Slammed well

[koganbot]

Here's a new Korean rap track I like: beats and boings from the techno sound-effects shelf, lots of shimmering space, four distinct personalities, fun with syllables:

Watch on YouTube

With a few huge exceptions, I haven't really warmed up to Korean hip-hop per se (as opposed to the rapping that saturates idol songs). I don't know the lyrics, of course. The two dominant rapping styles seem to be "We are being funny" and a deep, sincere-sounding, awful "I am in constant pain and it's your fault." There's rarely a ballad too sappy not to have an even sappier rap in it. Again, I'm saying this without knowing the words and maybe without processing the sounds right, and I'd be quite happy to be proved wrong. The first Korean LP I ever reviewed was an excellent rap album.

Google Translate puts forth "Slammed good!!!" for "난리good!!!." Basketball slam? "난리" alone gets us "Uproar." But Google Translate is usually helpless with Korean.

Comments

[koganbot]

By the way, you wouldn't happen to be able to provide a roadmap of Epik High and Tablo, would you? Most of their oeuvre originated prior to my knowing anything about K-pop.

[azacab.livejournal.com]

Ehh, IMO there's not really much to say about Epik High prior to their signing with YG. They seem to have been making alternative/conscious hip-hop (for whatever that's worth these days) since the beginning of their career. Until recently, their music has been very heavy on the lyric-dense songs, with occasional political messages and almost every beat piano-led, the kind of introspective stuff I find overly didactic and somewhat pretentious. They've also had a few hit songs that were rock-oriented, some adventures towards electro and pop in recent years, but nothing that I would say really dove into the hooky earworm madness of K-pop. Even still they topped the album charts and got a lot of international attention.

In 2009 Mithra Jin and DJ Tukutz took their mandatory military service so Tablo was left alone, since he has Canadian citizenship and is exempt from the draft. Then shit hit the fan for Tablo when rabid netizens terrorized his personal life and defamed him for almost a year. If you didn't read what happened to him I suggest you Google "The Stalking of Daniel Lee" which was a Wired article explaining it all. It totally shows the dark, rabid side of K-pop fandom and anti-fandom.

So Tablo responded by signing to YG since EK's label Woolim didn't help him during the whole fiasco, and he released Fever's End in 2011 which I loved. I think YG has just incredible in-house producers and it really showed on the album, they took the often drab arrangements of EK's previous albums and turned them into lush hit singles, yet still gave Tablo room to rap circles around the choruses.

In 2012 EK signed to YG as well, and DJ Tukutz pretty much got shafted with most of the beats on 99 coming from Choice and DEE.P. But it was a great decision, because it allowed Tablo and Mithra to really take their message to a wider audience a la Born In The U.S.A. (which to some sounds ludicrous but that kind of comparison always seems right to me). The tone is light but I find the songs quite affecting, and by the end you can really hear Tablo getting over hating himself. Lee Hi guests on the ballad, they do a Blink-182 number, one song beatboxes, "Bad Guy" namechecks Tony Montana in the most nonserious way a rap song ever will, "Up" has a military chant, and "New Beautiful" feels like the kind of song a lot of Korean kids need to hear when they don't meet K-pop's beauty standards.

...and I'm off my soapbox! Sorry to editorialize, hope this helps.

[koganbot]

Many thanks for this introduction, and I hope to give Tablo/Epik High the attention they deserve one of these days. I read the brief Wikip summary of Tablo's troubles and it all seemed horrifying but also that Internet people were being VASTLY STUPID. Of course, Senators and governments can be vastly stupid too, so why not Netizens? In comments to my very first ever post about K-pop back in 2009, petronia remarked that "K-pop has the most insane and deeply frightening fanclub culture ever, and I say this as someone with a full-blown otaku background. It's as much crazy hate of 'rivals' as crazy love of the idols in question, said rivalries seem as random in provenance (from an outside perspective at least) as hip-hop beefs, and are sometimes as damaging - people have poisoned the water bottles of and thrown acid at pop stars they dislike." Unfortunately for my moral development, this is one of the things that served to get me interested in the genre. (Back when I published about the Contortions, one of my friends said "I like the writing of the piece a lot but feel you're too infatuated with bullies.") Back on the K-pop thread, anhh wrote, presciently, "seems like this groups are like omnipresent in the media so the public kind of make factions, still not sure about this, but the mechanics that one appreciates in forums and blogs is that people are very obsessive and gossipy (usually to such a high degree that pisses you off) about the groups they love (also boy bands, but usually I don't listen to them so I can't talk about that) and kind of work as haters for the rest (or at least of the ones that can work as competence)."

It'll be interesting to listen through the lens of Springsteen. When I saw Epik High do "Up" on SBS Inkigayo it reminded me of the Clash, which I mean as a high compliment: the Clash's first NYC appearance in early 1979 is the best show I've seen in my life, with nonstop movement from the band (long cords so they could charge all over the stage). Epik High were more choreographed, but they did seem to be unleashing something that you generally don't get on K-pop TV, a sense of undirected convulsive movement (even though it was directed). I've never gotten that feeling just listening to the song, however, sans sight. Would like to get back to the alb soon and see if it sneaks up on me.

[koganbot]

Though I suppose one doesn't listen through lenses, Springsteenian or otherwise. Through ear trumpets, perhaps.