MUSIC

THE FREEDOM OF THE SOUTH KOREN UNDERGROUND HIP-HOP SCENE

or as wild as you need it to be

By Joey Kim

More than a bottle of Coke

The music industry is about as strange an industry as you can get and sometimes the issues that come from it inadvertently take on social and political dimensions. This is certainly true of the Korean Hip-hop scene, which we can divide into two easy categories: above ground, aka the mainstream, and underground, aka everything else that isn’t. I’m going to make an argument for the underground as the place to be, not actually but symbolically. By underground I mean outside the purview of the major record labels and producers. This is where true artistic innovation takes place and the Korean hip-hop scene is certainly proof of that.

Korean mainstream music has a wide appeal and is typically distributed through large media conglomerates. Underground music is free of those types of business interests. There are, of course, problems with that, but it does allow for anything to happen and often anything is quite interesting and wild. So the vibrant nature of the culture is partly due to the way it eludes the normal ways in which music gets produced. We can see this in the rough and raw power of underground Korean artists such as Penomeco, Punchnello and No:el.

Punchnello is a mellow shot

Punchnello is a South Korean rapper and producer who rose to fame after signing with the independent label HIGHGRND. His real name is Lee Youngsin. He grew up in Anyang, Kyonggi-Do, South Korea. He is a member of the Club Eskimo crew, Dean, Crush, Millic, Colde, 0channel, Chek Paren, 2xxx!, and Jusén, Miso. He signed to the HIGHGRND label founded by rapper Tablo who is one of the most influential artists in Korea and a popular songwriter and producer. On September 8th, 2016, he burst onto the scene with “Lime”.

“Lime” is one of the most fascinating underground songs produced in the last five years. The song begins with a dynamic Future Bass beat that feels like a sound of a popping heartbeat. At first the bass line comes at you in quarter notes, but that standard tempo soon speeds up into eighth notes. You can’t miss the beat and the way it almost works like a melody. I don’t need to point out, although I will, that this breaks some of the most basic rules of mainstream music. The bass is normally a supporting instrument and doesn’t call attention to itself as a popping heartbeat. So right away we’re in a different music terrain than the one we’re used to.

Bitter and Underground

Also, Punchnello’s unique voice harmonizes with the heavy bass line (both Future and standard) & fast rhythm to create an exciting energy and vibe. In the middle of the song, the Future bass beat suddenly drops out and suddenly we only hear a standard bass line and the drummer playing the Hi-Hat cymbal. These few seconds are both a relief and anticipation of what’s to come next—this is quite a savage “break” and gives you a sense of the dynamic nature of Punchnello’s music. In the latter half of the song, the tempo speeds up, as the Future Bass returns and Punchnello raps faster and faster to catch up to the rhythm. After he finishes rapping, the beat descends in tempo and pace and we only hear the drum beat. When that happens you feel every beat deep inside you and you want to breathe and catch up with what just happened. I love this part of the song.

Penomeco (born October 7, 1992) is a South Korean R&B Singer and Rapper under Million Market Entertainment. His real name is Jung Dong-wook, but he goes by Penomeco. His debut album, right there, came out October, 2014. He is part of Fanxy Child, a group with Block B‘s Zico, Dean, Crush, and Millic. He studied abroad in Japan at the same school as Zico who is one of the most famous rappers, songwriters and record producers in Korea. He met Zico in Japan 10 years ago and they have been friends ever since.

Penomeco, splitting words to find a name in the underground

His name is made of two words: a Japanese phrase, peno (ぺんを), meaning pen, and meco is short for the phrase “Made in Korea” when written in Hangul. He first started to write music in his second year of middle school. He used to be a vocalist in the rock-oriented grboy before he switched genres to R&B. He was on Show Me the Money 6, but was eliminated in the One on One Rap Battle against Asol. He participated in the TV show Breakers and won the championship. His most recently released albums are Coco Bottle and Good Morning.

“Coco Bottle” is one of the best underground songs the scene has ever produced. The song begins with charming intro. We hear a soda can opening, the liquid leaving the can, and entering the mouth of someone (we don’t know who) and then, and this is the good part, the sound of the liquid slipping down Penemoco’s throat as it merges into a zippy little tinkling of piano and a soft jazzy drum. It feels as if we have drunk our way into a jazz club. The beat accelerates as the soft drink slips down penomeco’s throat yet again.

Penomeco’s uses his voice like an instrument, as if he has taken the effect of onomatopoeia and turned it into a form of rapping. There are an abundance of “pop pops”, “click clicks”, “bang bangs”, and “pew pews”. These witty little noises make the beat surprisingly complex. In the middle of the song, the back beat and jazzy piano morph into a huge organ coupled with the chugging down of a coke. You feel like you are not only standing right next to a speaker in a club, but also next to the person who is drinking the coke.

Coco Bottle, it's the real thing

The organ beat and drum sound get faster and louder, like lightning striking in a storm, as Penomeco’s auto tunes his voice so that it is in perfect harmony with the organ and rhythm with the drum beat. After he finishes rapping, the song returns to a soft jazzy piano and a wispy high hat. It’s an exceptional finish and an exceptional song and not something that a mainstream producer would ever attempt.

These are just two examples of the incredibly vibrant underground scene in Korea and like all underground scenes this is where the new and the different happens for the first time. Because of broadcasting regulations, above ground rappers or artists have a strict rule when they are composing a song or writing lyrics. They have to submit to how the state and record companies define good and decent and there are just some people who can’t do this. They’re called underground rappers, but I think we can just call them artists.

©Joey Kim and the CCA Arts Review