khiphop is more defined by the indie-esque music system than the genre itself. a lot of artists who start in khiphop like making music in general rather than being committed to staying within a genre so its super common to see an artist go through the tight rap to pop song pipeline. this stuff performs way better with the public than classic hiphop anyways (re: b'eo counting stars, ash island melody, imjmwdp flex) re: its way easier to make money off of
i think ive ranted about this before but while there are gems within the genre, its always going to be held back in some ways by how derivative it is, which causes (imo) the following common issues:
its easy to pick up which artists an artist is inspired by (common ones include mac miller, xxx, kanye, kendrick, asap, etc), and while thats not inherently evil its not like people are often outdoing their inspirations. for every great khiphop song you can probably pull an american hiphop song doing the same thing but better. american hip hop has just been around longer and had more time to develop which i think contributes to this. artists can evolve though, i think kid milli used to sound like an asap clone but now he has a more distinct color.
i see a number of gang/drug/hood/trapper references in peoples lyrics. it comes off as corny at best, racist at worst (with occasional exceptions. eg. there are some rappers who are very pro weed legalization who rap about weed).
khh artists often have an inability to be normal about black people. its common for a korean person to go to the US, see a black person, comes back with a story about how it changed their life and inspired them to put out shitty music (queen wasabi is the prime example of this). its also common for khiphop artists to way over-romanticize black suffering or think because they're "hiphop" that they can do shit like say the n word (eg. loopy). even justhis has pulled a "yellow skin/black soul" line in his music before
The other factor that makes a lot of artists kind of cringey to me (but is definitely not limited to khh) is artists with rich families flexing their wealth and doing the whole "I made it even tho I had haters because my family is insanely wealthy" type of song and dance. A lot of korean rappers start by taking rap classes, which are even offered at some universities now (superbee started this way, killagramz is now a rap professor. lmao). flex culture is rlly disingenuous seeming when its coming from people who did not start out poor.
ok so aside from that here's what I like:
my #1 favorite thing about khiphop is the producers. producers rarely limit themselves to a single genre or sound and this allows for really experimental and cool beats. code kunst/giriboy/boycold/etc are the true stars of the genre. in general I think korean production favors a lot of transitions rather than repeating motifs like in western production which is also fun. a number of producers like Flip_00 have had a lot of success getting work in and out of korea
korean has its own unique flow to it and allows for wordplay/rhyming that would be harder to do in english
korean music taste inspires a lot of fun songs. koreans love for ballads inspires a lot of really good krnb. you can find khh songs with trot influences. I also think the popularity of fun indie Bolbbalgan4-esque songs inspires a lot of really light and dreamy beats and songs. korean music as a whole tends to do sad/emotional music well and khh isn't an exception
my fav song is IMJMWDP (prod. by giriboy) and my friend tells me im quite creative. i love to write, read and enjoy intellectual conversations.🥰
alright hear me out:
𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙘𝙝 𝙪𝙥 𝙞𝙨: Rindou Haitani
Can rap the lyrics really fast and tries to impress you with it. He seems like someone who only listens to rap and as a secret obsession k-pop. I also take him as someone who's actually really smart and could give you fun and deep discussions. From his weird poses and hair styles Rindou probably loves going crazy and creative too.
The song plays in his room where he tries to look as cool as possible so you look at him and not his brother
I think you are an amazing person and YOU make people their day on Tumblr, at least me! Uhm. You are well spoken and know what you talk about! I wonder why you did not choose to follow a career like writing for magazines, blogs etc. or start your own official website blog about kHH, r&b and also go to Korea, japan and do those interviews etc. A website Where people can subscribe and you can make money out of it.
Thank you I appreciate this!
Funny story but I did actually write articles for some websites as a small gig in my early days of college. They were about video games though!
I'm definitely interested in doing interviews w/ artists! I'm also interested in potentially getting into A&R or working at concerts in some way. I definitely wouldn't mind working behind the scenes to set up some tours in California, US, and potentially North America as a whole. When Swings' dropped that illustration of the IMJMWDP building I couldn't help but think "Hmmm, that seems like it's gonna need a lot of staff👀" LOL. Not to mention when some companies put out a recruitment call on IG for staff.
I definitely need to keep studying Korean so I can get to a point where I can have more in-depth conversations. Even if they aren't formal "interviews". I still think I might be able to get some interesting info about an artist/their career in regular conversation.
As far as websites, they take a lot of time to maintain but also there's not that much money to make tbh. I kinda just like this dynamic where we can talk and hang out without much thought into how to get the most views or subs. Otherwise, I have to put a lot of thought into putting out content that gets the most views/subs in order to make money instead of just having organic conversations. The internet isn't that profitable anymore without close to 1 million or more views/subscribers.
Right now I'm preparing to study Computational Linguistics in the Fall but I've been thinking a lot lately about how there's no reason I can't work in 2 fields.
I've been noticing a lot of people I respect (professors, musicians, and some other professions) actually work in more than one field. One of my old professors from undergrad is a really accomplished Linguist (researcher + professor) but he also has some albums/eps out and does theater as well! Another professor has multiple jobs on campus (professor, researcher, director of a lab on campus) but is also a speech therapist. A singer I like who is getting a lot of buzz in their genre also works in the film industry. Then you have people like Super Bee, The Quiett, Ash Island, Swings, Dok2, Loco, and others who make music but also have clothing lines, record shops, record labels, TV shows, restaurants, gyms. It's REALLY inspiring! Cause I feel like earlier on in life, the idea was more like "Yeah, you get ONE job/career and that's what you do!" So you had to choose one thing you really liked. And I know people having "more than one job/career" is also a product of how hard it is to stay afloat in our society and live the life you want on just ONE income (side hustle culture and whatnot) BUT still. I'm interested in A LOT of different things so it's nice to see other people making it work!
Anyway, thanks again for this ask! It definitely gave me some things to consider! And I'm glad you're enjoying my posts!