The Rap Star [EN]: Chapter 242

Without a doubt, HiphopLE is Korea’s leading hip-hop website.

After the hip-hop revival sparked by the 888 Crew, many competing sites emerged, but until just 2-3 years ago, ‘HiphopLE member’ and ‘Korean underground hip-hop fan’ were synonymous.

And that status remains unchanged. With all that they’ve built over the years, no latecomers could surpass HiphopLE’s recognition.

Thus, HiphopLE was a site that not only represented but also dominated Korean online hip-hop.

So, are there sites like this in the US too?

The answer was somewhere between Yes and No.

American hip-hop was too vast for one site to monopolize the online space.

The number of American hip-hop fans was greater than the population of Korea, and the amount of money circulating in the American hip-hop industry alone was larger than the total of the entire Korean music market.

As a result, numerous hip-hop sites existed in the US, fiercely competing with each other.

However, some sites were weeded out, while others, though not as dominant as HiphopLE, received considerable support.

Worldstarhiphop.

HiphopDX.

Undergroundhiphop (UGHH).

These three were the oldest, had the most members, and were the most recognized hip-hop sites in the United States.

Among these, HiphopDX was more of a magazine than a community, while Worldstarhiphop and Undergroundhiphop were sites where netizens actively engaged.

One of the important roles of a tour production company was to distribute highlight videos or hot clips from the tour.

And these videos had to go viral.

Only then could they create purchase incentives for the next tour and promote the live performance DVD to be released after the tour.

However, the Curtain Call Tour was in an ambiguous position to go viral.

Flexibly featuring stars from each country, each city, each metropolitan area was a huge plus for the tour, but a minus for promotion.

It couldn’t be promoted as ‘a tour featuring popular rappers from each city,’ because it was either an Eminem tour or a Jay-Z tour.

Therefore, the videos of the Curtain Call Tour, which EMI Music and Sony Music had promoted to the best of their ability, were not very popular. They were placed on the main pages of the top 3 hip-hop sites, but the number of clicks and comments wasn’t great.

However, starting in mid-February, videos from the Curtain Call Tour began to go viral. To be precise, a video clip of one musician participating in the Curtain Call Tour went viral.

This video clip began to record huge views and comments in the Today Video section of the Worldstarhiphop site, and its momentum showed no signs of stopping.

Finally, a few days before the end of February, the video clip was ranked as the monthly best video on the Worldstarhiphop site.

It was featured on the main page of the site.

From that moment on, various hip-hop sites, including HiphopDX and Undergroundhiphop, began to cover this video clip. It also recorded 12 million views on YouTube, the world’s leading video-sharing site acquired by Google.

The title of the video clip was ‘Yellow Real Ni**a’.

***

-Amazing. Really amazing. At first, I thought it was just trying to attract attention with a provocative title, but after watching the video, I think the title is too ordinary.

-Could there be a more provocative title than this?

-How about yellow WHAT THE FUCKING real nigga?

-This guy must be crazy.

-Who the hell is this guy? I definitely saw the Curtain Call Tour. But the rapper FiveSix wasn’t on the lineup! Why didn’t I see him!

-I heard FiveSix wasn’t originally on the lineup? A friend of mine is a staff member on the Curtain Call Tour, and 56 was originally PP’s hype man. But then PP’s opening rapper had a problem, so he got a chance by accident.

-Are you saying he debuted by chance? That’s a bit strange, isn’t it? The stage setup and effects are too perfect for someone who wasn’t prepared.

-If he participated in the tour as PP’s hype man, he must be a Sony Music musician. Sony Music must have set up the stage for him.

-Well, if FiveSix was a Sony Music musician, wouldn’t he have started as an opening musician from the beginning? Why would he start as a hype man when he’s this good?

-Yeah, that’s right. FiveSix probably isn’t with Sony. I don’t know if he joined recently, but if you listen to KRS-One’s “The way we live”, you can tell he’s part of a team called 888. Hime, another participant, is with Sony Music.

-But Koreans seem to like numbers. 888 and 56.

