This feature article appears in the August 2024 issue of X3 mag, an authenticity-first publication dedicated to capturing the genuine personalities, passions, and stories of emerging and established stars. X3 mag is published by XBIZ Media.
Kazumi eases herself into the passenger seat as we get ready to leave the inaugural X3 magazine cover photo shoot, for which she has been specially selected from among the entire firmament of adult entertainers.
“I don’t drive,” she announces matter-of-factly. “I don’t know how. I don’t ever want to learn. I’m like SpongeBob — I failed my driving test a few times. I passed my permit, because I’m a good test taker. But I don’t feel like I should drive. So I haven’t really been behind the wheel at all.”
This seems peculiar. If you know anything about Kazumi — and chances are you do, because she’s been inescapable the past few years — you know that she’s very much in charge. In charge of her life, her career, her marketing, arguably even the general direction of creator culture. She is most definitely “behind the wheel” in most senses, just not the literal one.
“I have a California ID and a passport. That’s all I need!” she proclaims.
The passport part is important. Kazumi is an avid globe-trotter. As her 1 million-plus Instagram fans know, the creator extraordinaire can be found as often in far-flung locations as grinding and hustling at home.
Not that she’s not grinding and hustling when she travels. In the “everything is content” era, her sojourns are fodder for copious documentation, a constantly updated audiovisual diary of landscapes and exotic dining, immediately and efficiently uploaded for her followers and influential “close friends” — bearers of the coveted Insta green star — to enjoy vicariously.
The California part — Southern California to be specific — is also important. East LA is Kazumi ground zero. Not the gentrifying hipster “Eastside,” but the amorphous east-of-the-LA-river sprawl extending toward and sometimes into Orange County. This was the setting for the prehistory of Kazumi, before there even was a Kazumi — a character that is not necessarily from a geographical area but is played by a gregarious, insanely extroverted first-generation Filipina-Californian from East LA who does not drive.
The Kazumi we all know and love, on the other hand, is from the internet.
For the full article and exclusive pictorial, click here.
