The Rap Star [EN]: Chapter 211

< Verse 32. Through to New York >

Seoul City Mind
(Seoul’s mindset)

Seoul City Vibe
(Seoul’s feeling)

Serious crime.
(It’s a serious crime)

Don’t love this city rhyme
(Not loving this city’s rhyme)

The chorus of Seoul City Mind blends seamlessly with a heavy bassline.

While singing the chorus, Sanghyun thought that the current chorus seemed to fit the raw aspect better than the original beat.

Of course, the original beat for Seoul City Mind was different. The original beat was a traditional East Coast hip-hop sound in the style of East Side, created by Minho.

However, every time Sanghyun listened to Seoul City Mind, he was vaguely reminded of Nas’s “N.Y. State of Mind”.

This was also why he came up with the theme for the song Seoul City Mind.

Of course, this was Sanghyun’s subjective feeling. Junhyung, for example, didn’t think of “N.Y. State of Mind” when he heard Minho’s beat.

We spend a hard time
(We spend a hard time)

But never cry
(But we can’t cry)

City light is so bright
(The city lights are so bright)

can’t close my eyes.
(I can’t close my eyes)

The reason Sanghyun used Nas’s beat was that he thought it would better express his music in the city of New York.

And it seemed to be working.

He could feel the audience’s favorable attitude while filling the intro and chorus.

However, the Apollo Theater audience’s reaction began to swing wildly the moment the verse started.

Sanghyun’s rap began to fill the Apollo Theater stage.

Came from the ‘Lonely Road’
Now raising my position
From Gwangju UP to Seoul-
The mirror where my enemy lives-

The moment Sanghyun’s rap began, an ambiguous silence flowed among the audience. Some frowned with dissatisfaction.

It was because they couldn’t understand anything other than ‘Came from the Lonely road’.

At first, he thought they couldn’t understand because the pronunciation wasn’t clear, but the pronunciation was too distinct for that.

The audience quickly realized that the Asian man on stage was rapping in his native language.

‘What on earth is he saying?’

However, Sanghyun continued his rap, unconcerned by the audience’s silence.

Man in the mirror
I beat him now
This shining city
Is so bigger thanks to that

Despite the strange silence, Sanghyun was not at all intimidated.

Rather, he continued rapping more confidently and firmly, trying to convey the vibe of the song Seoul City Mind.

If swagger is a term that can be used almost universally in hip-hop, vibe was the term that should be used most carefully.

To put it simply, the word vibe could be described as ‘the feeling a rapper wants to convey through a song.’ So, no matter how skillful a rap is, it was hard to see it as a good rap if you didn’t feel the vibe.

Because those raps don’t give a special feeling.

The problem was that the way to convey this vibe varied from song to song, situation to situation, or even from fan to fan who accepted the music. There is no clear answer.

However, even behind the language barrier, Sanghyun was doing his best to convey the feeling he had when making the song.

The biggest advantage, the delivery of lyrics that seemed visible, could not be expected, but the voice that conveyed the emotional line itself had not disappeared.

Thanks to this, some of the audience at the Apollo Theater were able to feel Sanghyun’s confidence and the subtle anxiety hidden behind it in Seoul City Mind.

That’s where the change in the audience’s reaction began.

A cruel city
Sometimes a warm place
But even so
A city of ten million is So sick

“Oh.”

“Good.”

The first to react to Sanghyun’s rap were the amateur rappers who participated in or were waiting to participate in Amateur Night today.

They couldn’t understand what Sanghyun was saying, but they got a good feeling from the flow and the dry but strangely focused voice that Sanghyun showed.

These were rappers who created flows and found rhymes, so they could guess the level of rap that Sanghyun was showing.

The night view whispers
Catch me if you can
Reaching out in the dark
Focus on my work again

However, on the contrary, there were also those who rated Sanghyun’s rap as extremely bad. These were either musicians who placed great importance on lyrics, or the general public.

