The Rap Star [EN]: Chapter 248

< Verse 39. Debut >

Sanghyun, J. Cole, and Kendrick didn’t check the NPQ [New Music Platform Quarterly] rankings until well into the afternoon.

The reason was simple: they were all asleep.

After performing at a club until dawn the previous day, the three members of MTB’s lineup had crashed at J. Cole’s house, the closest to the club.

The first to wake up was Sanghyun.

“Uuuuuung.”

The vibration of his phone subtly irritated him.

“Ugh, my head.”

Sanghyun, who had drunk alcohol for the first time in a while because there were no performances scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, clutched his head and sat up from the floor.

At first, he was disoriented, but when he turned his head, he saw Kendrick and J. Cole asleep in the same bed.

Just looking at them, he could tell how energetic the performance had been the night before.

Traditionally, Americans don’t share a bed, even with siblings. To Sanghyun, it was a difficult social norm to understand. In America, grown men sharing a bed was often interpreted as them being in a relationship.

Kendrick and J. Cole had initially bickered about who would get the bed, but they had simply passed out from exhaustion.

Sanghyun was fine sleeping on the floor, so he had taken it upon himself to sleep there. Before falling asleep, J. Cole had jokingly marveled that Koreans were a mysterious race.

“Uuuuuung.”

The persistent vibration sound reached Sanghyun’s ears as he was thinking about this and that, still groggy.

The problem was that he couldn’t find his phone. He knew he should look for it, but he was too lazy and couldn’t be bothered.

‘Eh, whatever.’

Sanghyun figured it would stop eventually and just lay back down.

However, after the phone stopped and then rang again several times, he felt like something was actually wrong and started searching the room.

Kendrick didn’t have his phone on him, and J. Cole always left his phone in the car during performances. In the end, the call was for him.

“What is it?”

Sanghyun finally found his phone and tilted his head.

He had assumed someone had an urgent matter and was calling him persistently, but the reality was unexpected. He had one to three missed calls from a wide variety of people.

Hadel Raines, Kirk Kim, Schoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Westrun, Mel, Bever, and so on.

Sanghyun called Bever, the most recent caller.

“What’s going on?”

“Where are you? Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

“I was sleeping at Jermaine’s [J. Cole’s real name] house after the performance yesterday.”

“Come to the record store quickly with everyone. The NPQ rankings have been announced.”

“How high is it that you’re making such a fuss? Just tell me.”

“Do you want to watch Star Wars and have the ‘I am your father’ reveal spoiled from the beginning? You have to save the best for last. Just come quickly.”

Sanghyun burst out laughing at Bever’s analogy.

“Where did you learn such a cool analogy? Our clueless Bever?”

“Just come quickly.”

Bever hung up. Sanghyun was starting to wake up, and he was now curious about the NPQ rankings.

Sanghyun woke up Kendrick and J. Cole, who were sleeping soundly in the same bed.

“Hey! Gays! Get up quickly.”

“Ummm……”

J. Cole hugged Kendrick in his sleep. Kendrick woke up from the sensation.

“What the Fuck……?”

Eventually, the MTB lineup arrived at Bever’s Vevo Record after Sanghyun had teased Kendrick and J. Cole about being gay about ten times.

There were a lot of people at Bever’s Vevo Record. But strangely, people were crowded in only one area of the wide record store.

It was where the MTB album was displayed.

Also, judging by their actions, most of the people were there to buy the album, not just to listen to it. People who had already listened to it once and decided to buy it.

Sanghyun, who was coming to the record store for the first time since the album was released, thought that MTB’s popularity was better than he had expected. Maybe Bever’s fuss was because of the NPQ album chart number one.

“Oh? K-Dot!”

At that moment, one of the black kids in the record store recognized Kendrick and shouted.

With Sanghyun’s suggestion, Kendrick used his real name, ‘Kendrick Lamar,’ instead of K-Dot when releasing MTB.

J. Cole was also considering using J. Cole instead of Therapist, but Sanghyun quickly applied for the release under the name J. Cole.

So, the kid who was shouting K-Dot clearly knew Kendrick before the album was released. In fact, among hip-hop fans in LA, there were more people who knew Kendrick than those who didn’t.

“This album is amazing!”

The kid ran towards Kendrick while looking at him. He looked about eight years old and was quite cute.

Then, the kid’s gaze gradually shifted from Kendrick to the left of Kendrick.

A yellow man and a mixed-race man standing next to Kendrick.

MTB is a collaboration album of black, yellow, and mixed-race people.

You couldn’t help but get the feeling.

“Oh my god!”

The kid shouted, pointing at Sanghyun and J. Cole.

“Yellow Monkey! Flip!”

“……”

Sanghyun and J. Cole were taken aback by the truly innocent way the words ‘yellow monkey’ and ‘half-breed’ came out.

Normally, if you heard such words from someone you didn’t know, you would naturally throw a punch first, but that kid was just shouting because he didn’t know the musician’s name.

Sanghyun approached and spoke to the kid.

“Kid, if you’ve heard our song, you know it’s not good to use that word, right?”

“Ah, I’m sorry. But I don’t know your name.”

“FiveSix.”

Suddenly, the kid’s face turned pale at Sanghyun’s answer. Then he started thinking about something.

Sanghyun was wondering why this kid was suddenly like this when he heard the kid’s timid voice.

“Thirty, thirty?”

“……?”

“Is it thirty-five……?”

The kid was learning the Multiplication Table at school.

