James Huang started playing piano at the age of 6 in Chapel Hill and kept at it for nearly a decade, also adding a little trumpet in the school band. He also sang in various choirs and acapella groups through his time at East Chapel Hill High School – all of which factors into the hip hop music he makes nowadays under the name Saky.
Saky’s music career formally began after he got his degrees from NC State University, when he spent five-and-a-half years in Los Angeles pursuing filmmaking. Seeking to break into art and music that he could, he was shooting videos for a number of different artists, including a group called Nitemrkt.
“I was looking for any type of work with artists I could get and started working with those guys as a videographer,” he says. “I’d never rapped on a record before, but I did have a good amount of musical background and understanding from piano and vocal training. I understood tones, octaves, how to stay on-key. So I asked if I could join them in making music, and they obliged. That was my first time rapping.”
Eventually he would come back home to North Carolina and go solo under a performing name that goes back to a nickname from his days at NC State. Saky is a derivation of the alcoholic beverage saki, and he replaced the “i” at the end with a “y” to make it seem more like a name than a drink. But what really clinched it as his professional moniker was that “Saky” was available on social media.
“Artists take on different identities, try on things to [expletive] with whatever people think about who I am,” Saki says. “You get identified with an alter ego. Even though I was not yet an artist making music, that nickname stuck. I was already shooting videos back then and directors have artist names, too.”
Now 34 years old, Saky has independently released a string of singles and mini-albums since returning to Chapel Hill in 2022, including this year’s “It.” His music sounds like a throwback to hip hop’s late-1990s classic era, which makes sense given that he grew up listening to video countdowns on Black Entertainment Television and his older brother’s Busta Rhymes, Notorious B.I.G. and Eminem CDs.
Thematically, his songs’ subject matter trends toward questions of identity and other people’s expectations of him as a native-born American of Asian descent (Huang’s parents immigrated to the U.S. from China six years before he was born). He certainly doesn’t lack self-confidence. From his 2022 mini-album “Re:Visions,” “Jeff” is a song about his best friend at NC State and begins with Saky declaring himself “just a kid from Carolina that was born to be great.” “It.” represents a solid step forward in his progression, with hooks, layered arrangements and entertaining between-song audio soundbites (many of them recordings left behind by that friend Jeff, who died in a 2022 plane crash).
“I approached this latest record with the intent of creating all the production and beat-making myself,” Saky says. “I learned how to create song structure, bought a synthesizer that helped me play a bunch of different instruments, threw it all at the wall to see what stuck. Each song brings a different energy, but it’s also cohesive. I felt like I achieved that, and it shows my versatility as an artist.”
Although “It.” just came out a few months ago, Saky is already working on possible next projects. While pulling material together, he’s also doing his first concert tour this year, opening for the group Dark World on a series of dates in Western North Carolina. His next Triangle show will be Oct. 17 at NC State in Raleigh.
“Right now I’m trying to build up a group of songs that sound good to me,” he says. “I just want to enjoy the process of making music rather than getting too caught up in results. But I do have goals. I see myself being respected as an artist in the future, putting in the work to create songs that last longer than the latest algorithm. I want to build a loyal fanbase, but a lot of that is out of my control. What I can control is the creation of things, and to try and improve each day. You’ve got to constantly evolve.
Follow Saky on Instagram and visit him at his studio at the Eno Arts Mill during First Fridays at the Mill.
