The best Kpop walks the line between the relatable and total, utter chaos - offering an alternative and respite from direction-ality in general, balking at consistency and continuity, rewarding an all-over-the-place sonic palette and attention span. In Korean Hip Hop there is very little surprise. Rappers traditionally rap forwardly. Journey as a specific vector, tickling words apart as they flow by. Emphasis authentically. Below are two who gave me a start:

T.O.P. - Doom Dada
"Haku-nama-ta-ta"

T.O.P. comes with cred, but his stoic suit and tie baritone has always been part of the totality that is Big Bang, a mainstay backdrop for the whiny bling of GD. Everyone in Big Bang dropped something last year: Well received and well made, GD's flow has been setting the standard for what Korean hip hop sounds like in the now/future, but Coup D'etat was not a big evolutionary jump for him personally. Daesung belted ballads. Sungri soothed with lounge dance. Taeyang took on a completely new identity with Ringa Linga - his ghost-rapping unsatisfying, but the song garnering much attention.

It's hard to imagine an audience for T.O.P.'s Doom Dada. Girls swooning for candlelit flow? Nerds nodding to (mostly) boring canonical authenticity (here's the Primer)? Certainly, the West - fed on the gimmick of Gangnam style - might be a little confused. Uniquely Korean, Doom Dada follows the trickster prog formula of Kpop but translated into rap. T.O.P. dives off cliffs into different registers, styles, speeds. Continuously. Deliberately. A spooky melodic callout is interrupted by a hypnotic doomsday chant. Deep space synths and pings slide over cavernous beats, a minimal maximalist composition.

The video and the beats are touched by a weird that his public appearances only suggest. Kubrick references, nuclear cauliflower flower. Digs at T.O.P.'s Big Bang persona, namely a salivary monolith of handsome, are more sly than soapbox. In Doom Dada, T.O.P. suddenly unleashes an extroverted, aggressive energy. Nothing else sounds like him, but he finally sounds like Him. A grown up gorilla, drinking champagne and snarling - an angry, dark, nimble and hard thing.

Tae Woon - Focus
Forget his risible group, forget forward motion, because Tae Woon raps in 3-D.  


Pick your references: E-40 comes to mind, Deltron, the entire SF scene, Ludacris, southern, club bangers, the legit underground. Tae Woon of boyband Speed is an anomaly. He has more skillz than average. His repertoire is broader than expected. Perfect enunciation punches syllables into submission - an enunciation which eviscerates lines. Details cluster between and inside the mundane. Phrases syncopate and scatter into the aether like atoms. Growls and yelps are exclamations - more convicted. Delivery, vocally, both are heftier than usual - more convincing. Convincing at all.

These two really make me wonder how many other talented Korean boyband rappers are repressed.