Episode 72: M.A.D.E. prologue—The YG Famillenium (1988-2006)
This is the first part in a series of episodes on BigBang’s magnum opus: M.A.D.E. I’d had the idea of trying to cover the album the same way I did Winner’s EVERYD4Y and SHINee’s The Story of Light (two other K-Pop masterpieces) but the more I researched, the more I understood that the story of M.A.D.E. is really the story of BigBang and, more broadly, of K-Pop as a genre.
This first episode—The YG Famillenium (1988-2006)—covers the founding of YG Entertainment and the origins of both the early YG Family sound and the origins of some of the characteristics that would define the agency through this early era.
People curious to hear more on this early era can check out 1TYM member Danny Im’s 2017 podcast on Spotify as well as his various other podcast appearances such as on Fun With Dumb. Danny seems like a super nice guy and it’s a lot of fun listening to him talk about the old days.
I’ll also point people to the massive Seo Taiji Archive if you’d like more information on Seo Taiji. I’d love to dedicate a series of episodes to the short and influential career of Seo Taiji and Boys because there is a ton of material to dig into.
I can’t speak to the origin or authenticity of this video but it appears to depict Seo Taiji hard at work as a bedroom computer warrior, if you’d like an idea of the type of rig he’d have been working with.
I’d also like to give a shout out to Old R from the K-Pop Sunbaes (check out the podcast!!) for lending me her expertise and helping me work through a few things. Old R pointed me towards obituaries for Go Kyung-Min, the stylist who came up with Seo Taiji and Boys snowboarding look and who later co-founded Amoeba Culture, home of Dynamic Duo and Uhm Jung-Hwa.
CEO Byun Do-Seob of Yedang Entertainment passed away in June 2013 under tragic circumstances.
The catalog of Lee Hyun-Do of Deux is also worth digging into. His legacy is almost completely ignored in English but Force Deux is considered one of the best 1990s dance pop albums.
Hyun Jin-Young, who Sean of Jinusean back danced for as part of Wawa, is someone I’ve mentioned on the podcast before and is another unsung (in English) legend of K-Pop. Hyun Jin-Young has completely turned his life around in recent years and you can find him on Instagram.
Park Nam-Jung is best known by K-Pop stans today as the father of STAYC’s Sieun but he was a huge star in his own right back in the 1980s and it’s worth dialing up a few songs to check out his cool moves, fresh from the dance floor at Moonlight Club. You can even spot YG and other Moonlight Club regulars dancing behind him.
This video has a bit of Perry speaking English about 5 minutes in and you can get a sense of the family atmosphere at YG Entertainment at the time. Early BigBang fans would also often say that T.O.P. looked a lot like Teddy and you can kind of see it here as well.
The songs played are:
“Haru Haru” by BigBang (0 to 10 in Japan, live with the Band Six)
[“Bae Bae” Freestyle] by Lil Yachty
“Kim Satgat” by Hong Seo-Bong
“Can See Far” by Park Nam Jung (and check him out in action!)
“I'm Chief Kamanawanalea (We're the Royal Macadamia Nuts)” by the Turtles (from one of the all time classic 1960s albums, The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands)
“Say No Go” by De La Soul
“Method of Modern Love” by Hall and Oates
“ 난 알아요 (Club mix)” by Seo Taiji and Boys
“Girl You Know It’s True” by Milli Vanili
“Like an Indian Doll (DJ mix)” by Nami and Boom Boom
“너에게” by Seo Taiji and Boys (MV)
“하여가” by Seo Taiji and Boys (MV)
“발해를 꿈꾸며” by Seo Taiji and Boys (MV)
“나를 용서해” by Keep Six (MV)
“Gasoline (English version)” by Jinusean (MV)
“Baggy Jeans” by NCT U (MV)
“Tell Me feat. Uhm Jung Hwa” by Jinusean (and check them out doing the song in 2015 on Infinite Challenge! CUTE!)
“1TYM” by 1TYM (MV)
“HOT 뜨거” by 1TYM (MV, and keep your eyes peeled familiar faces!)
“Storm feat. G-Dragon” by Perry (MV and check out the live performance with Perry’s bleached hair and colored contacts!)
“Come Back To Me” by Se7en (MV feat. Heeleys and the Music Camp performance I describe in the episode)
“Real Wunz feat. Cypress Hill” by Jinusean (The whole album is on Spotify! Go listen!)
