MUSIC

THE AUTHENTICITY GAME

how authentic is Korean Hip Hop

By Betty Gu

Are they the real thing?

We often think of Hip Hop in its obvious surface effects -- crazy back beats, rhythmic and rhyming speech, the style, the bravado, the nutty personalities -- but as it has gone world wide, the most important aspect of the genre has been the idea of authenticity. We can see this when Hip hop aesthetics leave the United States and infiltrate the cultures of other countries, especially Asian ones, and, most interestingly, South Korea. What we can see is that the copy is never authentic, maybe. When South Koreans take up Hip Hop in all its seriousness, our first reaction is come on. But that would be a mistake, the question of taking an American art form and culture and translating it into something truly Korea is mind-boggling. In other words, how do you take an aesthetic that isn’t of your culture and make it your own.

Hip hop music started as an underground urban movement in the South Bronx in New York City in 1970’s and it is an inner-city African-American art form in both its creation and execution. With its unique rhythm scheme and flow it’s fundamentally different than other music genres, though, strangely enough, it has dominated mainstream music and culture for the last 30 years. For example, rappers like Kanye West, Eminem, and countless other rappers have won Grammys every year; Jay-Z’s albums have sold approximately 50 million copies globally, and he is ranked as one of the most successful artists of the millennium, receiving more awards than his superstar wife Beyonce has “likes” on her twitter account; Dr. Dre sold his brand Beats to Apple in 2014 for one billion dollars; rap motifs and quotes appear in pop culture every day with suburban mothers saying they need to keep things going 24/7, as if they were ghetto drug dealers. Needless to say, Hip Hop is now one of the most successful and popular genres in all of music.

Jay Z and Hip Hop sells world wide

Decades before hip-hop would become a “thing,” there were countless “things” that led to its creation. In 1925, Earl Tucker used floats and slides to invent new dance moves and many years later these dances were the inspiration behind breakdancing. In 1940, Thomas Wong used a speaker to create a booming sound. People loved the big sound, and Wong used it to gain many followers and popularity, but he never would have guessed that his “big sound” would become the sonic backdrop of the most popular music in the world. In 1962, a new hit show called Live At The Apollo aired on TV. James Brown's band created a new beat called Break Beat, and it quickly caught on. Brown continued to experiment with new and strange rhythms. He recorded two new edgy songs in 1969, “Mother Popcorn” and “Funky Drummer,” that used a freestyle-propulsive drumbeat devised by Clyde Stubblefield, complete with 10 hits and 2 cymbal lifts as the recording's drum break. It is one of the most frequently sampled rhythmic breaks in Hip Hop and popular music. The song “Funky Drummer” could easily be considered among the most important songs in Hip Hop’s 40-plus-year existence.

In 1973, a new disc jockey named Kool Herc emerged and began playing music for block parties. He had emigrated from Jamaica, and he quickly caught the eye of others in the music industry. Kool Herc joined Grandmaster Caz, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Babaataa in the music business in 1974. Their particular brand of music earned the nickname Hip Hop. From that time, the music genre “Hip Hop” was officially born. During a performance at the Bronx River Center in 1976, DJ Afrika Bambaataa went head to head with Disco King Mario. It became a "DJ battle,” which is now a major part of hip-hop culture.

While Hip Hop was just gaining momentum, a variance emerged. It was called rap music, and it would quickly gain popularity. Several new groups formed with the creation of rap. Musician Kurtis Blow would be the first rapper signed to a major record label in 1979. Rap music gained further momentum when Blow performed on Soul Train. Soul Train was a hit-making show and Blow became a star. And a year after, a new group called The Funky 4 plus One More was invited to play for NBC's Saturday Night Live. They performed their hit song, "That's The Joint,” and for the first time reached white hipsters all over America.

Here comes Hip Hop

In 1984, Hip Hop skyrocketed which the labels organized their first national tour and raked in over 3 million dollars. From 1985 to the present, Hip Hop and rap continue to create music that soars off the charts. Despite the success, many of the stars were often locked in violent battles, I mean, real violence. That might have been part of the popularity and success, the notion that this was an authentic expression of the street.

