Armed with the confidence to follow her muse wherever it leads, Lexie Liu has put her stamp on genres from hip-hop and R&B to hyperpop and retro dance. The maverick artist’s path in music has taken her through K-pop and Mandopop reality competitions into a career as an independent artist who writes, produces and performs her own work. A native of China’s Hunan province, Liu has her sights set on the world, with multilingual tracks that combine her unique vision with international influences—in the case of her 2025 single “FFFFF”, the booming bass of a ’90s nightclub. Below, Liu tells Apple Music how she came up with the song’s signature sound. What was your source of inspiration for this track? “‘FFFFF’ is a party, the sort of nightlife I fantasised about as a kid. It combines the influence of ’90s Eurodance with the electro-pop I grew up with in the 2010s—Basshunter, Kesha and 3OH!3. Their music has that big Eurodance energy, a dynamic, brainwashing beat that always gets me moving. So that’s what I wanted to use in this song to get a party started in my music.” What was it like creating the Spatial Audio mix? “It was a really exciting process, actually. It took a lot of fine-tuning, but hearing the final result was so worth it! It felt like stepping inside the song.” What are your thoughts on being selected as Greater China’s Up Next artist? “I deserve it. I’ve been in the biz for 10 years, so I’d like a star, please! 🥺✨”