Freya Fox

Janelle Kao, known professionally as Freya Fox, is a Filipino-Vietnamese-Chinese American DJ, record producer, singer, actress, and TV personality and former professional gamer. She is most notable for her collaboration with Joel Kim Booster and Atsuko Okatsuka at Life is Beautiful Music Festival in Las Vegas, NV in 2022 and her performance at LA3C in 2022. She briefly appeared on Netflix's Bling Empire.

She is ranked 69th in the DJaneTop Top 100 DJs of Taiwan, where she used to reside full time.

Personal life

Kao was born and raised in San Diego, CA. She also lived in Taipei, Taiwan in her early 20s where she was a club singer. While in Taiwan, her cover of Eric Chou's "Ni Hao Bu Hao (How Have You Been?) went viral on SoundCloud's Top Streamed International Charts.

Kao is of Filipino, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Japanese descent.

She is openly Lesbian and is an advocate for LGBT inclusion without forced diversity in media and video games.

She is openly sober and admits to losing friends over quitting alcohol at age 23.

Gaming career

Before becoming a touring musician and DJ, Kao was a professional gamer. She specialized in Fighting Games and won the inaugural Facebook Gaming Fighting Game Championship in 2018 at Pax West 2018.

As of 2018, Kao was also signed with Playerunknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) as an official PUBG Philippines Partner

In 2018, At Pax West 2018, Kao won the Facebook Gaming Fighting Game Championship by playing Soul Calibur VI in front of a live audience, in collaboration with Bandai Namco Japan, defeating Captain XBit to claim the title. That same day, Kao also participated as a video game host and talent for Square Enix's Pax West 2018 stream to promote Kingdom Hearts III.

In June 2018 at E3 2018, she hosted a segment at the Facebook Gaming booth alongside fellow Facebook Gaming partners Alodia Gosiengfiao and StoneMountain64. Kao later appeared in a vlog with Filipino Celebrity Alodia Gosiengfiao whom she had collaborated with online prior.

In January 2020, Kao modeled and appeared in a print ad campaign for EDIFIER audio, appearing at their CES 2020 booth in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In March 2020, she was a digital panelist alongside fellow creators Trisha Hershberger and Ryan "Gootecks" Gutierrez, aka "PogChamp" at Inven Global's Esports Conference as an expert in professional gaming.

The conference was traditionally held at a convention center in Irvine, CA, but due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the event and subsequent panelist were forced to shift to a digital platform.

On May 12, 2020, appearing as Freya Fox, Kao partnered with the University of Southern California and appeared at their USC Games Expo 2020 as a featured streamer and panelist.

In November 2020, Kao as Freya Fox, partnered with the American Cancer Society in an effort to fight cancer around the world for a campaign entitled "Gamers Vs Cancer"

In April 2022, in a report by Dexerto.com, Kao went viral on TikTok for recreating the viral Will Smith Oscar Slap in the video game WWE 2K22. The video received over 650,000 views and 16,000 likes.

In 2022, Fox was signed to TikTok Live US as a sponsored and managed gamer. She subsequently appeared in various TikTok Live US takeovers where Fox would take over the official @Tiktoklive_US account and stream.

Music career

In September 2022, Kao performed as part of a comedy special at the Life Is Beautiful festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. She appeared alongside comedians Atsuko Okatsuka and Joel Kim Booster, providing musical accompaniment during their set. Freya Fox specializes in electronic dance music (EDM), performing and streaming her music on TikTok LIVE. Her popularity on TikTok LIVE led to a booking at LA3C, a music festival in Los Angeles, where she performed alongside artists such as Snoop Dogg and Megan Thee Stallion in 2022. This opportunity was facilitated by a TikTok manager dedicated to supporting live streamers on the platform.

In December 2022, Kao as Freya Fox performed a live EDM singing set at the inaugural LA3C music & arts festival in Los Angeles, CA at the LA historic park. At LA3C she performed her first complextro single "I'm Too Free".

In June 2023, Kao as Freya Fox was personally selected by EDM vocalist HALIENE as the winner of the her Open Aux DJ Competition to open for her at the Fonda Theater in Hollywood, CA.

In April 2025, Kao was credited by Indonesian and international media for reporting the death of Seringai's Guitarist Ricky Siahaan who had died on stage after their Tokyo concert. She reported the death on her X.com account, from Tokyo, before the band had made an official statement.

TV career

Kao appeared briefly as a star of Netflix's ''Bling Empire New York'' in 2022.

References

External links

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Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
Musicians from San Diego
American DJs
American record producers
American musicians of Asian descent