30 years after Hip-hop’s introduction, it has become a worldwide phenomenon. Hip-hop and rap culture has spread through urban and suburban communities throughout the United States and subsequently the world. Various styles of hip-hop culture have been introduced in other countries, all over Europe, Asia, including South Korea. South Korea’s hip-hop scene is one of the fastest growing in the world. Korean hip-hop has become increasingly popular, both in Korea and abroad. It is as if Hip Hop came from outside Korea, incubated there, and now is leaving Korea in a new form.

As everyone knows, the relationship between Korea and United States has been extensive since 1950, when the United States helped establish the modern state of South Korea. They agreed to a military alliance in 1953 and all South Korea forces have been under the United States’ control. So, American culture has had an undue influence in South Korea.

During the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Koreans who had been living in America brought their knowledge of R & B, Hip Hop, and soul to Korea. In the beginning, it was predominantly rock musicians who dabbled in rapping. In 1989, the very first Hip Hop influenced piece of K-pop was released. Hong Seo-beom, a moderately popular rock musician, recorded a song called “Kim Satgat.”

This man was the first in Seoul to have soul

Even by today's standards, Seo-beom’s rapping on ”Kim Satgat” has held up surprisingly well. But Hong's attempt was clearly an experiment. He never aspired to be a hip-hop musician. The song “Kim Satgat” was a one-off, avant-garde take on a new form of music that was gaining ground in the U.S. In the popular recount of Korean Hip Hop history, Hong’s name is rarely mentioned. That’s an oversight.

Instead, the K-pop artists who came after Hong, such as Seo Taiji, Hyeon Jin-yeong, and Lee Hyun-do are usually considered the pioneers of Korean Hip Hop. But even with this corps of artists, the label "hip hop musicians" would be a stretch. For example, Seo Taiji's first album in 1992 definitely caused a sensation with a historical rap number, "I Know [난 알아요]". The song showcased a deep American hip-hop influence, drawing similarities with Public Enemy’s “Can’t Truss It” and New Jack Swing. But hip hop was just one of the many musical styles that Seo Taiji played with; in his later albums, Seo drifted toward his original love of rock music.

Can you really trust it?

It is fairer to think of this era as the pre-history of Korean Hip Hop, because few K-pop artists considered themselves to be "hip hop artists." In this time period, Hip Hop was a device, not an end to itself. Even at the time, the music of Seo Taiji and Lee Hyun-do was not referred to as "hip hop", but "rap dance"--dance pop with some rap sprinkled on. In fact, the tradition of rap dance is very much alive in today's K-pop, as it is almost a K-pop cliché to insert a rap bridge in a dance number.

The Korean hip-hop scene grew considerably in the late 1990s and early 2000s due largely to a growing hip hop club scene and the influence of the Internet. While K-pop groups continued to incorporate rap into their songs, this time period also saw the emergence of pure hip-hop groups, notably Drunken Tiger, "the first commercially successful true hip-hop group" in Korea. It was not until late 1990s that K-pop artists who dedicated their career to hip hop began to emerge. For the first time, it made sense to refer to a proper "rapper" in Korean pop music scene. However the origins of Korean Hip Hop told stories through rhymes, just like the Hip Hop we all know and love out of North America did the same in the 80’s, just in a different language -- not so foreign, but unknown to the Western world.

The topics were similar, but different in their own right, representing social and political waves in Korean culture. The rapper Verbal Jint changed the Korean hip-hop game again in 2001 with "Modern Rhymes," where he significantly revamped Rap rhyming schemes in the Korean language. Following this, Hip oriented artists such as Dynamic Duo, Leessang, Epik High, and Supreme Team adopted and adapted these rhyming schemes, establishing themselves as key performers in the hip-hop genre. More Korean hip-hop artists experienced mainstream popularity and success in the 2000s and 2010s.

More of the origin story

Korean Hip Hop at this time could be categorized on two levels, which largely kept away from each other at first. Roughly speaking, there was a mainstream and an "underground." The former appeared on television and sold albums by hundreds of thousands; the latter put together mix tape-quality albums and performed in basement clubs. The opportunities for bringing underground rappers into the mainstream can be attributed to two rap survival shows: Show Me The Money, and Unpretty Rapstar, which is also the most recent growth of Korean hip-hop.

