Bringing back them Epik High favs

Recently Epik High performed at a club. They filmed the thing (somewhat professionally, with good angles and audio) and put up all of the performances on YouTube.

They performed most of their amazing hits, but what got me super excited was when they performed their past hits. The most amazing hits that were a solid part of my middle-high school adolescence. Gawd I love them.

Go here for the full playlist of the performances in order, and I've linked some of my favourites down below.
If you do watch the playlist, notice the girl at the front near-center where she has bangs in the beginning but they progressively disappear into stringy bits of hair in her face as she sweats and gets hit by water.

LOVE LOVE LOVE


FAN

DON'T HATE ME


As you may have noticed, I just really love seeing these boys on stage together. They're hilarious and Tukutz really brings this energy that makes them so fun to watch. And I didn't know he was such a dancer...

October favs in kpop: Epik High, Ailee, Glen Check

Epik High's comeback totally beat my anticipation level for Big Bang's comeback this year. Epik High is a group that I would recommend to anybody and everybody. Their songs run deep and some are just great for laughs, but three members of the group are each so fun and amazing and talented. Their music has definitely resonates with people around the world and of all ages, and their story adds depth to what they do.

Their two comeback singles Up and Don't Hate Me are both fun tracks that are uplifting and encouraging. There is a story behind choosing their title tracks for the album, which I found quite amusing. To be honest I found the performance for Up more entertaining than the music video because of Tukutz at the end when he grabbed the mic and jumped around on stage with the other two. Don't Hate Me is just screams Epik High with how they executed the music video and the performance stage. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH.

Epik High - Don't Hate Me music video

Epik High - Up performance

They also released a behind the scenes/interview type video of them talking about each track of the album. Unfortunately YG hasn't put in any kind of english subtitles for them but check it out for some behind the scenes glimpses of their studio and music video recordings!

Ailee's comeback was also something that I was looking forward to. Her first single Heaven was amazing, and her run on Immortal Song 2 was perfect. She had proven to have a great voice and a wonderful performer, as well as have a sweet personality and she's so pretty o_o. Her new track I Will Show You is the perfect upbeat song to show off everything she's good at in a fun glitzy kind of way. Her music video is fun, but I was also impressed with all of her live performances because she's obviously not lip-synching and she sounds amazing. New girl crush right here.

Ailee - I Will Show You

I'm also going to add Glen Check here. This freakin band released a new EP called Cliché at the end of September, but I had been listening to it non-stop for the first half of October so what the hell. More amazing dirty electronic rock and roll type sound from my favourite new band of the year. Their '84 The Original is also reminiscent of the funky Jackson type era :)
How can you not love a band that puts out teasers like this?

Glen Check - Leather teaser

Check out the rest of their EP on youtube!

[Day 5 Music (is my life)]

Returning to that 30 Day Kpop Challenge that I started back in March, here's day 5 - Your favourite track from a Korean group.

This is actually really sad that I could only make it consistently through 4 days of the challenge. Pathetic.

Epik High ft. K.Will - Music (is my life)


This song has always been on my all time favourites list since I first heard it back in 2007. I was already in love with Epik High, and then this song introduced me to K.Will. Omg I fell in love with that guy almost instantaneously. His voice is so good and I jumped on all of his solo stuff for the first little while after his debut. For a while I was seriously telling everyone that I'd marry this guy for his voice (which was actually saying something since in Korea K.Will gets made fun of a lot for looking like Daesung, and that standard to Koreans is very low in terms of looks. Truthfully I think they're adorable and if a guy can sing... that's good enough for me.)

Anyways, I loved this song because it was simple, fun and I connected with the lyrics. I'm a big music appreciator, and it's definitely got me through a lot of ridiculousness in my adolescence. I know all of the words by heart and I always sing this song when I go to karaoke with my friends. Yes, I can rap. Just this one though.

[Day 4 Epik High]

I'm going to have to pre-write some of these posts in preparation for the upcoming week and a half. Exam period is near and I'm feeling the pressure :(

Day 4 // Your favourite non-idol Korean singer/group

Korean music is not all idols. The younger generation of singers typically promoting in groups, all of the members have to sing and dance on stage despite their role within the group. Thankfully, there are very talented non-idol artists in the industry as well. They're the ones that have me still sticking to kpop.

There are multiple non-idol groups that I absolutely love, such as Clazziquai Project, Winterplay, and Brown Eyed Soul. But Epik High is the group that I love the most. I've been following them the longest, and I have great respect for them, having witnessed all of the out of the norm risks they've taken with their career to express what they feel and think through music.


Epik High is a trio of a hip hop/rap/pop genre. Member DJ Tukutz creates their beats, and Tablo and Mithra rap to it. All three write lyrics and compose their songs, they also feature some amazingly unique voices in Korea in their tracks. The contrast in their voices (Mithra generally sounding like a wild husky voiced lumberjack) and their clever lyrics with Tukutz's style of beats combine for some amazing songs of love, politics, fears, hope and some random topics of pure amusement. Tablo, having done an English degree at Stanford in the States not only manipulates the Korean language in his amazing lyrics but also English, in the couple of English tracks they have done.

Wuddup world it's a kpop blog

Kpop is my guilty pleasure.

Considering that I am Korean, I was a bit late on catching on to the kpop scene. To be fair though, I didn't grow up with a lot of Korean kids around me. I never went to a big Korean church, which any Korean immigrant knows is the number one way to make Korean friends. All of my schools had next to nothing of a Korean (or East-Asian in general) population, so I didn't meet many fobs until I got to high school.

[clicking on the captions will take you to a music video from the album. They get better, I promise.]

SeeYa - Scent of a Woman (2006)

Epik High - Swan Songs (2005)

SG Wannabe - The 3rd Masterpiece (2006)

That being said, I did watch a couple of Korean dramas with my mom during middle school, but I didn't like them very much because they were like super dramatic soaps infused with a bit of comedy. What I did like were the ballads that they used in their soundtrack, which was basically where I started my interest in Korean music. I managed to get a hold of some drama OSTs (official sound track), and from there I was introduced to Clazziquai Project, Epik High, SeeYa, SG Wannabe, and Brown Eyed Girls. In high school, there was a sudden increase in the East-Asian population around me and my new Chinese friends were asking me if I liked Big Bang and Epik High. That basically sparked the explosion of kpop domination in my world. Because of my advantage of being able to understand Korean, I understood songs, dramas and variety shows without having to wait for subtitles (a service that took a  lot more time to provide back then). I was slowly able to reconnect with my Korean side through the Korean entertainment industry.

Big Bang's spread in their Hot Issue EP booklet (2007)

From about Grade 12 until now I've grown just a tiny bit weary of the whole thing. I stopped jumping on all of the new groups pretty much after 2PM because I couldn't deal with all of these 5+ member groups that all sang and danced in perfect synch. I stuck with my bias groups and gave a chance to the groups that were recommend to me by multiple people. I've definitely slowed down my drama consumption since high school (which was more out of responsibility than anything), but I still like to pop by Dramabeans to keep myself updated.

Alex - Just Like Me (2011)

Big Bang's Alive (2012)

Clazzi - Infant album (2012)

Tablo - Fevers End (2011)

2NE1 - 2nd Mini Album (2011)

Winterplay - Touché Mon Amour (2010)

That being said, I still can't let go of Korean music, which is why I've started this blog. I want to share thoughts and favourites from the Korean entertainment industry in general. I like to laugh at Engrish and I love following a lot of the fashion that explodes out of that scene (Eiffel in Seoul is a pretty good blog for that). 

So tell me, how did you start listening to Korean music?

[all images from Bugs, a Korean music site]