The Rap Star [EN]: Chapter 81

< Verse 13. Circle >

Sanghyun felt a mix of anticipation and unease regarding the rhyme controversy that he had initiated.

Firstly, Sanghyun felt anticipation because the direction of the controversy was correct: the expressive methods and potential development of Korean rap.

In fact, since Korea is within the Chinese character cultural sphere, matching rhymes was easier than one might think. Except for some purely Korean words, it wasn’t difficult to find words with similar Chinese pronunciations at the end. However, this raised the issue of whether the word usage suited the context and the overall theme of the song.

Therefore, rappers had spent time researching many methods. And each had a different answer.

Verbal Jint used multi-syllable rhymes to find rhymes within various syllables, Swings used inversion to emphasize sentences and create appropriate rhymes. Dok2 mixed English and Korean, and E Sens, in songs like ‘Trouble,’ explained that he gave the same feeling to ‘pigo’ (피고 – smoking) and ‘hyeongijeung’ (현기증 – dizziness), so it was a rhyme. Besides these, there were countless other methodologies.

Although the exact details are unknown, this methodology became a topic of debate around 2007 and was refined around 2008. Therefore, Sanghyun had a strange expectation that the controversy he started might advance the timeline by two years.

Conversely, Sanghyun felt uneasy because he questioned whether the current hip-hop scene had accumulated enough nourishment to achieve evolution.

In Sanghyun’s memory, the Korean hip-hop scene had faced four major turning points.

The first was in 1999.

The album <1999 대한민국> (1999 Republic of Korea), released in 1999, can be said to have started the history of Korean underground hip-hop. This album created the underground market, and countless aspiring rappers poured in.

The second was in 2007.

At the end of what is commonly called the Golden Era of Korean hip-hop from 2004-2007, there was the birth and development of numerous rappers.

Verbal Jint, San E, Swings, Beenzino, etc., rose to prominence, and at the same time, Supreme Team, Dok2, Beenzino, etc., were formed or achieved musical progress. Verbal Jint’s album (Stigma), which would forever be recorded as a masterpiece of Korean hip-hop, was central to the rise of these rappers and the overall improvement of skills.

The third was in 2012.

With the emergence of outstanding rap stars like Illionaire and the TV program ‘Show Me the Money,’ the Korean hip-hop scene grew enormously. Although many felt it moved Korean hip-hop in a negative direction, it was undeniable that the market size grew several times due to ‘Show Me the Money.’

The term ‘rap star’ began to be used, and musicians who made a lot of money through hip-hop were born. The turning point when the hip-hop scene completely shed its ‘niche’ image and began to gain mainstream popularity through external capital inflow was 2012.

Also, movements against such popularization appeared. Starting with E Sens’s ‘Anecdote,’ which is considered a masterpiece, rappers inheriting the spirit of ‘Be The Underground’ also emerged.

The last was in 2020.

This was the year when musical exchange began in earnest with the birthplace of hip-hop, the United States. It was also the point when rappers from non-English speaking cultural spheres such as Korea, Japan, and China began to make inroads into Billboard charts.

Keith Ape’s ‘잊지마’ (It G Ma), released in January 2015, received a great response in the United States, and Korean-American rappers from LA, such as Nafla and Loopy, made their names known. Also, Tablo and Joey Bada$$ collaborated in the same year.

After that, producers advanced to the United States and volunteered to serve as a bridgehead between Korea and the United States. The number of rappers targeting the distant market of the United States increased, and this was the point when rappers began to envision a bigger picture.

Sanghyun’s concern was the intervals between the turning points in 1999, 2007, 2012, and 2020.

This interval was not a simple void. It was a period of accumulating sufficient energy for the next leap.

In 2007, Verbal Jint released the album (Stigma) with the slogan ‘The Birth of New Korean Rhymes,’ which simultaneously produced a huge number of fans and haters. And the Next Stage was formed and developed amidst such controversy.

Therefore, Sanghyun thought that the change in Korean rhymes that started with him had the potential to evolve in two directions, good and bad.

‘But isn’t it a deception to make music that’s merely appropriate for the times, not the best music you can make? I can’t do that even if I wanted to.’

In the end, there was only one thing Sanghyun could do.

To make music so that the scene can move in the right direction, even if only a little bit. That’s why he was making Crouching Writer.

A milestone, or a role model.

Crouching Writer was a rap that maximized the expressiveness of the lyrics and wordplay.

Thanks to this, the composition of this rap was different from ordinary rap music. There were no bridges or choruses in Crouching Writer. Only verses filled the beat. Moreover, the length of the verse was a whopping 100 bars.

A pure 100-bar rap.

It was a song with a playing time of 5 minutes, but except for the 10 seconds of the intro, there were no resting sections in Sanghyun’s rap.

‘Hey, are you really going to do a hundred bars? Is that even possible?’

‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

‘No, I mean, you *can* do it. But would a track that only has rap for a hundred bars without a hook be fun?’

‘I have to make it fun.’