Calling upon the underground hip-hop community and rapper wannabes to audition for a chance to challenge more mainstream rappers was a boon for Korean Hip Hop. The competition format and versatility of the show (with guest features, collaboration tracks between unlikely artists, and new songs available in music stores each episode) was a hit and quickly saw more seasons being produced, alongside a ‘female-only’ version of the show, Unpretty Rapstar, which gave a platform for female rappers who were sometimes at a disadvantage in a male-dominated scene. Interest in the series has since spread abroad, with rappers who participated in the show's fourth season performing in the United States in 2015. The show also held auditions for its fifth season in Los Angeles in 2016, and for its sixth season in both LA and New York this year.

Despite Korean Hip Hop’s huge gains in popularity, there is still a weird chasm between these new Korean starts and American Hip Hop culture. And the question what is real, what is authentic? Although it’s agreed upon that South Bronx, New York City is the birthplace of the hip-hop culture and movement, it’s become a worldwide phenomenon and is not limited to a certain subset or group of people.

BewhY has some opinions about authenticity

While the Korean popular rapper BewhY revealed his new album recently and talked about his plans for American advancement, he mentioned the perceived division between Korean and American Hip Hop. He said, “People usually separate Korean and American Hip Hop, but I think it’s all just one culture. All that’s different is the language and the country. I plan to advance into the American market when a good chance comes along.” However, is the difference only about the language and country?

Yes, we can say that Korea’s hip-hop artists were finally able to speak Hip Hop in their own language had massive implications for Korean Hip Hop’s quest for authenticity. The ability to rap organically in the Korean language, by its very nature, projected far more authenticity then any imitation of American rap. The heavy anchor of authenticity was gone. Through the medium of Hip Hop, Korean artists were finally able to speak in their own voice and tell their own stories.

As Korean Hip Hop artists tamed and domesticated the foreign genre, the question of authenticity became more internal. "Realness" in Korean Hip Hop became the question of expressing authentic experience and emotions--as it should be. Since the early 2000s, Korean Hip Hop as a whole has showcased the full range of pain, rejection, anger, joy, party, love, finally becoming true to the artist's inner self.

However, can Korean Hip Hop ever be "real"? Many American Hip Hop aficionados, who zealously guard their own ideal of "real," may scoff at the idea. And they are not without a point. When some of the American Hip Hop fans saw what the Korean rapper Bewhy said in the radio, they left a lot bad comments below saying that Korean Hip Hop cannot be in one culture with American Hip Hop because the simple fact is that Korean "Hip Hop artists" don't even realize where Hip Hop came from proves it's not real Hip Hop.

Is this authentic?

That’s understandable from an American viewpoint. Clearly, Hip Hop is not native to Korea. It is a cultural from that Koreans took on. And surely, Hip Hop in Korea is still in the process of becoming localized. Although Korean Hip Hop has come a long way in the last two decades, there is still no stand-alone "hip-hop culture" such as exists in America. Idol groups that use Hip Hop as a mere device significantly outnumber those who pursue Hip Hop as a craft. So if the definition of authenticity is narrow enough, it would preclude Korean Hip Hop from being real. However, it is actually hard to think of any music genres that American pop culture has never touched.

True authenticity requires no justification, because it justifies itself. If the Korean rappers are able to express their true inner self in their lyrics, and express their genuine selves through intricate rhyme and flow, can it count as being real? For people not familiar with the music that comes out of Asia, they think all Asian Music Genres are copycats. It’s necessary to disabuse these foolish prejudices. K-Pop has a complex relationship with Hip Hop. There is a whole spectrum of interaction between the K-Pop, the hip-hop world, and Korea’s own underground hip-hop scene. But, just like Western music, Asia's music covers a wide range of genres: rock, ballads, indie, metal, reggae, R & B, and Hip Hop. I think it is possible that Korean Hip Hop will be free to be authentic in its own unique ways.

©Betty Gu and the CCA Arts Review