‘What on earth is that yellow monkey saying?’

It wasn’t uncommon for East Asian participants to be at Amateur Night, but it wasn’t extremely rare either.

Of course, there were rappers among them. But there was no rapper who spat out such incomprehensible rap like this.

If that’s the case, I don’t know why they bother rapping at Amateur Night. Shouldn’t they rap in their own country?

Those who felt a great aversion to Sanghyun’s rap were thinking this way.

Still, I’m from outside the city to inside
Again, my mind is from inside the city to outside
Competition and fighting, or love and peace
Smile and blank expression, Seoul City Mind

Sanghyun’s 20 bars, which filled the Apollo Theater, came to an end.

The current first verse was a verse that was not included in JFTR’s Seoul City Mind.

This was because the latter half of this verse contained more of the emotions of 38-year-old Lee Sanghyun.

The feelings about Seoul that 38-year-old Lee Sanghyun felt.

A city where you can seize opportunities, but a city that gives you loneliness.

It wasn’t intentional, but it was a verse that he had never revealed to anyone because these feelings got into it.

Sanghyun spat out the first verse and looked down at the stage.

About 60% of the people were showing rejection with their arms crossed, and about 30% were showing a favorable reaction. The remaining 10% could not tell what they were thinking just by looking at their expressions.

It was a much better reaction than I expected.

Then it was time for the second chorus.

Sanghyun’s unique chorus, which the 888 Crew members called ‘hook slave’, still had a strong ripple effect.

Despite being a fairly difficult beat that goes in on the beat and comes out on the offbeat, quite a few people were humming and catching the rhyme of the chorus.

Seoul City Mind
Seoul City Vibe
Serious crime,
Don’t love this city rhyme

It was a proud sight to see the citizens of New York, who were even described as ‘a place where all hip-hop connects’, riding the beat and singing along to his chorus.

However, what Sanghyun truly enjoyed was singing verses made in Korean.

Of course, it was a natural fact that his Korean rap could not give a huge shock to all audiences and cause cheers.

Because the language barrier was something that could not be ignored.

Nevertheless, the reason why he insisted on Korean rap was because rapping in Korean while living in Korea was the real rap that the musician 56 had.

We spend a hard time
But never cry
City light is so bright
can’t close my eyes.

If he were to steal and sing Jay-Z’s love letter to New York, the mega-hit song “Empire State of Mind”, which will be released in 2009, would the citizens of New York at the Apollo Theater go wild?

Absolutely not.

He lived in Korea, dreamed in Korean, was inspired in Korean, and wrote lyrics in Korean.

No matter how good Sanghyun was at English, there was bound to be a difference from the language that made up the thought itself.

Of course, there are cases where English is mixed into the lyrics or the chorus is sung in English. However, this was just a way to package the message that came to mind in Korean in a cool way according to the rhyme and flow format.

As he learned while doing , rap was just about being truthful. Whether you think of it as bourgeois art or popular art, it was beyond their concern.

No matter how wonderfully packaged, if it doesn’t contain noble impulses and sincerity, it’s not a complete rap.

So, the best music he could show was this.

A truthful appearance.

Sanghyun’s voice grew louder.

Seoul City Mind-!
Seoul City Vibe-!
Serious crime.
Don’t love this city rhyme-!

People were strangely falling for the rap.

There were still many people who were dissatisfied with Sanghyun’s rap, but the important thing was that there were no ‘boos’.

One of the unique cultures of the Apollo Theater is that the audience is free to boo. The Apollo Theater’s booing was not at all an impolite audience culture, but rather a traditional culture. However, booing was prohibited for participants under the age of 15.

So, if they really didn’t like Sanghyun’s rap, the audience could have booed enough.

In other words, even if there were audience members who were dissatisfied with Sanghyun’s attitude of rapping in an incomprehensible language, it meant that there were no audience members who viewed Sanghyun’s rap itself as low-level.