As Junhyung worried, it was never going to be an easy task. This 100-bar rap was a challenge that Sanghyun gave himself.

Usually, hip-hop consists of 16 bars per verse. It is sometimes expanded to 24 or 32 bars, or reduced to 8 bars, but usually it is 16 bars. Thinking about it that way, you could see how difficult it was to fill 100 bars with rap.

In Sanghyun’s memory, the first rapper to put a rap of more than 32 bars on an album was Canibus.

Canibus presented a hundred bars of rap through ‘100 Bars’ on his album <2000 B.C>, released in 2000. This rap is considered one of Canibus’s best songs and gained fame by being suspected of dissing Eminem and LL Cool J. Much later, rapper The Game released a song called ‘400 Bars.’

The first musician to attempt something similar in Korea was Epik High. In the song ‘백야’ (Midnight Sun) from their 4th album, Tablo and Mithra Jin spat out 54 bars of rap each.

Following this, Epik High’s 6th album [e] included Tablo’s solo song ‘Supreme 100.’ ‘Supreme 100’ was the first 100-bar rap in Korea and received tremendous attention from hip-hop fans for its lyrics showcasing Tablo’s genius. After that, Swings also showcased 300 bars and 500 bars of rap in ‘300’ and ‘500 Bombs’ respectively.

100 bars appearing in the Korean hip-hop scene in 2005.

It was an attempt 5 years later than Canibus, but it was clear that Sanghyun would receive a lot of attention if he released Crouching Writer.

‘Can I pull this off?’

No tricks would work for this task. You just had to be good at ‘rap,’ and you just had to be good at writing ‘lyrics.’ Except for when deciding on the concept of the song, there was nothing to gain even if you knew the future flow.

In addition, Sanghyun chose the beat for Crouching Writer as the currently popular ‘East Coast boom bap beat.’ It was a deliberate choice not to rely on the novelty of the beat.

The influence that 888 Crew and Sanghyun currently wielded was so great that it was hard to believe they were rookies.

Usually, around 30 comments are posted on Hiphopplaya’s interviews. If it goes well, about 40 comments. However, the number of comments on 888 Crew’s interview was over 200. There was a controversy over the lyrics, which inflated the number of comments, but it was still a huge number.

The current perspective of hip-hop fans looking at Sanghyun is one of ‘perfection.’ Not a single verse was trite, and not a single verse was uninteresting. In this situation, if Sanghyun’s 100-bar rap wasn’t good, the negative impact would be greater than expected.

It’s a burden.

But,

‘I really want to do it.’

A place where he is evaluated only for his pure rapping skills, putting aside cheat codes for a while. Just thinking about it made Sanghyun’s heart pound.

Therefore, Sanghyun was spewing out rap like crazy in Professor Kim Woon-cheol’s lab.

‘Awesome.’

An Sumi, who was blankly watching the scene, exclaimed. At first, he seemed unable to concentrate on the rap as he was conscious of her gaze, but once he started concentrating, his entire demeanor changed.

‘He looks genuinely happy.’

How many people in Korea are really doing what they want to do? Probably almost none.

That’s why people both respect and envy celebrities in any field. They feel vicarious satisfaction when they succeed, and they feel a completely different kind of pleasure when they fail.

‘Which side is that kid on?’

An Sumi thought that Sanghyun was shining. This was not rational curiosity or affection, but the radiance emanating from someone who was working hard with all their might.

A person who is absorbed in something emits light in itself.

In that way, Crouching Writer was being steadily recorded amidst An Sumi’s admiration.

***

Sanghyun came out of Professor Kim Woon-cheol’s lab and had a phone call with Manager Oh Yeon-joo after a long time. No, she had been promoted to Deputy Manager Oh now.

‘Already a deputy manager, must be nice to be born with a silver spoon.’

The call was a simple check-up call. Sanghyun and Yeon-joo had a brief, casual conversation about how they were doing and quickly hung up.

Thinking about it after hanging up, he felt a sense of novelty.

‘I never thought I would be doing music when I first met Deputy Manager Oh Yeon-joo.’

In a way, it seemed that Deputy Manager Oh, no, Deputy Manager, had inadvertently helped him choose music. If she hadn’t come to him, he wouldn’t have learned the truth about his parents’ death, and he wouldn’t have been shocked and hospitalized.

‘If that hadn’t happened, would I still have ended up doing music?’

Thinking about it that way, that wasn’t necessarily the case either. He had a strange conviction that no matter what happened and what experiences he had, he would eventually choose music in this life.

It was really amazing to think about that. Life seems unpredictable, but it also unfolds according to a preordained path, as if it were natural.

Sanghyun still recalled the performances of Sejong Musical Instrument Store, Soft Straight Line, and Club Homie before going to bed. Revisiting moments that were like fragments of a dream, even though they were real experiences, allowed him to drift into a pleasant sleep.

“It’s cool.”

Sanghyun enjoyed the wind. The weather at the end of September, when summer was almost over, was quite cool.

< Verse 13. Circle > End

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