Korean HipHop 101

Lawrence laughed at my question: "do you like HipHop?" He then replied, "your question is like, I am asking you if you like rice." He seemed to be proud that African Americans created HipHop music. He then gave me a lecture of HipHop 101 at Argo Tea cafe. It was last May. He would have been even more proud if he had known how such music styles spreaded to another culture.

In my opinion, Koreans have adopted and tranformed the styles very well. Korean HipHop started in the early 1990s when Seo Taiji's "난 알아요 (I know it)", the first rap song in Korea was released. The song was a huge smash hit. However, it was late 1990s, with many Korean Americans back to the country, when HipHop stepped into the Korean mainstream music. The number of Korean HipHop artists mushroomed.

Now I cannot follow who are the hottest, but my favorite Korean HipHop artists are Drunken Tiger, T (Yoon Mirae), Dynamic Duo (or previously CB Mass), Epik High and MC Sniper. For many Japanese, MC Sniper may be a good introductory K-HipHop because his songs cover some famous Japanese songs: Ryuichi Sakamoto's "the Shelering Sky" was arranged in "Baby Don't Cry", and "봄이여 오라 (Come unto Spring)" used Yumi Matsutoya's "春よ来い (Come unto Spring)". Also, a Rocky's soundtrack song is featured in "Better than Yesterday".

With combinations of 21 vowels and 19 consonants, Korean HipHop songs RHYME ALL THE TIME.