-Didn’t you know? Koreans are incredibly fast at mental arithmetic. Even if seven people eat together, they can instantly calculate how much each person has to pay. It’s convenient to be with them.

-I’m curious about how famous FiveSix is in Korea. According to the lyrics, KRS-One contacted him first, but it seems like he was in Korea when they were working on “The way we live”.

-My roommate is Japanese, and she loves Korean singers and likes FiveSix quite a bit. She told me that the crew FiveSix belongs to has sold the most hip-hop albums in Korea. By a landslide.

-How much is that?

-They’ve released a total of 2 albums, and both went gold. So that’s a total of 1 million copies.

-How many people are in Korea?

-Googling it, it says about 50 million.

-What? So even if we assume that the 500,000 people who bought the two albums are completely the same, that means one in every hundred people living in Korea bought FiveSix’s album?

-The US population is 300 million, and Eminem has sold 30 million albums so far. That’s about 1 in 10 people. You can’t calculate it that way.

-Still, it’s impressive. Eminem’s albums were sold worldwide, but FiveSix only sold them in Korea.

-At this point, shouldn’t a Korean person come out and explain about FiveSix?

-A Korean appears! I wasn’t originally planning to leave a comment, but I will. I’m a Korean international student and came to Arizona early last year.

-Oh, I’m looking forward to it.

-Korea in 2005-6 was similar to the early 90s in the US. It was a Golden Era when Korean hip-hop was growing both quantitatively and qualitatively. FiveSix is a rapper who led that Golden Era. He’s not a rapper who gained popularity in the hip-hop scene that had already become mainstream, but a rapper who brought hip-hop to the mainstream. In short, he’s Korea’s Run-DMC, Tupac, and Dr. Dre.

-So FiveSix gave up that popularity and came to the US? To succeed in the hip-hop scene of the homeland?

-Yeah. At some point, he disappeared from Korea, and later an article came out saying he went to LA. I respect FiveSix’s passion and purity as a human being, not as a musician. Honestly, it can’t be easy to go from being a superstar to the LA underground, right? He was really a superstar and rich in Korea.

-Wow, that’s amazing? He’s a real Nigga.

-If he likes the word Nigga, I want to call him that too.

-I think he likes it? In the video, he smiles brightly when someone shouts Yellow Nigga.

-FiveSix seems to be pretty good-looking.

The reaction to Sanghyun [FiveSix’s real name] on Worldstarhiphop and Undergroundhiphop was enthusiastic.

Beyond simply ‘a rapper who raps well,’ there was a great deal of interest in the story that Sanghyun had.

The story of a musician who had almost conquered Korea coming to the LA underground solely to do better hip-hop had a strange appeal that stimulated hip-hop fans.

Of course, there were negative reactions, but as Hadel Raines predicted, LA’s hip-hop fans and rappers actively supported him.

FiveSix had never said that he was a musician who was successful in Korea, and that he had worked hard in the underground.

Around that time, Hoodman’s story was covered in the magazine-style HiphopDX, and American hip-hop fans once again showed great interest.

The story of Hoodman and No Color were strangely intertwined, creating a good response.

-No Color is a really great song. These are lyrics that only ‘people of color’ can write, and a rap that only FiveSix can sing in the world. This song gave us emotion and momentum for racial discrimination.

-Can the word momentum be used here?

-Shut up. That’s not the point.

-Interesting. I’ve always thought it was strange that hip-hop complains about discrimination against blacks, but also spews indiscriminate abuse at relatively weak people such as gays, lesbians, and people of color. Through No Color, FiveSix has made his place in the contradictions of hip-hop culture.

-Isn’t that too much interpretation?

-I don’t think FiveSix completely intended it either. But as a result, that’s what happened.

At some point, audiences began to come to the Curtain Call Tour touring California solely to see ‘FiveSix’.

In particular, the rush of Koreans was amazing.

California was the state with the largest Asian population in the United States. This was because the distance was relatively close and the climate was similar to that of Asia.

The proportion of Asian people in the United States is about 5.8%, but San Francisco has 33.6% and San Jose has 32.4%. Of course, there were many Koreans among them.