The MTB lineup, who signed the album the kid bought and even gave him a poster as a gift, followed Bever into the office inside the store.

The three of them plopped down on the sofa, and Bever smiled and asked.

“What do you think we ranked?”

J. Cole asked a question instead of answering.

“But I’ve been wanting to ask, is NPQ that credible? It’s not Billboard, it’s just a local magazine, right?”

Kendrick answered.

“It’s credible. I wouldn’t say it’s completely fair, but it has a long history, and there are quite a few musicians who have made a name for themselves in NPQ and entered Billboard. You could say it’s the Billboard of California and LA.”

“Really? Kendrick, have you ever been on the NPQ chart?”

“I was number 5 on the album chart with a mixtape I released in 2005, and the albums after that all went to number 2, I think?”

“Oh, 2005 was your first mixtape, right?”

“That’s right. When I was 16.”

“That’s amazing.”

Bever interrupted as Kendrick and J. Cole’s conversation was about to get longer.

“Okay, okay, why are you talking so much? Aren’t you curious? What rank are we?”

“I’m curious.”

“But why are you guys reacting like this? Shouldn’t you be so curious that you can’t sleep the night before the announcement?”

Sanghyun scolded Bever, saying that the person who said to save the best part for later was the most impatient, at Bever’s fuss.

Bever put on a sulky expression and put down the printed paper.

NPQ is a monthly magazine, so the official magazine is published at the end of each month. The weekly rankings for 4 weeks are recorded in the magazine at once.

Therefore, the real-time rankings announced every Monday could be checked on the NPQ website, and that’s what Bever had printed out.

“Look, what rank are we?”

Kendrick snatched the paper, and Sanghyun and J. Cole also leaned in from the side.

“Oh?”

Kendrick exclaimed. But the exclamation had a slightly ambiguous feeling.

“What rank is it that you’re like that?”

“It’s 3rd.”

“3rd on the album chart?”

“Yeah.”

Being 3rd in the first week of release was a huge achievement.

NPQ rankings usually peak in the 2nd-3rd week and tend to maintain or decline in the 4th-5th week, so it was a position from which they could aim for 1st place.

However, considering Bever’s huge fuss, it was a slightly disappointing figure.

Honestly, Sanghyun had also thought, ‘Could it be number 1?’ after seeing Bever’s fuss.

When an ambiguous atmosphere lingered, where it was hard to be excited but there was no reason to be upset, Bever suddenly burst out laughing.

After laughing for a while, Bever pointed to the top of the printed paper with his finger.

“Look closely.”

“Huh? What are you looking at?”

Kendrick, who was holding the paper, had a puzzled expression. There was nothing special to see because there was only a simple table.

At that moment, Sanghyun exclaimed.

“What is this!”

“Why?”

“It’s not LA NPQ, it’s Cali NPQ!”

LA NPQ was a ranking based on the LA metropolitan area, and Cali NPQ was a ranking based on the entire state of California.

The top of the printed table clearly read ‘Cali NPQ Ranking.’

“What? California ranking?”

“Is this real?”

Bever nodded, laughing.

However, the MTB lineup clearly thought there was an error.

Logically, it is impossible to reach 3rd place on the California hip-hop album chart in just one week. Even if the album sold a lot, the NPQ chart was a chart with a low reflection of sales.

NPQ had a higher ‘buzz’ or ‘popularity’ index. This meant that even if the musical quality was a bit low, if it was popular with the public, the chart ranking would be high.

The fact that ‘Eight, Eight, Eight Remix’, a standard party tune in a foreign language, ranked first in the DJ club tune category, although it was a non-mainstream chart, was for the same reason.

“Isn’t this wrong?”

“No.”

Bever said firmly.

“Then how did this happen?”

“That’s why Compton [a city in Los Angeles County, California] is a problem. They can’t use the internet, so the news is slow.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jay-Z, The Game, KRS-One.”

“Uh……?”

The king of East Coast hip hop, Jay-Z.

Compton’s representative gangster rapper, The Game.

The teacher respected by rappers across the United States, KRS-One.

“Do you get the feeling?”

“Could it be?”

Jay-Z was related to J. Cole.

J. Cole released the mixtape in mid-2007 and received Jay-Z’s attention, and there were talks of a contract with the hip-hop label Roc Nation that Jay-Z was trying to create. That’s why his manager was in New York.

The reason J. Cole came to LA was that he sensed that his life would change soon as the contract with Jay-Z was being discussed, and he wanted to see a wider world. And the meeting with Sanghyun and Kendrick, which would really change his life, started in LA.

If Jay-Z was related to J. Cole, The Game was related to Kendrick Lamar.

The first guest of Anthony Tiffith, the president of T.D.E [Top Dawg Entertainment], where Kendrick Lamar belonged, was The Game, a famous gangster rapper from Compton.

After The Game left T.D.E, the next to enter was 16-year-old Kendrick Lamar, who caught Anthony’s eye.

The Game maintained a good relationship with Anthony even after that, and after listening to Kendrick Lamar’s second mixtape through Anthony, he proposed a collaboration.

That was the song ‘Cali Niggaz’ released on The Game’s album in 2007.

Lastly, KRS-One was related to Sanghyun.

He worked with him on the song The way we live, raised Sanghyun’s spirits at the Compton Black Block, and Sanghyun received indirect help from KRS-One during the Curtain Call tour.

They had spent about 3 weeks together in New York and had developed a personal connection.

These three masters had each given a shout-out to MTB.

< Verse 39. Debut > End

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