What, Exactly, Is a ‘Khia’?
Everyday, beautiful linguistic innovations spurt out of the gutters of the internet directly into our wide-open minds. There is “delulu” and “skibidi toilet” and “Ellen DeGeneres is an environmentally significant apex predator who’d banish Hawk Tuah to maintain ecological balance.” There is “rawdogging” and “aura points” and “Clairo Shade.” From the gladiatorial arena of pop stan Twitter, a new buzz word emerges triumphant: “Khia.” If you don’t know it, let’s “X” out of this article and get you to bed grandma.
Here are contexts in which you might have encountered “khia,” assuming you’re homosexual (culturally or actually), under 30, and active on X: In a tweet commending a next-gen pop artist who’s been blowing up (“she had a one way ticket out of the khia asylum,” proclaims a Tate McCrae fan, posting a clip from her “greedy” music video) or dismissive response to a purportedly overhyped artist’s success (“Gracie Abrams is a khia and the only reason ppl listen to her is bc she is a taychild,” “taychild” meaning Taylor Swift pupil) or nostalgic remembrance of a time when a pop star enjoyed more niche status (“local takes like this is exactly why I want Carly Rae Jepsen to remain khia forever”). In the most basic sense, a “khia” is a nobody, an irrelevant person. Beyoncé is canonically not a khia; neither is Taylor Swift, though she occasionally exhibits khia behavior. As DJ Louie XIV, host of music podcast Pop Pantheon and Khia-hd (as in, a Khia Ph.D.), summarizes: “A khia is a pop girl who people talk about, but who no one seems to care about culturally.”
tried to explain the khia aslyum to a non-chronically online person pic.twitter.com/BdNtg2udcJ
— Brooklyn (@bklynb4by) November 16, 2024
A textbook case of khia-dom: In 2014, a then 23-year-old Rita Ora, who’d been struggling to take hold in the United States, tweeted that she’d release new music if she got 100,000 retweets. She got a pittance of that engagement, summarily deleted the tweet, then feebly alleged that she’d gotten hacked, which absolutely no one believed. It’s a faux pas that no suburbanite hearing pop radio at the grocery store would register (how much does the average Kroger shopper know about Rita Ora?), but it’s stamped into the memory of die-hard pop music devotees, who monitor pop success like it’s the NFL. It’s these queer fans who keep up with Ava Max, Bebe Rexha, Camilla Cabello, and their ilk — “often nondescript white women who are not following their own muse but their idea of what a pop star is and does,” defines my friend Shaad D’Souza, a fellow pop-music critic who himself was called a khia by disgruntled fans of Halsey, after he recently panned their album and they retaliated by making an infographic calling him out. (Taking your beef to Canva: a very khia move.) A khia tumbles down the fatal gap between aspiration and actuality. Those still toiling in relative obscurity are said to be stuck in the “khia asylum,” the subterranean dungeon whose walls they bang on, until by the benevolent grace of god — or a better creative direction — the door flings open to the top of the Billboard charts.
the security guards at the khia asylum have been asleep for the past 5 months and everyone has escaped https://t.co/o6LnRxRKxe
— n. (@musicalg3nius) October 29, 2024
this cover lowkey just locked her in the khia asylum for good……. https://t.co/CTXqKGLM1H
— lola (@chinabrbie) November 14, 2024
Pop stans: They have such vivid and sadistic imaginations. In the allegory of the khia asylum, they’re both the rescuers and the jailers. They pledge their devotion to underground divas, spreading their gospel to wider audiences and protecting them from outside attack. “I have a very small but mighty fan base, and they really do clock in every morning like, this girl needs our help,” says Jae Stephens, a Black pop starlet who’s written for J.Lo and Normani and started self-identifying as a khia as a light-hearted inside joke. “I’m fully aware of the fact that I am on the up, and if this is what it takes to get people to rally behind a cause, then sure.” Her working definition of “khia” is relatively positive: not a has-been, not a flop, but “someone who hasn’t had their chance yet.” It’s true. In some cases, “khia” connotes a best-kept secret, a visionary whose talents are only yet known to those with excellent taste. Another example: “My roman empire is Caroline Polachek bc everytime I find a new khia artist, caroline already follows them on instagram,” essentially a list of underground pop musicians to stream next.
Give a khia a chance @charli_xcx https://t.co/36vhsPtzvo
— jae stephens (@jaephens) October 14, 2024
this is genuinely what it's like watching you guys post my video every day in an effort to get me out of the khia asylum pic.twitter.com/4VotCWrxwl
— jae stephens (@jaephens) October 2, 2024
But stans also belittle and patronize their idols, adopting a perverse investment in their smallness. “My mission is not to be gate-kept, like let me out,” Stephens says, noting that some fans have urged her to be wary of leaning too much into the label, given how dismissive the pop industry already is of Black artists. The use of “khia” as an insult actually dates back to 2014, when Nicki Minaj stans reacted with surprise to a photo of an overwhelmed fan meeting Khia, the American rapper of “My Neck, My Back” fame, who did not at all deserve to be invoked in this conversation. (The real Khia has not responded to requests for comment.) Its usage only really exploded in the past year, when a host of would-be “khias” — Charli XCX, Tinashe, Chappell Roan — finally broke through into the mainstream.
The more you probe, the fuzzier the definition of “khia” gets, or at least the more indiscriminate its usage. Are Magdalena Bay, the guy-girl pop duo whose recent breakthrough, Imaginal Disk, served as Rosalia’s Halloween inspo, khias? No, they’re just indie — former prog-rock kids who couldn’t care less about the pop lifestyle, though they’re fascinated by pop music. What about Dua Lipa, an A-tier pop star whose Radical Optimism performed slightly below par? Possibly, but I don’t think so. Men are rarely called khias, with the exception of perhaps Lil Nas X, because they’re less interesting to queer (specifically gay male) pop stans and thus rarely a part of the conversation. “There’s a kind of fun and camp game that we all play around the pop girlies that’s also kind of derogatory and misogynistic,” DJ Louie says, warning against the danger of imposing an unwanted framing around our favorite artists. “I’ve interviewed a lot of these artists, like Tinashe, and the uniform response is, like, the way people fixate on whether I’m big or not is really toxic and almost never what I’m going for,” Shaad says.
The meaning and application of “khia” has evolved to accommodate differences in artist intention. Nicki Minaj and pop-culture stan account @Yslonika proffered Lana Del Rey as someone who is still considered successful even if she does not chart: “She’s not considered a khia because she’s a staple in pop culture.” Being a “khia” may not be about stats so much as integrity and vision.
Ultimately though, trying to track down a precise definition is a fool’s mission. “What you and I are trying to do right now is apply logic to this concept invented by 14-year-olds,” Shaad tells me, after we’ve cycled through too many case examples. (Is Charlie Puth a khia? What about Carly Rae Jepsen?) “At the end of the day, you’re in a different kind of asylum if you try and figure it out too much.”
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