2010-08-30

Where Korean pop could have gone

This is pretty fantastic.

I was sent this by Mag, my (hopefully frequent!) new correspondent from France, who's got a wicked taste in music. It's a Korean hip-hop song from 1992, and it's radically different from anything else in the country released since - a kind of weird melding of minimalist deep house à la Blaze to straight-up breakdancing electro and a touch of eurodance, nothing like all other hip-hop at the time. And that background vocalist! Amazing stuff. Mag writes:
I haven't really delved, but I think South Korea is one of the least interesting places on earth at the moment for popular music : it tries sooo hard to imitate western pop music, and the end result is often quite embarrassing. South Korea has failed so far to develop styles of its own : I really don't like what is refferred to as K-pop! Bland, monocultural, devoid of a sense of humour, devoid of happiness.

So far I only found ONE Korean song that I like, it's a hip hop song from 1992, so I'll share it with you. A Korean friend who was trying desperately to introduce me to Korean pop showed it to me among hundreds of shite videos and I instantly fell in love with Seo Taeji and the Boys. But the rest of their musical production doesn't live up to that weird and promising debut single.
Here's the video:

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