My nightmare is finally coming true.
Oh god.
I hope we don't have another Drake, another colonizer, but this time coming from Korea.
Oh lord have mercy.
So Jenny and Dochi?
No, I love Dochi.
Don't do this please.
Where to begin?
Okay.
All right.
Calm down.
This is going to be a tough one.
I don't have all of my thoughts completely gathered.
I just know that I have some guttural reactions and it is a feeling of disgust, of disgust.
And I'm not 100% sure exactly why.
I don't know how much of it has to do with my love for Dochi and her music, her artistry,
creativity, or my difficult complex relationship with K-pop.
Okay.
So let me start from the beginning.
I have never been 100% in love with K-pop.
I have enjoyed K-pop.
They are great background music, music to have fun and dance to.
Here's how I feel.
All these people worried about AI being able to take over art, worried about AI being able
to just create the music and then artists don't have to exist.
You know, the worries about AI, you don't have to worry about it if you're worried about
what is to come.
It was already here and it was already here in the form of K-pop.
Okay.
Koreans, I'm speaking as a fellow Korean here.
Look, Koreans have K-pop, I should say more specifically, has mastered the art of creating
catchy bops and tunes that will go viral on places like TikTok and YouTube shorts and
all these other places, right?
You want to create a trend.
K-pop has figured out how to go ahead and make that happen with both the sound and also
the media, social media.
They've just mastered how to manipulate these things in order to make things go viral.
They've done a wonderful job of it.
They seem to have mastered it in ways that even AI is going to be far behind for a while.
Okay.
So, if you're worried about AI taking over, you know, the creation of art, don't worry.
K-pop's already been doing it.
They've already figured out how to infect our ears with music that is super catchy,
don't really have much depth and just kind of numbs you.
Okay.
I have never considered K-pop good art.
I have always considered K-pop to be good vibe music, good dance music, good fun to
just listen to without having to think.
Okay.
But I wouldn't consider it like good in terms of as an art form in any form or fashion.
Okay.
Now, I want to be clear.
I think that these K-pop artists are very talented.
I know that a lot of them don't necessarily write their own music, but in at least the
performing of them, you know, these companies have invested a lot of time, energy, money
into developing these artists so that they're amazing for performances.
And they are held to an extremely high standard.
And there's a reason that they've become globally popular.
It is clear that the production is there.
It is clear that the training is there to really develop these K-pop artists and to
create a kind of fandom, right?
To create a sense of connection to these artists through social media.
They've done a wonderful job.
But now, I'm not going to talk here about the dark side of K-pop.
That will be for another time, which includes the toxic fandom.
Not that they're all terrible, but there's a kind of toxic online fan culture in K-pop.
I think a very unhealthy one, as well as the exploitation of a lot of these artists.
So the ones actually on stage, right, they might not necessarily be the ones responsible.
It might be the companies that are kind of pushing and promoting them that might be responsible
for some of the critiques that I have.
Okay.
All this aside, okay, I also figured that when it was specifically the Blackpink members,
Rosie, Rosé, what is it, Lisa, and Jennie specifically, I figured that they would be,
they would do well in transitioning to the US audience.
I figured that in part because I believe all three of them come from backgrounds where
they are very well versed in English and have a kind of, a certain kind of love affair with
American culture to some degree.
You could see it in their music even before they started promoting themselves so much
here in the United States and now like coming out with albums specifically through US labels.
But I figured that they would be quite popular.
In fact, I actually bet that Lisa would probably be the most popular of the three to make her
way into US pop culture.
I just figured there's something about the charisma and the way that she presents herself
that feels very much like it was made for an American audience.
Okay.
So I imagine they would be successful.
However, collaborating with Dochi just broke my heart.
I mean, Rosie collaborating with Bruno Mars also broke my heart to some degree, but that's
a little less complex because Bruno Mars isn't black.
But Dochi is and Dochi is pure hip hop.
She's not a pop star in my eyes.
She's a hip hop artist.
