Christian Gates’ songs do not only live under his own name. As a writer, he co-wrote “Ride Or Die” for Chinese superstar Cai Xukun, a track that reportedly reached number one on QQ Music, one of China’s largest streaming platforms.
A global reach most fans never see
It is the part of an artist’s career that rarely trends: the writing credits on other people’s hits. A number-one in China is a different scale of audience than a viral clip in the US, a market of hundreds of millions with its own stars and its own charts. Landing a co-write on a song that tops it means Gates’ pen travels even when his voice is nowhere on the record.
Writer first
That should not be a surprise. Gates has always been a writer, producer and engineer as much as a performer, the person building the song from the ground up rather than just singing someone else’s. Placing one with a star like Cai Xukun is that same skill working for someone else, and it is a reminder that songwriting is a career of its own, one that can quietly out-earn and out-reach an artist’s solo catalog.
His voice went viral at home. His pen went number one abroad.
The bigger picture
Taken together with the Rolling Stone recognition and a Gold single, the Cai Xukun credit fills in a fuller portrait: not just a viral singer, but a working songwriter with international placements. The credit is part of the verified record in the Christian Gates wiki, and, like other single-source claims, is presented as reported.