The Rap Star [EN]: Chapter 247

< Verse 39. Debut >

***

Originally, Sanghyun had no intention of staying in LA after the Curtain Call Tour ended. He and Hadel had already planned to go to New York and build another career as soon as the tour was over.

The reason Sanghyun continued to stay in LA was entirely due to his impulse.

Sanghyun thought of his choice as an ‘impulse,’ but Hadel Raines thought of it as ‘intuition.’

“Hey, Mr. Ha. New York is good, but I want to stay in LA a little longer.”

Sanghyun had started calling Hadel Raines ‘Mr. Ha’ in Korean a while ago. It was a nickname he used jokingly at first, but for some reason, it felt so natural.

Hadel Raines still couldn’t understand why it was ‘Mr. Ha’ instead of ‘Mr. Raines’ when his last name was ‘Raines,’ but he was quite used to it now.

“In LA? Why?”

“I just want to. I keep thinking it would be good to connect more musically with my LA friends.”

Hadel paused for a moment at Sanghyun’s words.

If it had been him ten years ago, he would have shaken his head without hesitation.

The ‘No Color Project,’ which was more than 90% complete through the Curtain Call Tour, was scheduled to be completed by going to New York to build a career. And in the past, he never changed his plans.

But Hadel nodded.

-Promotion is magic, but the magician is a musician, not a planner.

This is what he had realized over the past 10 years.

Hadel also had unwavering faith in Sanghyun.

In his long experience, stars often chose to go the roundabout way, leaving the easy path behind.

Not all of those choices led to good results, but a significant number of the results that led to so-called ‘jackpots’ came from those roundabout choices.

That was the intuition of a star, a superstar.

‘Maybe my promotion philosophy has changed, or maybe I’m just a huge fan of Five. A superstar.’

That’s how Sanghyun ended up staying in LA.

Hadel Raines believed that Sanghyun’s choice would eventually help him.

There would be no visible results in the short term, but in the long run, it would be a device to further solidify Sanghyun’s identity as ‘from the LA underground.’

But Hadel’s thoughts were wrong.

About a month later, he found himself deep in thought, staring at a CD.

‘How should I promote this?’

He was so worried that he couldn’t sleep.

Because the tracks weren’t good?

Because the album’s composition was poor?

Because there was no source to use as a promotional topic?

Not at all.

Rather, there were so many ways that he was going crazy.

A good choice is to choose the best and discard the second best, but all the ways to package the album seemed to be the best, so he couldn’t choose.

And Hadel never decided which promotion method to use until the end.

And there was no need to make a decision.

An album called began to devastate LA and the state of California.

***

Sanghyun, Kendrick, and J. Cole created in two weeks and were exhausted.

In fact, the production schedule didn’t have to be so tight.

Kendrick and J. Cole didn’t have much to do, and Sanghyun didn’t have much to do for the next two months, so it was an album that could have been made slowly.

Nevertheless, the album was made so quickly because of the synergy effect brought about by the talents of the three. A hellish synergy effect that made it impossible to rest.

When Kendrick and J. Cole got tired, Sanghyun suddenly spat out an amazing verse. Then Kendrick and J. Cole, inspired by it, started working again.

Conversely, when Sanghyun and Kendrick got tired, J. Cole spat out an amazing melody, and when Sanghyun and J. Cole were tired, Kendrick wrote crazy lyrics.

There was no way they could rest.

They didn’t want to rest because the guy next to them was so good.

In addition, Sanghyun’s talent as a beat maker, which J. Cole and Kendrick had never expected, played a big role in shortening the production schedule.

In 2008, Kendrick didn’t have a career as a producer yet.

Kendrick’s mother was a singer, so his family wasn’t poor, but they weren’t rich enough to buy a lot of producing equipment.

In fact, Compton rappers usually started their careers as singer-songwriters after experiencing a successful debut. After accumulating enough wealth to buy producing equipment.

This was the same for Kendrick, and Kendrick had predicted that their album would be produced by J. Cole.

But Kendrick didn’t know what beats Sanghyun had been making and hiding on his computer.

“What the fuck……!”

That was Kendrick and J. Cole’s reaction when Sanghyun first brought a USB and played the carefully selected beats.

Sanghyun showed them all the beats that he had been too precious to show anyone.

Because it was Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole.

Among the millions of American rappers, including the underground, they were the rappers who were always in the top ten.

After two weeks of pouring all their energy and mental power into music, except for survival and physiological phenomena, they had an album in their hands.

Of course, it would take a few more days to make a formal sales album, but the work was created anyway.

“By the way, how should we promote this? First of all, T.D.E. [Top Dawg Entertainment] and H&R INC people have to meet, right? Call Jermaine’s manager too… Sanghyun, what do you think?”

Now Kendrick called J. Cole Jermaine (J. Cole’s real name) and FiveSix Sanghyun.

At first, the pronunciation of Sanghyun was a bit strange, but now he was quite fluent. It was because they had been through thick and thin together for two weeks.

Sanghyun and J. Cole paused for a moment at Kendrick’s question. They had made it like crazy, but they hadn’t thought about how or where to release it.

Kendrick was affiliated with Top Dawg Entertainment (T.D.E) in LA, and Sanghyun was affiliated with Hadel Raines’ H&R INC.

J. Cole didn’t have an agency, but he had a manager who had been with him from the beginning. His manager was now in New York.

So, in order to release the album, T.D.E. and J. Cole’s manager had to create a profit-sharing model, focusing on H&R INC, which had the widest managing spectrum, and start negotiations on promotion.

It was a strangely complicated method for those familiar with the Korean pop music scene.

However, the American entertainment, label, and recording systems are so large and complex that it is not uncommon for a musician to be affiliated with or collaborate with three or four companies.