Hip hop slash R&B.
I don't know how you want to categorize her, right?
But that just hurt me to the core.
I was trying to figure out exactly why it hurt me so much, why I was so sad and disappointed
by all of this.
And I think it's in part because of my love for hip hop and my desire for the authenticity
and the roots of hip hop.
I've been in love with hip hop for so long and I've been so personally sensitive to people
on the outside trying to use it for capitalistic purposes, right?
And especially people that are not of the culture.
Now I'm not saying that I am of the culture, right?
I am a fan, but as a fan who genuinely cares about preserving the integrity of hip hop,
I've always been a little sensitive to figures like Drake who come in and know nothing about
hip hop culture and then uses it in order to make lots of money and to gain fame and
so on and so forth.
So I've always had a lot of issues with K-pop to begin with, in part because of, again,
my desire to protect something I love, hip hop as a culture.
And then there's the other side, which is that I am Korean and I did listen to some
Korean music growing up, but there was something that immediately turned me off to Korean music
and I can actually remember the exact moment that that happened.
I'm going to cite a very specific song.
It was by, at the time, right?
K-pop wasn't this global phenomenon that you see today.
It was something that was just kind of starting out.
And one of the major figures, kind of like the Michael Jackson, I think you could say,
you know, how he's like king of pop.
Like if you want to say like the originators of K-pop, right?
At least one of those groups would be Seo Taiji, or either, right?
That's the Korean name.
You'll probably find it in English as Seo Taiji and the Boys, right?
Or Ann Boys, I'm not sure.
Seo Taiji is spelled S-E-O-T-A-I-J-I.
And I believe one of the members is now the CEO of YG.
This is actually named after him, I believe, which is actually the label that produced
Blackpink, who's the subject of the discussion today.
So they made this song called Come Back Home.
I forget exactly when it was.
It must have been, oh man, 1990s?
That was a while ago.
It was a long time ago.
But they came out with a song called Come Back Home.
It was extremely popular in Korea for a lot of different reasons.
But the sound, immediately when I heard the record, oh my goodness, I was pissed.
I was pissed because, and you know, I'm going to pause for a second and I'm going to let
you just listen to that song.
You could probably find it.
I believe you could find it on YouTube and other places.
Just find the song and listen to it.
I'm going to pause for like one second here, or you could pause this podcast for a second
and then listen to it.
Pause.
OK.
All right.
So assuming that you listen to it, OK?
If you love hip hop, you've studied the history of hip hop, that song should immediately,
immediately set off alarms because I heard that song and I immediately heard Cypress
Hill.
And my reaction at the time as a kid was, what the fuck?
What in the actual fuck?
It wasn't just like culture vulture type shit that I am not going to I'm going to just set
that whole thing concern aside for now.
Right.
And it just felt like straight up plagiarism.
Right.
And anybody who knows, right, who has paid attention to K-pop over the years, this is
their M.O.
They just straight up plagiarize.
They mix and master, produce a little, make it a little different, put their own spin
on it.
But it almost feels like K-pop decides.
I mean, like I'm thinking about like these K-pop groups, you know, they have this notion
of like a concept for these groups, and I immediately think the concept is nothing more
than taking something that was popular at one point in time and then making that the
concept.
Right.
That's what it feels like.
That's what it absolutely feels like.
And there's a reason that the sounds of K-pop seem to hit so familiar to me in a lot of
ways is that all of these songs in some ways, right, like it's like they took from African
culture, they took from the U.S. hip hop culture, they took from, you know, various South American
cultures, right, like depending on what they felt like taking from, whether it was from
Brazil or, you know, Argentina or Mexico, like they're just like taking sounds from
around the world and especially from, you know, people of color, like I'm not going
to lie, right.
It's black and brown bodies, like there are that they often take from and then they take
it and then put their own little spin on it.
But like quickly you could hear where it's coming from.
And that's what's so disturbing about these K-pop artists.