We spend a hard time
But never cry
City light is so bright
can’t close my eyes.
(We spend a hard time
But we can’t cry
The city lights are so bright
I can’t close my eyes)

A voice that gets louder and then gradually lowers.

Along with it, the drums, which were like the sound of a gunshot from N.Y State of mind, became muffled. Originally, the beat change in the part where Nas’s verse 2 begins.

Sanghyun was interpreting that part in his own way.

Thanks to this, people were unknowingly reminded of the hard times they had in the huge city of New York.

Whether it was Seoul, the capital of Korea, a country they didn’t know well, or New York, which is treated as the capital of the United States, it seemed that people lived similarly wherever they went.

-Straight up!

-Go get`em!

Cheers erupted for the first time.

Sanghyun recalled the feeling when he performed Walk This Way at Sejong Instrument Store for the first time. The moment when the audience’s cheers were unfamiliar and unfamiliar, but so happy that they came out in his dreams.

The cheers he received on the New York stage were just as happy.

Numerous imaginations flashed through his mind.

Standing on the same stage as Eminem, Jay-Z, and Nas.

Appearing on BET Cypher [a freestyle rap showcase on the BET Awards].

Being nominated for a BET Award or a Grammy Award, etc.

The most pleasant imagination among them was that many people would find his rap interesting and sympathize with his message.

‘It will take some time.’

There were also skill issues, but as mentioned earlier, there would also be language issues. Language was the root of thought.

After becoming as accustomed to being inspired in English and writing lyrics in English as breathing.

After artificiality is eliminated from these actions.

After naturally experiencing American hip-hop culture.

From then on, his true challenge would begin.

If the first challenge was the Korean scene, the second would be in the United States. To achieve the many things in his imagination.

‘I have to come back to the Apollo Theater then. Not on Wednesday, but on Saturday.’

Sanghyun gripped the microphone tightly again.

Because this place was the starting point for such a challenge. He wanted to finish with a perfect rap without mistakes.

That’s how Sanghyun’s second verse began.

The still Korean rap echoing in the Apollo Theater.

However, the rejection seemed to have lessened compared to before. Now, about half of the audience had a pretty good expression on their faces.

The rap containing the sound of this city
A tag with three fortunes attached
A fax containing the JFTR message
My tax paid with rap money

If the first verse had a classic old-school East Side feel, the second verse began to show off a sophisticated new school feel with the flow intricately woven together.

“Oh, Shit!”

Some of the audience members who had a good feeling from Sanghyun’s rap shouted.

This was because the layback [rapping slightly behind the beat] and syncopation [accenting off-beats] were so exquisite.

A nuclear bomb launched from Gwangju fell on Seoul
A pop filter absorbs sweat, latex
Seoul City vibe national tour KTX [Korea Train eXpress, a high-speed rail system]
The rap containing the sound of this city

Sanghyun’s verse maintained the same rhyme structure that started with ‘rap’, but contained an ever-changing flow that constantly played with the beat in the middle of the bar.

The structure of continuing the bars as if spitting out other rhymes, but returning to the rhyme of the ‘ㅐ’ vowel, had the power to focus people at once.

Interestingly, most of the audience members at the Apollo Theater who were impressed by Sanghyun’s rap were amateur rappers. Or those who are very deeply immersed in rap music.

Rappers, or those deeply immersed in rap music, could fall for the rap just by listening to the rap skills. Not all Koreans who enjoy listening to foreign rap understand and listen to foreign languages.

That was the case with the audience members who were admiring Sanghyun’s rap at the Apollo Theater right now.

It was possible to guess that if Sanghyun’s rap was in a language that could be understood, there would have been an enthusiastic reaction beyond admiration.

Apollo Theater.

Amateur Night.

Sanghyun was announcing the start of his American career and confirming his own mind and potential.

***

< Verse 32. Through to New York > End

ⓒ