When you go to a foreign country, you become a compatriot, and Koreans who didn’t know much about Sanghyun, and even Japanese and Chinese people, came to the Curtain Call Tour a lot.

To those who were discriminated against, Sanghyun, who was confidently raising his name in the hip-hop scene where even white people could not easily intervene, was a pretty cool existence.

The Curtain Call Tour, which had left for Santa Rosa after finishing two performances, returned to San Francisco due to the huge number of performance inquiries from Asians.

EMI Music and Sony Music hurriedly began to officially provide FiveSix’s video clips.

Sony Music, PP’s agency, realized the enormity of the Asian rush and allocated 15 minutes to Sanghyun.

Until then, the stage that Sanghyun was in charge of was 5 minutes and 30 seconds.

He matched 5 minutes with screen video, “The way we live” 1 verse, and “No Color” 2 verse, and the remaining 30 seconds or so was a time to shout out PP.

In fact, 5 minutes and 30 seconds was too short.

This was even more true for Sanghyun, who was thirsty for the American stage.

And finally, as the stage was extended to 15 minutes, Sanghyun was able to properly show his musical world.

And the Curtain Call Tour lineup and the audience in California were able to realize that Sanghyun was not only a rapper who rapped well, but also a rapper who performed well.

However, the most heated (?) was not Sanghyun, Hadel Raines, or the audience, but Plan Paper [PP’s full name].

“This monkey son of a bitch!”

PP, who couldn’t even stand K-Dot’s stage, couldn’t stand Sanghyun’s stage at all.

However, allocating 15 minutes to Sanghyun was an instruction from a high level that PP could not afford to be arrogant. Besides, he couldn’t come forward because he had a history of kicking out sub-musicians.

In fact, Sony Music was coveting Sanghyun, who had suddenly fallen out. A treasure that can work in the United States and in Asia.

There was no precedent for how far an Asian rapper could go in the United States, so it was impossible to calculate. But he was a talent that would work 100 percent, no, 1000 percent in Asia, whether it was Korea, Japan, or China.

And EMI Music had the same thought.

However, what Sony Music and EMI Music, who were preparing to seduce Sanghyun, received was a certificate of contents [proof of ownership].

The host who had a provisional contract with Sanghyun was Yoshiki, who was in charge of the PP division, not the Curtain Call Tour. And there were no special clauses in the provisional contract. Therefore, EMI Music and Sony Music had to pay the copyright for the performance video of FiveSix that was distributed ‘without permission’.

And the host was H&R INC and Hadel Raines, who returned to the popular music scene after 10 years.

-Kyaaaaaaak!

-FiveSix!!

As the favorable views of American hip-hop fans mixed with the Asian reaction, Sanghyun’s stage gradually heated up.

Sanghyun’s popularity was increasing as he toured.

The power of Worldstarhiphop, HiphopDX, Undergroundhiphop, and YouTube, which are popular with hip-hop fans across the United States, was enormous.

Of course, there were also disapproving views and critical voices. In some areas, black gangs even threatened Sanghyun on stage.

But Sanghyun didn’t care. He had already expected this level of threat and prejudice, and he had experienced it in LA.

Nothing dangerous would happen. Hadel Raines was by no means a sloppy manager.

The tour continued with fantastic times.

Sony Music, which learned that Sanghyun belonged to a company called H&R INC, was still keeping Sanghyun as PP’s opening rapper because they didn’t want to raise his pay for no reason.

But no matter what anyone said, Sanghyun was participating in the tour as a proud lineup member.

As time passed, in early April.

The Curtain Call Tour arrived in the last city to wrap up its California schedule.

The second largest metropolitan area in the United States after New York.

The home of Hollywood, the center of the American film market.

The place where the most Korean immigrants live in the United States.

The City of Angels.

Los Angeles.

He left as a hype man, but he wasn’t when he returned.

Four months after Compton Black Block, Sanghyun, who returned to LA, had already gone beyond ‘LA’s underground musician’, which was his starting point, and was approaching the next stage.

< Verse 37. Next Stage (完) >