The Rap Star [EN]: Chapter 45

< Verse 6. Fuck Tha Show Biz >

After lunch, people gathered in the studio.

888 Crew members Park In-hyuk, Kim Hwan, Oh Min-ji, and Shin Ha-yeon. From the band L&S, Minsik and Yongjun. And even guest keyboardist Miju.

A strange silence hung in the studio.

Some were fuming with anger, while others were silently contemplating solutions. Sanghyun stood somewhere in between.

As the silence stretched, Sanghyun nudged Junhyung with his eyes. No matter what, Junhyung was the leader of the 888 Crew. It was right for Junhyung to start the conversation.

Junhyung spoke.

“Did everyone see the magazine?”

“I bought it this morning and read it. I never imagined the interview would be edited like that.”

Miju, Sanghyun, Junhyung, and Minsik, who had been at the interview, strongly agreed with Yongjun’s words.

Then, Park In-hyuk, the law student, raised a question.

“I wasn’t at the interview, but if it was maliciously edited, can’t we take legal action? They must have recorded it, so wouldn’t the original transcript be with the magazine?”

Sanghyun didn’t express it, but he thought legal action wouldn’t be as easy as Inhyuk suggested.

Inhyuk, as a law student, might believe in the power of the law, but in reality, few things in society are handled according to the law. Besides, even if they went the legal route in this case, there was a high probability that a proper objection wouldn’t be accepted. And it didn’t seem likely that a transcript would still exist.

Junhyung sighed and opened his mouth.

“The editor-in-chief said at the end that he would be editing the interview.”

‘It would be great to publish the full interview in the magazine, but that’s impossible due to space constraints. I’ll try to maintain the original nuance as much as possible when I compress and shorten the conversation, but sometimes musicians are unhappy.’

‘Ah, that’s fine.’

Sanghyun reread the magazine he had bought from the bookstore that morning, right after waking up.

The root of the incident was simple. Originally, the July issue of Show Business magazine was supposed to feature an interview with a team called ‘Indie Kid.’

Indie Kid, despite their name, was a team that had dedicated themselves to Korean indie music for a very long time.

In short, they were the grand elders of Korean indie music.

They played difficult music and liked high-level performances, so their public recognition was low, but they had appeared on public broadcast music programs several times and were respected by indie musicians.

A team that could aptly be described as musicians’ musicians.

‘I thought the release date was too tight.’

The L&S band and 888 Crew had essentially taken the place of those musicians’ interview.

Of course, even if Indie Kid’s fans were upset, it wouldn’t be a huge problem up to this point. The magazine company would decide who to interview.

The real problem was that the interview that replaced Indie Kid’s was edited to be too provocative. It was edited to provoke the band players.

Q. What do you think about the future of band music and hip-hop music?

A. Lee Sanghyun: Band music that claims to be Rock or Grunge will lose its popularity. And I think the indie music genre that will take its place is black music.

I’ve only been making music for three months. Also, most of the songs on the setlist for this performance were completed in just a day or two.

But didn’t the editor-in-chief see which song received the biggest cheers at this performance?

Sanghyun had never said anything like that.

That answer was a cleverly edited combination of Sanghyun’s three answers.

The story about Korean band music losing popularity seemed to have come up while talking about the ‘idol bands’ [bands formed and marketed by entertainment companies] that were popping up like mushrooms because of Buzz’s popularity.

The story that black music sounds would be more popular than band sounds in the idol music field, which mainly caters to teenagers, was a carefully brought up story based on his knowledge of the future.

The stories about his three-month music career and quickly making songs were definitely not in that nuance.

Lastly, the arrogant-sounding question of which song received the biggest cheers was a joke he made in response to Editor Hwang’s question, ‘How do you evaluate today’s performance by the band L&S?’

Of course, everyone laughed at this joke, and after the joke, he gave a proper answer expressing respect.

‘Did you want to do noise marketing [a marketing technique that involves generating controversy] that badly?’

He was angry.

Not all of the interview was maliciously edited. Some of it was definitely published as he said it. Sanghyun didn’t think Editor Hwang had any personal grudge against him that would make him maliciously edit it.

But.

“This… it seems like they’re trying to create a confrontational structure between band music and hip-hop music for noise marketing.”

As Kim Hwan cautiously said, the edited interview content of Sanghyun and Junhyung was framed as ‘hip-hop music is better than band music.’

As a result, even Sanghyun’s objective explanation of the differences between hip-hop music and band music was seen as ‘disrespect’ towards band music.

Q. What is one area where you can say that hip-hop music is ‘unconditionally better’ than band music?

A. Lee Sanghyun: I think it’s diversity. First of all, band music is inherently limited to the band ensemble system from the very beginning.

But hip-hop music includes the diversity to be cross-overed with numerous genres such as jazz hip-hop built by Gangstar’s rapper Guru and Japan’s Nujabes, rap metal with rock, electronic hip-hop, and R&B hip-hop.

The above interview content was also something that could be sufficiently problematic if Sanghyun was seen unfavorably.

Of course, the content that Sanghyun said before this answer had subtly disappeared.

‘Just as you can’t rank music, I don’t think there can be an unconditionally better part. If I had to pick one, it would be diversity.’

