So, growing up in Vancouver, the youngest kid of Korean immigrants, Sophia Chang loved

music.

By high school, she was into all sorts of different things, new wave and then eventually

punk.

But the moment she heard Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Fives, the message, it was

kind of like something inside of her.

Some primal urge came alive.

She was hooked by the beats, by the lyrics and the artists who were tapping the power

of music to speak with so much truth that resonated deeply with her.

Sophia headed to New York and soon after found herself immersed in the music scene, befriending

punk legends like Joey Ramone, working with the legendary Paul Simon, and then quickly

dropping into the hip hop scene in the late 80s and 90s where she'd not only build a decade's

long career as what she calls the first Asian woman in hip hop, but also become deeply

entrenched in the work and the lives of a kind of nine person hip hop phenomenon Wu-Tang

clan, where she became kind of not only family, but over the years also manage a number of

their individual careers, as well as over time, those of many others like a tribe called

Quest, Raphael Sadiq, D'Angelo, and so many others.

Now in the middle of all of this, Sophia took some time and stepped out of the music business

for about a dozen years to train Kung Fu and manage a 34th generation Shaolin monk, who

she'd helped build into a global name while also becoming partners in life and work and

raising two kids together.

That relationship would eventually end, leaving Sophia in her early 40s as she describes

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