Looking at Kendrick a few years later, he was affiliated with ‘Top Dawg Entertainment’, ‘Aftermath Entertainment’, and ‘Interscope Records’, and was also a musician affiliated with ‘Black Hippy’, which was changing to a commercial label.

In addition, Top Dawg Entertainment had a collaboration with Warner Bros. and Asylum Records.

Six companies were involved in one of Kendrick’s albums, so it was common for three groups to come together like now.

At that moment, Sanghyun said something out of the blue.

“What do you guys think about entrusting it to Bebo Records?”

“Bebo’s Bebo Records? Why?”

“Nigga, Yellow Monkey, Flip. Would it be too greedy to show the unpainted truth?”

Nigga, Yellow Monkey, Flip.

Terms that denigrate blacks, Asians, and mixed races.

And this is also the title of track number 1 of .

Sanghyun didn’t want to hastily package their album. There was something about packaging that obscured the essence, and this album was exactly like that.

MTB (Mix Them : Abbreviation of Black) had too many sources to package.

-Therapist, who gained Jay-Z’s attention with his handsome appearance and excellent lyrics and rap development skills, and made a name for himself in the New York underground.

-K-Dot, a ‘hot rookie from Compton’ who received an offer to join T.D.E. with a mixtape he released at the age of 16 and participated in the album of top musician The Game.

-FiveSix, who appeared like a comet in 2005, led the 888 crew, turned the Korean music scene upside down, and is considered to have led the golden era of Korea.

What would happen if the discographies of the three people representing the East, West, and Third World rap scenes were heavily promoted and the album was released?

Of course, listeners’ interest would inevitably be attributed to ‘Who did better on this album?’

And that would soon be transformed into support for J. Cole by East Coast hip-hop fans, Kendrick Lamar by West Coast hip-hop fans, and FiveSix by Asian races.

Not only this.

The moment the advertisement ‘An album created by super rookies of three different races!’ is attached to MTB, what will the public think?

Nine out of ten people would think, ‘The agency planned something interesting?’ or ‘The agency guys are so greedy that they planned an absurd collaboration?’

Because MTB was such a unique project, the image of ‘the agency’s intention’ could not be excluded.

However, there was no commercial intention in Sanghyun, Kendrick, and J. Cole getting together.

They gathered purely for music.

Three rappers who recognized each other’s music, recognized their talents, and were influenced by inspiration, came together regardless of skin color.

Sanghyun didn’t want that purity to be violated.

Kendrick and J. Cole quickly understood the hidden meaning in Sanghyun’s words. And then they were greatly impressed.

‘That’s why he abandoned all the great success he had tasted in Korea and came to the LA underground.’

The absolute purity of music that Sanghyun showed had something that fascinated rappers.

J. Cole and Kendrick nodded, and Sanghyun expressed his gratitude.

In fact, if it weren’t for Kendrick and J. Cole, they would not have accepted the seemingly absurd proposal to give up promotion for the sake of musicality.

However, both of them in the future were not people who made commercial music and succeeded commercially. They were just people who were so good at music that they succeeded commercially.

“But we can’t just wait, so we can give it to the DJs, right?”

“Of course. I’ll also tell Bebo to put it on the most visible shelf. We’re not hiding it, we’re just not covering it with strange packaging.”

Kendrick shouted energetically at Sanghyun’s words.

“Let’s conquer the NPQ chart! I think it’s possible?”

“Sanghyun, you must be familiar with chart rankings?”

“Not that familiar. As I said, the 888 crew wasn’t a team that registered a lot of music.”

“Have you ever been number one on the entire Korean chart?”

“Yes.”

“How many weeks?”

“Was it 9 weeks, or 10 weeks…….”

He couldn’t remember exactly how long JFTR and 56 JFTR had been in first place, as if they were passing the baton.

While Sanghyun was reminiscing, Kendrick and J. Cole clicked their tongues. It was the same as saying that they had been number one on the Billboard chart for 10 weeks.

“But the NPQ chart is the first time, right?”

“No. I did it with Eight, Eight, Eight Remix. It wasn’t a hip-hop chart, but a DJ club tune chart.”

“Ah, why are you talking so much? Let’s just conquer LA NPQ.”

“You asked?”

Kendrick ignored Sanghyun’s words and played the album again.

Soon, Black Hippy’s studio began to be filled with MTB’s songs.

***

MTB began to be sold at Bebo Record Shop.

And what Bebo had been planning was put into action. He used his connections to release the album to record stores in East LA at a lower price.

Record store owners who were interested in Bebo’s plan or who were close to Bebo listened to MTB, which Bebo recommended, and were immediately fascinated.

‘Don’t you have a poster for this?’

‘Poster? Why?’

‘I’m going to put it up in the store and put it on the set list with the external speaker.’

‘Really?’

Bebo asked Sanghyun if he had a poster, and Sanghyun, who hadn’t prepared anything, made a very simple poster on the spot.

It was a white piece of paper with M in black, T in gray, and B in yellow.

Bebo said he liked the simple design and produced several posters, and soon MTB began to be sold in LA record stores along with the posters.

Meanwhile, Sanghyun, Kendrick, and J. Cole performed MTB songs at a club in Compton.

It wasn’t grand, but it was a kind of showcase.

The response to the showcase was so hot that they toured more clubs in and around Compton. They even performed four times a day in Compton, which wasn’t very big.

A busy week passed like that.

“I must have put my name on the chart, right?”

“Well, I can’t guess yet because the sales haven’t been tallied. The response seems to be good.”

“Anyway, NPQ doesn’t have that high of a sales score. It’s an underground indicator.”

MTB was released on Monday, and the following Monday was the day the NPQ weekly rankings were announced.

< Verse 39. Debut > End

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