Or,

‘Of course, I know that band music also has diversity, like jazz bands, alternative bands, and rock bands.’

That content couldn’t be found anywhere.

Currently, the 888 Crew’s Cyworld club [a popular South Korean social networking site] was flooded with critical posts from musicians who were fans of Indie Kid and based in Hongdae and Busan (the members of Indie Kid are from Busan).

Since the magazine was released yesterday, the number of critical posts that started from midnight yesterday was steadily increasing.

Most of them were along the lines of ‘What does a guy who’s been doing music for three months know?’, ‘Do you know how many things are wrong in the interview? You don’t even know properly.’, ‘Is music made in a day or two even music?’

In fact, the interview had many strange things even when Sanghyun saw it because it was pieced together.

Moreover, some of the musicians criticizing 888 were hip-hop musicians. Most of their criticisms were, ‘You’re the reason hip-hop musicians are misunderstood.’

“Sanghyun, did you call that Editor Hwang?”

“He’s not answering. I’ve called the magazine company several times, but they say the editor-in-chief is out.”

Hayun’s expression darkened.

“Minsik hyung [older brother/male friend], how is L&S doing? Have you gotten any calls from fellow musicians?”

“I contacted the bands in the Gwangju area in advance. Especially the people who came to the after-party, many of them were angry with us, saying that you guys wouldn’t do that.”

Junhyung’s expression brightened a little.

“But the problem is the bands in other regions. We’ve been getting calls since this morning, cursing us for collaborating with a team like you. Even if we explain that’s not the case, they don’t listen well……”

Minsik felt so sorry for the 888 Crew.

In fact, L&S wasn’t getting directly cursed at.

Perhaps because of Editor Hwang’s intention to divide the band as ‘white’ and hip-hop as ‘black,’ their interviews didn’t have severely edited parts.

There was also the reason that they were ignorant of hip-hop and remained silent.

‘Junhyung and Sanghyun, who talked a lot about band music, are the only ones getting cursed at.’

The curses that L&S was getting now were only to the extent of ‘Why did you perform with those kids?’ and occasionally, ‘You’re always getting taken advantage of because you’re so nice.’

That’s why he felt even more sorry.

They were the ones who suggested doing the performance, but the arrows of criticism were aimed at the 888 Crew.

“Putting the interview aside, what about the photos? Those are really not it.”

“The photos are really……”

“Ugh! You bastards! Bad bastards!”

Oh Minji cursed.

Sanghyun suppressed his anger and looked at the photos in the magazine again.

Okay, let’s say the interview was a ‘commercial edit’ brought about by the magazine company’s marketing greed. But the photos were truly excretions close to delusion.

-Lee Sanghyun of the 888 Crew uses homosexual codes to make female audiences cheer.

The posted photo was of Sanghyun putting Minsik’s electric guitar around his neck.

It was taken so cleverly that, at first glance, it looked like Sanghyun was hugging or kissing Minsik.

The criticism of this part was also enormous.

He had to be grateful for Editor Hwang’s note, “Of course, these are physically healthy males, and we would like to inform you that this behavior is only part of the performance marketing,” which was attached as a small footnote under the comment.

-A girl who is moved by the performance and sheds tears

This was the part that Sanghyun was most angry about.

The crying girl was Sangmi.

Sangmi was crying because she thought her parents couldn’t see her performance. It was definitely not a photo to be used for sleazy noise marketing.

Sangmi was covering half of her face with her hand, but it was at a level where anyone who knew Sangmi could recognize her at once.

What was even more disgusting was that to properly explain the photo, he had to advertise to the whole world that her parents had passed away.

It was truly the atrocity of a disgusting capitalist company.

‘And would it be okay to post the performance poster photos and the photos I took separately during the performance in the magazine? With comments attached?’

‘Of course. Please use well-taken faces if possible.’

Sanghyun was furious when he saw this photo until Sangmi stopped him.

There were a few more photos besides this.

-Lee Sanghyun of the band L&S looking for the phone number to give to lead guitarist Bang Minsik’s individual fans.

-Lee Sanghyun disrespecting other regions through the song ‘Gwangju UP’ (Disrespect: an act of attacking through music, a unique culture of hip-hop).

The comments attached to the photos were truly absurd. Excretions.

If it wasn’t for Sangmi’s photo, he would have tried to resolve the situation while maintaining his composure, but he was really angry. Seeing the magazine made the anger he had barely suppressed surge up again, and it was hard to control his swearing.

“You son of a bitch!”

“Sanghyun……”

Hayun seemed to guess Sanghyun’s feelings and took his hand. With that warmth, Sanghyun barely calmed his anger.

“At this rate, all the people who play band music in Korea will curse us. As you know… the indie scene is very small.”

“Good things spread slowly, but gossip and bad things spread quickly……”

Miju added to Minsik and Yongjun’s words.

“I heard this morning that Lee Kyungmin is fueling the rumors.”

“That sleazy bastard Lee Kyungmin. You son of a bitch, he’s still holding a grudge from Sejong Music!”

“No, what is there to hold a grudge about? Does he have anything to be upset about?”

“What should we do? Should we post an apology on the club?”

Sanghyun shook his head at Park Inhyuk’s words.

“No. If we post an apology, the incident may subside, but in the long run, it will only look like we really did those things.”