Our opening song today is BigBang’s “Haru Haru,” performed live at Yanmar Stadium Nagai in Osaka, Japan, on July 31, 2016, during their 10th anniversary 0 to 10 concert tour. I thought it would be nice to open with this song because not only was “Haru Haru” one of BigBang’s first real hits and not only because this arrangement slaps but also because I think that teen angst aside, you can hear the seeds of what BigBang’s sound would mature into. Which is our topic in this series of episodes.
As we begin to accept that BigBang has ended their journey together as a group, I thought it would be worth looking back at what I consider to be K-Pop’s artistic pinnacle: M.A.D.E. For new K-pop fans, especially those who started following K-Pop after 2018 or so, it’s impossible to overstate how massive both BigBang and this album were. And far beyond the metrics, statistics, and Perfect All Kills, the album is simply… good. No, not good—great. A masterpiece. And it was everywhere. I often talk on here about how idols and K-pop are a subculture even in Korea and it’s true that there are a lot of quote unquote hits that nobody outside narrow K-Pop spaces has heard of. That’s not the kind of hit I’m talking about when I talk about BigBang and M.A.D.E. But don’t take my word for it, here’s American rapper Lil Yachty freestyling over BigBang song “Bae Bae” in 2016, in honor of BigBang’s 10th anniversary. The video for this is amazing and I’ll link it in the show notes. It goes for over 20 minutes and features the young breakout rapper in front of BigBang member standees.
In the six plus years since BigBang went on hiatus for the members to perform their mandatory military service, then returned from military service, then dropped one last major hit, and then essentially disbanded, English speaking K-Pop fans have been subjected to some truly wild misinformation, bitterly negative press, and outsized histrionics about both the group and its members. Before I start talking about the album, because this is my podcast, I think it’s worth going back to give an overview of the group itself, where they came from and where they were in 2015 when M.A.D.E. was released.
And because this is my podcast, to really understand where BigBang came from, we need to take a look at their agency, YG Entertainment, because BigBang, who debuted in 2006, helped build YG Entertainment into one of the premiere K-Pop companies, much in the way H.O.T. and then TVXQ did for SM Entertainment. And to understand where YG Entertainment came from, we have to start with a group called Seo Taiji and Boys.
So we return once again to the 1980s in Seoul, South Korea, where a young man, the son of an electrician, future founder of YG Entertainment, named Yang Hyun-Suk also known as Yang-Goon or YG, has given up a career in the buildings trade in order to dance. Now, YG had had a passion for dancing since he was in middle school and a love for music from guys like Michael Jackson, so, it makes sense that once he’d abandoned the pragmatic career world, the next step would be… to join a break dancing crew. YG joined a crew called Spark (스파크) alongside a guy named Lee Juno (who will pop again in a few minutes) and ended up as one of the many regulars at Moonlight Club, a dance club frequented by Black American G.I.s in the Itaewon neighborhood of Seoul.
Echoing the way American sailors brought rock and roll records into the British port city of Liverpool in the 1950s, inspiring the future Beatles among others, Moonlight Club was where young Koreans could pick up the new sounds and dances from America and perfect their own takes on them. This is ground I’ve covered in other episodes but the 1980s was a time of cultural liberalization in Korea and part of this process was the birth of a new, Seoul-based, teen-focused pop music scene. All the old rules were being thrown away and teens were hungry for something that was all their own.
YG, who had become a well known dancer at the Club, was eventually hired on as one of the backing dancers for the hottest teen idol in town, another Moonlight Club regular named Park Nam-Jung. Like Hyun Jin-Young, who I’ve discussed in previous episodes, Park Nam-Jung is an early K-Pop figure who has since been written out of the narrative in English but he was massively popular with teen girls when he debuted in 1988. Although Hong Seo-Bong’s “Kim Satgat” is technically considered the first Korean rap song, it was more of a novelty song, like Blondie’s “Rapture” and some credit Park Nam-Jung with the true first attempt at a Korean language rap with his 1989 song, “멀리 보이네”. Like YG, Park Nam-Jung loved the dance and early hip-hop music he was hearing at Moonlight Club.
Unfortunately for Park Nam-Jung, the record company he was signed to, TGR, thought he should be sticking to a more conservative sound, something closer to what the popular trot singers of the time like Cho Yong-Pil were doing. But Park Nam-Jung did his best to try and meld those stodgy melodies with fresh and hip elements, whether it was with his Moonlight Club dance moves or sneaking in a rap section as with 멀리 보이네.
