八方來財(Stacks from All Sides)

A song about chasing fortune

The Chinese title, read Bāfāng láicái, joins 八方, “the eight directions”, with 來財, “bringing in wealth”: a wish for money to arrive from every side. Newsgd, a Guangdong news site, notes that “lai cai” became an online meme, posted in comment sections as a joking wish for good luck.

The song sketches a fortune-seeking young man from small-town Guangdong who wears jade for luck, looks to the gods for help and dreams of status symbols such as Hong Kong vehicle plates. Sixth Tone calls it a commentary on wealth and inequality; Newsgd reads it, with the companion track “Karma Code” (因果), as a humorous satire of people who pray for divine help while making money by dubious means, then face the consequences.

The two songs share one music video, which runs from “Stacks from All Sides” straight into “Karma Code”.

Sound and language

Skai Isyourgod builds his music on Memphis rap, a Southern US hip-hop style he cites as an influence, and fills it with imagery from his home province. Newsgd credits the track’s simple, repetitive melody, heavy rhythm and samples of Korean songs for how easily it travelled.

His delivery is mostly Mandarin, but, as Sixth Tone observes, it is studded with Hakka, Cantonese and Teochew words from his hometown of Huizhou, an accent so familiar in Southeast Asia that some Malaysian fans first took him for a Malaysian Chinese rapper.

From Douyin to the world

According to Sixth Tone, the song first caught on in China on Douyin, then among overseas Chinese on TikTok, and finally with audiences who do not speak the language; by August 2025 the music video had about 26 million views on YouTube, with commenters joking that they understood nothing but loved the vibe.

Newsgd describes a wave of covers, adaptations and AI-generated pet videos built on the two songs. The attention lifted his whole catalogue: Sixth Tone reported that in July 2025 he overtook Jay Chou as the most-streamed Mandarin-language musician on Spotify.

Its theme of prosperity has also made it a seasonal favourite: Bandwagon Asia put it on its 2026 Chinese New Year playlist.

About Skai Isyourgod

Skai Isyourgod, whose Chinese stage name is 揽佬 (Lanlao), was born in 1998 in Huizhou, Guangdong. He studied performing arts at Sichuan Media College in Chengdu and released his first album in September 2023.

Sixth Tone places him in a new wave of Guangdong artists who tell small-town stories rather than echoing Hong Kong’s Cantonese pop culture. In Emblem World, the song sits in the China music collection, where people discover and rate local food, drink and music.