The internet is awesome.

I was curious what I can expect from South Korean culture so I decided to look up some of the local music. Highly impressed.

So before this the extent of my South Korean exposure was the film Oldboy (Soooooo good… as long as you turn it off15 minutes before the end…) and the occasional episode of M.A.S.H..

(Farther, you know you’ve never seen a full episode of M.A.S.H….)

Well… Ok, whatever. One movie is the limit of my cultural exposure to the country. There. You happy?

(Are you sad?)

…a little…

(Then I’m happy.)

Awesome…

Anyway, I decided to do a little research on some of the popular music in the country and was happily surprised by some serious talent. Here’s a taste with accompanying YouTube videos after the jump.

Hip Hop: I was incredibly surprised by the Hip Hop scene there. I was expecting it to be terrible but there’s some good stuff.

Drunken Tiger: Korean-American Hip Hop group. Amazing! Tiger JK, the band leader, grew up in LA in the 90s and you can hear serious 90s West Coast Hip Hop influences in his work. He moves back a forth between English and Korean seamlessly also. I’m really happy with this find.

Outsider: Fastest rapper in South Korea. The production on this song reminds me of some of Twista’s production. Either way, he’s good.

MC Mong: Hahaha! I love this guy’s style. Great humor and a song equating love to ice cream. Awesome.

K-Pop/R&B: A lot of their Pop music is crap just like all Pop music, but they still have some good’uns.

HaHa: I really like this song. Reminds me a lot of where R&B was here in the states in the mid 2000’s.

Tasha Reid: Tiger JK’s wife. She was born in Portland, TX to a South Korean mother and an African-American father. In a country as homogenous as South Korea her fame was unlikely to say the least, but her popularity just goes to show that progress is made with every generation, no matter where. It doesn’t hurt that she’s widely considered the best singer to ever grace the South Korean pop charts either though.

BoA: She’s huge in South Korea and Japan but when she used this song to try to break into the American market she quickly went back in defeat. Despite the fact that I can’t recall a single Asian singer breaking into the American market ever, I don’t see why this song didn’t catch. Not only does it have the Dubstep influences that are huge in our Pop music right now, she’s also cute, a good dancer and better than half the folks in our Pop charts currently. I guess sometimes shit just happens.

Metal: Most of their metal sounds like cheap knock-off Euro-metal but there are a couple gems.

a doom: This is a Gothic Metal band. I haven’t heard a good Gothic Metal band since the Australian band Virgin Black. They aren’t amazing but I think they’re pretty solid.

Crash: They have a much more modern sound than a lot of their brethren. They sound like a lot of the newer Thrash Metal acts of the mid 2000’s.

Moonshine: A bit of good Black Metal. Very riff and keyboard heavy stuff. Little bit of Goth thrown in for good measure. Me gusta.

 

These are just some of my favorites that I found in an afternoon. There’s plenty of others out there. If you’re interested go find them!