, that somehow translates into connection with others, even though you're being very personal and it's very internal in a way. So I think my goal, yeah, is to always be honest, and just statistically. I'm sure there's people in the world who have gone through similar experiences.
We are on the cusp of such a new generation in so many ways, like being first generation Korean American. I think that myself, along with a lot of children of immigrants, have this insanely specific experience of growing up in this world at this time with this level of influence, with this access to the internet. So I really think all artists, our job is just to reflect the times. I love Nina Simone, and that's a clip I've heard her say where your job is to just reflect the times. It's just a way of kind of imprinting, like history and history of the world. Writing some shit that connects people here and there.
I think I say a lot of things in my music I would never say, in real life. So in a lot of ways, it was like the way I could be honest, because I felt like I couldn't be honest in my real life. Because I grew up, you know, not really around people who look like me, not really around, you know, a lot of things are really confusing to me growing up. So I think that the music was like that one place where I could be someone else, but also really be myself.
NICOLE
AUDREY
It was much more challenging. I think I experienced a lot of new challenges as a sophomore project that I didn't experience in my first. I would say, just more so battling this idea of 'pressure' which was such a non-concept for me for my first album. It wasn't even something in my scope of imagination like what that would feel like, I think because I literally was just doing it for fun. And I think sophomore projects are interesting because now you've kind of said something, and in a way, a response to what you've said in the past. So I think just trying to free myself from those expectations, TRENCH was a very transitory album in that way, right? And a lot of the chaos manifested for sure, within the project in a way that I'm proud of, and in a way that really documents, like, what my life was for those two or three years.
NICOLE
AUDREY
To design a couch. Oh, and I would love to make an album in Korea? Wait, Tokyo. I would love to be more involved in films and movies.
