TOKiMONSTA performs at the 2022 Coachella music festival.
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Coachella
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Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Coachella
TOKiMONSTA performs at the 2022 Coachella music festival.
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Coachella
Listening to her now, it’s hard to fathom that there was a time just a few years ago when electronic music producer and DJ Jennifer Lee — aka TOKiMONSTA — suffered from aphasia so severe that she was unable to speak.
In 2015, TOKiMONSTA was diagnosed with Moyamoya disease, a rare progressive cerebrovascular disorder that put her at risk of a sudden aneurysm or stroke. The two brain surgeries that followed, in January 2016, left her with alarming side effects, including acute aphasia.
“I couldn’t communicate anymore,” TOKiMONSTA says. “English, which was essentially my first language, became a foreign language. Anytime someone talked to me, anytime I watched TV, anytime there was a spoken word, it just sounded like a foreign language.”
Though TOKiMONSTA had taught herself how to make electronic music in college and had created her own label, Young Art Records, in 2014, after the surgeries she found that music had become unrecognizable, just noise. “At that point, I realized something was wrong,” she says.
Just two months after her brain surgery, TOKiMONSTA pushed herself to begin making music again. During her recovery she created one of her most personal albums, Lune Rouge. It earned a
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