Like I'm not going to disagree that it's a lot of fun to listen to and I'm not going
to disagree that they do a great job of promoting themselves and they do a great job with the
production.
They do a good job with all of these things.
And I am going to wholeheartedly acknowledge that all of these K-pop artists are extremely
talented.
I enjoy a lot of the music, but I've always had this love-hate affair with K-pop from
its inception because from the very beginning, its history, it has been founded on stealing
from others.
And there's something about that that limits my ability to fully acknowledge K-pop as,
you know, as anything particularly, I don't know, how do you say this, like artistic,
right.
I have a hard time giving it any artistic merit, right, because there's nothing innovative
in a lot of ways.
There's a lot of old stuff repackaged.
That's what it feels like.
Okay.
Now, again, I'm not talking about the entire Korean music scene, right.
There's a really, really vibrant indie scene coming out of Korea and they make a lot of
just great music.
There's actually a lot of talented people.
But I'm talking about specifically K-pop, which is attempting to, I'm not sure what,
I don't know what the primary goal is, right.
I'm not going to do a deep dive research on this, but my guess is that they're trying
to be as popular and as big as possible in terms of the kind of money that they make
and the reach that they have.
That is the sense I get because the music that's produced often feel, and the way that
it's promoted often feel like the goal is to be number one streamed, right.
Is to get as large of an audience to be listening to it as regularly as possible, which is why
it doesn't surprise me that so many of these K-pop songs show up as viral TikTok dances
and such, right.
There's a reason for it.
It's not an accident, okay.
But here's the thing.
When you steal from other people, I feel like there's something disgusting about your profiting
so much from it without at least giving credit to where you're getting it from, right.
And I think this is one of the things that I've always had issue with, right.
Somebody will come out with a song, it goes viral, it's popular, it's catchy, all of that.
And you could hear the influence and nobody wants to talk about the actual influence and
where this stuff is actually coming from, right.
I mean, I think this is should, we should be talking about it more in art in general,
I think.
But maybe it's the academic, I'm not sure what, but something about not really giving
due credit and also the fact that you are using it for your own personal gain, whether
it's the artists themselves or it's the labels that they're associated with.
It just seems like a purely money grabbing, capitalistic endeavor.
And that is just for somebody who loves art for art's sake, that just feels disgusting.
It feels disgusting, you know.
And the more popularity it gains, the more it hurts my heart because the more I realize,
oh my goodness, there's a large fan base who's probably just enjoying this without giving
it a second thought.
And that hurts.
And my worry here, especially with Tochi working with Jenny, is that I'm scared that we're
going to have Drake 2.0.
We're going to have Drake 2.0.
We're going to let somebody come in, do collaborations, have features, bring on people to do features.
And the whole purpose might be to have some sort of meshing of the fan base.
I'm not sure what, but I'm worried that it's going to be seen as some kind of a co-sign
to then go off and do a bunch more of this type of stuff where they take and take and
take from the culture, from the art that I love, and then use it just simply for personal
gain without giving back to that culture.
That's my concern.
My concern is that Jenny might become Drake 2.0.
I'm so scared.
I am so very, very scared.
And so I had this feeling, right, of the...
I had a sense that it was coming.
When I was seeing all these interviews at late night shows and guest performances from
BTS and Twice, and I was like, oh no, no, no, please don't.
I was hoping that it would stay in the pop realm.
I was like, okay, if you just stay in pop, if you just do collaborations with Justin
Bieber, it'll be fine.
Y'all are all in the pop space and pop music generally just steals from everybody else
anyways.
So stay in that pop realm and then maybe I'll be fine.
I was trying to tell myself, I was trying to comfort myself in that way.
And then I saw Dochi and I was like, oh no, no, no, no, no, please no.
Oh, this hurts my heart.
Oh my goodness.
I don't know how to feel.
You know what?
Somebody help me.
Help me figure out how to feel here.
Please leave your comments.
Give me your thoughts.
Help me work through what I am witnessing because I can't really even process all of
the feelings that I have at this very moment.
Lord, help me.