Written by: Lyric Hounshell

Growing up, 8muhan’s childhood in New York was just as entertaining as his bars.

“I was all over the place with my family. We grew up in Queens, Far Rockaway, Baldwin, Hicksville, and even Elmont,” he says.

Despite going from city to Long Island, 8muhan spent the majority of his time in Cambridge. Although his best memories may be from childhood, the people stood out the most in his life the older he got. 8muhan remembers seeing the same guy come into the laundromat every week dressed from head to ankle in coats, hats, and scarfs, but walk the floors completely barefoot. He always wondered why people chose to do the things they did, but it would be things like this that would give him the clever witticism he slips into his songs.

8muhan finds himself heavily influenced by the people around him. Music for him began with freestyles. His friends would play around and his brother and him would rap random things over silence in the beat or melody. And although 8’s uncle never went the route in order to pursue taking care of his family, he says he even used to produce some tracks for a lot of big artists. Family and friends have always been 8’s biggest inspiration.

“When I look into my friends, my brother, and my uncle, when I look into their eyes, I see the love they have for music and the love they have for me. They inspire me to get up and do this every day because I see that glimmer,” he says.

8muhan was encouraged by so many but wasn’t liked by everyone. People constantly looked to him as different, strange, and weird, though he never let that define who he was and who he’d become.

“Sure, some people won’t like you, but look at all these other great people. They’re amazing and there are a lot of people who don’t like them,” he said. “My childhood showed me that I can shine as bright as those people because even though I may be hated by a lot, I’m loved by so many who are loved by everyone else.”

With confidence and positive affirmations from friends and family, 8muhan had a foundation to build off and by this time he had written down plenty of lyrics and had beats waiting for him to hop on but was solely missing an artist name.

“My original name was 8infinite, but it didn’t sound catchy, it just didn’t roll off the tongue,” he says.

8muhan and his friends spent a lot of time thinking about the world and its history and even looked into languages they could pick up. His mom and him took an interest in learning to speak Mongolian, so when feedback on the way his current name sounded was mediocre, he translated it in the language. 8infinite quickly became 8muhan, and after the minor fix, 8muhan dropped his first song, “Sundown,” in 2019.

“When I sang my first song in front of others, they were like, ‘This is good!’ My friends were hyping me up and I was like, ‘Oh shit, okay this has to get out,’” he said.

8muhan knew he had the support but never realized how heavy people rocked for him.

Unlike the rest of his music which falls under the rap category, 8muhan’s first song had a southern take. He recalls everyone in school commenting on the way he spoke and his frequent use of the term “y’all.” Despite the accent, the south wasn’t included in the list of places 8muhan considers himself from. In fact, he’s never even been. “Sundown” for 8muhan was a piece of him he could never forget. It would capture an accent that hit here and there and hold on to it.

The brief southern tone turned to rap after 8muhan found rhyming easiest to work with. 8muhan is big on being grammatically correct and admits he has his errors, but was taught that even if you mess up, you keep going. 8muhan raps as a reflection of what he does with grammar but hopes to release songs under different genres soon.

Photo by Tyler Thompson

“I don’t want to stick with rap. I want to get into EDM and do so many things. I had one track where I was singing but I want to do more,” he says.

After a year's release of “Sundown,” 8muhan dropped his first EP called “Raw Papers & Anime.” The EP came about after he hopped on a few of his brother’s beats while rolling his weed into raw papers and watching anime. Though, 8's brother DE$ isn’t the only person he has worked with. You can find 8muhan featured on songs with artists Surf, K.E. The Ice God, Dulo, and tonytwochoppas. 8muhan enjoys collaborating with other artists and plans to continue doing so in the future.

“When I’m [making music] by myself, I think of what people would like to hear and less of what I want to put on it and sometimes I battle with that. When I’m with another artist and I’m collabing, I think of how I can bounce off them and how they can bounce off me,” he said.

Last month, 8muhan dropped a new song titled “Trapped” and joined the collective ixvolt. For 8muhan, making music isn’t about the attention. The end goal for him is to make good, catchy songs and sustain himself while staying in his own lane. He measures his future success closely to the artist Lucky. 8muhan says he is always ready to give content, but following years of issues with communicating his feelings, 8muhan also wants to leave listeners with a piece of advice to disperse theirs in a healthy way, whether through music or not.

He says, “Everybody should have a voice no matter what and it should always come from a place of calm and tranquility, never hatred.”

New music from 8muhan 4/19/2024!

Link to 8muhan’s Music

8muhan

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Charlize Ramirez