Son of Paper: The Chinese American Hip-Hop Artist Turning Ancestral Silence Into Sound
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
There is a document somewhere - a piece of paper purchased in 1933 - that is the reason Kyle Shin exists.
His great-grandmother bought it because there was no other way in. The Chinese Exclusion Act had made legal immigration nearly impossible for Chinese nationals, and even her marriage to a US citizen wasn't enough to bring her over legally. So she did what thousands of Chinese women did during that era: she became someone else on paper. A paper daughter. She crossed the Pacific Ocean under a false name, memorized a family history that wasn't hers, and built a real life from a fictional identity.
Five generations later, her great-grandson is making Hip-Hop music about it under the name Son of Paper.
Who Is Son of Paper?
Son of Paper - born Kyle Shin - is a Korean and Chinese American Hip-Hop artist based in San Francisco, with over 100 years of family roots in Chinatown. He splits his time between the US and East and Southeast Asia, spending nearly half the year traveling and recording across the Pacific.
His music has earned millions of views across Instagram and Rednote 小红书, been licensed to Pokémon GO trailers, Concord Music, and multiple Asian American films, and earned him features on Mnet's Show Me The Money and Dulé Hill's PBS Special. He launched his career from a Chinatown rooftop - an origin story that has become central to who he is as an artist.
But the paper daughter history is the deepest thread.
The Name
"Son of Paper" is not a stage name chosen for aesthetic reasons.
It is a direct reference to the paper daughter system - the network of false immigration documents that allowed thousands of Chinese women to enter the United States during the exclusion era. Kyle's great-grandmother was one of them. That document - a paper that gave her a path when the law offered none - is the foundation on which his entire family in America was built.
"That document is literally the reason I exist," Kyle says. "She came here as a fictional person. As Son of Paper, I get to make her real."
Every time someone asks about the name, her story gets told. That is intentional.
The Language
There is a second layer of loss that runs through Kyle's story alongside the paper daughter history: language.
His grandparents spoke Cantonese. But his grandfather was severely bullied in school for his Chinese accent - and so he and Kyle's grandmother made the decision not to pass the language down to Kyle's mother. To protect her from what he had gone through. It was an act of love - one that meant Kyle grew up without access to the language, which made connecting with his family's origins much harder.
He is learning Cantonese as an adult now. Reclaiming something that was surrendered to keep his family safe.
"They gave up the language to protect her," he says. "That was an act of love."
The Search
In 2024, Kyle spent 86 days in Guangdong, China, searching for family his family had lost contact with nearly a century ago.
The search began not in China but in Vietnam, where a friend named Nhien showed him a family shrine going back 19 generations. She pointed to a well her ancestor had dug and asked if it wasn't incredible that it was still flowing. The question landed hard. Kyle realized he couldn't point to anything like that. His family had been in San Francisco for a hundred years and he knew almost nothing about what came before.
Two months later he was in Guangdong.
He documented the entire search on Rednote - posting daily vlogs that drew hundreds of comments and direct messages per day from strangers across China trying to help him find his roots. The response turned into a community. People shared their own family search stories. They wrote about how his journey connected to theirs. When he finally found family, someone commented: "You finally found them. We are also your family."
He found about 66% of what he was looking for. There's a 200-year-old banyan tree outside his family temple in Guangdong. He's stood under it. He met relatives who welcomed him into their home and let him stay for months after his American family went back.
One family line remains unresolved. The trail goes cold, and there is a resistance on both sides of the Pacific to pulling that thread. He has learned to sit with not fully understanding it.
The Music
R!SE - Kyle's newest single - was born directly out of the Kowkong homecoming. On his fourth-to-last day in China, after 86 days of searching, he was asked to perform in front of ten thousand people in his ancestral hometown, with his newly found family in the audience. That energy came back across the Pacific with him and went straight into the record.
"I'm not trying to just document the history," Kyle says. "I'm trying to capture what it feels like to be living inside it. The grief, the joy, the homecoming. All of it is in the music."
R!SE is the first glimpse of where Son of Paper is heading. More is coming.
The Mission
Kyle sees his own journey as an echo of his ancestors' in reverse. They crossed the Pacific to build a life in America. He crosses back. He too has had to learn a new language, adopt new customs, navigate a culture that isn't fully his yet. The difference is that he does it by choice - to rebuild what was lost, to make real what was forced to be fictional.
"There are thousands of families where someone came over under a false name and nobody ever talked about it," he says. "Those families are still carrying that silence. I hope this music gives some of them permission to start talking."
Key Facts
Artist name: Son of Paper (SOP)
Real name: Kyle Shin
Based: San Francisco, CA
Genre: Hip-Hop / Transpacific / Diaspora
Heritage: Korean and Chinese American; 100+ years of family roots in San Francisco Chinatown
Notable: Features on Mnet's Show Me The Money, Dulé Hill's PBS Special; music licensed to Pokémon GO, Concord Music, and Asian American films; millions of views on Instagram and Rednote 小红书
Latest: R!SE — new single coming soon
Press inquiries: sonofpapermusic@gmail.com Social: @sonofpaper on Instagram | Rednote 小红书
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