Ryan Celsius (stylized as R y a n C e l s i u s °) is the pseudonym of a Washington, D.C.-based music curator, disc jockey, video artist, music producer and YouTuber. His YouTube channel features visual mixtapes, combining underground hip hop, phonk and lo-fi tracks with nostalgic anime and movie visuals. ''Trappin in Japan'', which began in 2017, is among the channel's most popular series.

Career

Based in Washington, D.C., Ryan Celsius began producing music and making videos in 2005. The same year, his production hardware was stolen, and he lost all the music and videos created. Celsius stated that the event made him stop producing music for eight years. In the early 2010s, Celsius got interested in the vaporwave culture, including vaportrap and simpsonwave. He opened his YouTube channel in 2011 as a "personal project". The channel's video mixtapes combine underground phonk,

trap A trap is a mechanical device used to capture or restrain an animal for purposes such as hunting, pest control, or ecological research. Trap or TRAP may also refer to: Art and entertainment Films and television * ''Trap'' (2015 film), Fil ...

and hip hop music with nostalgic visuals from popular anime clips and movies. Most of Celsius' tracks come from independent artists. The ''Trappin in Japan'' series, which began in 2017, is among the channel's most popular, featuring visual mixtapes with first-person footage of people driving or walking through Japanese streets, coupled with clips from nostalgic films such as '' Akira'', and imagery from '' The Simpsons''. He cites YouTube channel Emotional Tokyo as an inspiration for the series. The series, among others, was key to popularizing the phonk genre. Celsius' channel also holds 24/7

live streams Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but ...

of visual mixtapes. In January 2019, Celsius was hired by indie record label

Amuse Amusement is the state of experiencing humorous and entertaining events or situations while the person or animal actively maintains the experience, and is associated with enjoyment, happiness, laughter and pleasure. It is an emotion with posit ...

to build their

lo-fi music Lo-fi (also typeset as lofi or low-fi; short for low fidelity) is a music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate choice. The ...

division. In summer 2019, Celsius' YouTube channel was demonetized and several videos were "

shadow banned Shadow banning, also called stealth banning, hellbanning, ghost banning and comment ghosting, is the practice of blocking or partially blocking a user or the user's content from some areas of an online community in such a way that the ban is no ...

" due to "misleading thumbnails" in his videos. Celsius stated: "the YouTube policy team cannot understand the link between Japan, trap music, anime, ''The Simpsons'', so since they don't understand my content it must be misleading". In 2020, Celsius worked with Westbrook Media to create a lo-fi mixtape for Will Smith's YouTube channel. In 2021, he performed with Flying Lotus in New York, and was the visualizer maker for the official music video content of the TV series ''Yasuke''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Celsius, Ryan Date of birth missing (living people) Living people Place of birth missing (living people) American YouTubers Music YouTubers YouTube channels launched in 2011 American DJs American video artists Record producers from Washington, D.C. Phonk Unidentified people Year of birth missing (living people)