For this cultural post, I wanted to dive into korean music. More specifically, korean hip hop. When someone says korean music the first thought that will appear to most people is kpop. These people will most likely talk about and know many different groups ranging from newer groups like BTSand GOT7 to groups that have been in the industry for a while like Girls Generation and Big Bang and many more respective groups. Yet, one industry that has been rising more rapidly and garnering less attention is the korean hip-hop industry that has become more mainstream since relatively 2010.
The origins of korean hip hop can be traced to the Itaewon dance clubs of 1980 in Seoul, Korea. This is because these clubs were originally only open to American soldiers that were placed in the U.S. military base in Yongan. After a couple years, these clubs started opening to the general Korean population and this is where American hip hop and dance was introduced to Korea from the works of Michael Jackson and eventually Moonlight in Korea. This trend for dance music in the 1980s was so popular at the time that Lee Soo-Man created a new kpop group that incorporated dance into kpop for the first time in 1992. This was big because that the origins of kpop with rap were introduced by Seo Taeji and the Boys, Deux, CLON, DJ Doc, R.ef and Roo’ra in 1992 when these groups and duos started incorporating hip hop dance and incorporating rap lyrics into their songs. Although this music was considered hip hop in Korea, it really did not meet that in terms of American hip hop as in Korea it meant just dance music, which led to Koreaa-born Koreans beginning to actually explore the possibility of rap within their own language and Korean-Americans bringing the hip hop aesthetic from America to Korea. This led to to some Korea-Americans to make a name for themselves as Tiger JK made more gangster rap music and Yoon Mi Rae for Korean-American hip hop group Uptown rose to prominence. And from these musicians Koreans congregated to the Internet in the 1990s to form a community that at first listened to American hip-hop since they rejected “the Korean hip hop” (that was basically Kpop at the time) and essentially formed the first underground community of K-hip hop. Underground community meaning that it wasn’t widely accepted as Kpop was and korean hip hop was relatively unknown compared to Kpop. The break came in 2001 when an artist named as Verbal Jint first made and uploaded a track on youtube where he changed how korean being used in hip hop was used by finding a way to change the speed and emphasis of his Korean lyrics to work with hip hop. He essentially found a way to create parallel structures with clauses of different length in Korean that worked with what American hip hop was related with. And this would increasingly grow as artists and people became more and more skilled at making these lyrics and making names for themselves. This led to the start of a show series called Show me the Money which was a Korean rap show in 2012. And this show exploded with popularity and quickly led to rappers becoming popular and more mainstream like Zico, Mino, Jay Park, pH-1, Kid Milli, NO:EL, Swings, Loco, and many more artists.
I was introduced to korean hip hop in around 2013 just before high school in middle school while going through lots of Youtube and have been a fan since. I would listen to the korean hip hop music and hear words and phrases and was captivated at how there was a korean version of rap as I knew it. From then on I wanted to learn more Korean to improve my understanding of the lyrics of all these artists as I was blown away at the skill these Korean artists had adapted to become successful in hip hop. And it is something that I am always impressed by and enjoy as the Koreans had adapted hip hop to their culture in a way that also pays homage to American hip hop. In season 8 of Show me the Money there was a contestant who had a rhythmic flow that was close to that of hip hop from the 1980s and 1990s named Ahn Byung Woong. This is something that I found was interesting as the Korean hip hop as was known to the public has since changed since 1980 and is a topic of interest for many people as it continues to evolve and improve year by year with the increasing talent of individuals. And although Korean hip hop wasn’t as big in the past, I think it is something that will only continue to get more and more attention as people improve and put out more good music. This could also be a different way for people to get introduced to hip hop and overall exposure to Korean music and the culture as a whole which makes this such an interesting topic to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=hbgahuuMfWQ&feature=emb_logo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IDknHU6cUI
https://www.vulture.com/2019/01/a-brief-history-of-korean-hip-hop.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QljRe99OMCU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFaKDXE_T3s&list=UUARjz5W6RVkoAU2p8NV5W6w&index=127
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