And, clearly, enough of his own flavor came through that it impressed a young middle school dropout and aspiring musician named Seo Taiji who happened to catch a performance of Park Nam-Jung and Friends at some point in early 1991. The teenaged Seo Taiji had left heavy metal band Sinawe and was scraping by playing bass for an indie band and trying to figure out the next steps in his career. As the story goes, the indie band and Park Nam-Jung and friends shared a bill one night and impressed with what he saw, Seo Taiji went backstage to introduce himself to one of the “Friends”, YG, and asked about learning how to dance. YG had no interest in teaching him. Seo Taiji at this point was still a scraggly teen with long, unkempt heavy metal hair. Not quite the kind of guy that YG, who was a few years older and quite handsome and cool, necessarily wanted to hang out with. So, YG tells Seo Taiji to just go to Moonlight Club—which Seo Taiji did. But Seo Taiji is not a club guy, so a month later he comes back to YG saying, okay, so now will you teach me? But YG still didn’t want to do it so he quoted an outrageous sum (4.5 million won) for three months of lessons, payment in advance, and was shocked when Seo Taiji actually deposited the money. Then unfortunately (or fortunately) before lessons could really get going YG gets called up into the military for his mandatory military service.
And here our story might have taken a very different turn but YG ended up being discharged early from the military due to a previously undiagnosed heart condition. As he would explain, colorfully, about his early discharge on an episode of Healing Camp in 2012, “Just like how a wild bird will die if you cage it, my heart got sick caged inside the military, unable to dance.”
So, somewhere between six and eight months after YG disappears with Seo Taiji’s money, around October/November 1991, YG returns to Seoul (presumably with some new heart medications) and looks up the weird long-haired kid, thinking maybe he’ll see if he still wants those lessons. But Seo Taiji hadn’t just sat around doing nothing for all of those months. Seo Taiji, who again was still a teenager at this time, had cut his long, heavy metal hair and had been working on some hip-hop inspired demos for a solo album using a new digital music tool called MIDI and a technique called “sampling.”
Without getting too into the weeds, MIDI or musical instrument digital interface, was a standard developed in the early 1980s that essentially allowed a composer to save the skeleton of their work—the pitch, duration, etc.—on a floppy disk (anybody under 30, ask your parents what that is) and then be able to use that skeleton to trigger sounds on an digital instrument like a synthesizer or a drum machine. It revolutionized the music-making game for guys like Seo Taiji who had no problems working alone on their computers—which almost certainly would have been an Atari ST. With MIDI you didn’t need access to a huge professional studio or a team of musicians ready to play whatever charts you wrote out for them. With a handful of floppy disks, an Atari ST, and some digital instruments, a person alone in her bedroom could be her own Phil Spector and the Wrecking Crew.
And then there’s sampling. Sampling is one of the foundational techniques used in hip-hop. In the 70s, DJs figured out ways to “loop” sounds manually on their turntables. But at the time Seo Taiji was working on his demo, a producer or DJ could use a piece of equipment called a sampler to record a short snippet of an existing record, such as the Turtles 1960s classic “I’m Chief Kamanawanalea (We’re the Royal Macadamia Nuts)” and then use that snippet in building a brand new song. insert De La Soul “Say No Go”
It’s sometimes misunderstood as a lazy and uncreative way to profit off of somebody else’s work and maybe that’s true in some cases but, at its best, sampling should be understood as a postmodern composition technique, akin to musical collage. Sampling repurposes and recontextualizes existing sounds into new forms. It was a key part of early hip-hop culture and as the technique spread, it led to more and more ambitious layering of sounds. Early hip hop artists drew from a wide palette from the aforementioned Turtles to German pioneers Kraftwerk to funk and soul artists like James Brown. Listen to the Wu Tang Clan’s Method Man talking about some of the music that inspired him:
Seo Taiji was fascinated by the music coming from acts like the Beastie Boys, whose 1989 album Paul’s Boutique is considered an early hip-hop classic. Their musical journey from punk rock to hip hop must have spoken to the former heavy metal bassist and it’s no coincidence that an early incarnation of Seo Taiji’s new act was simply called: the Taiji Boys.
If you remember from previous episodes, South Korea at the time, had some very lax copyright rules, especially on foreign material. Bootlegged and black market media was very pervasive and music fans didn’t have the sense of preciousness about Official Albums the way they did (and still do, to an extent) in countries like Japan. In the memoirs of Hasegawa Yohei, a Japanese musician and vinyl collector who visited Seoul around this time, he talks about walking down the street and spotting a prize album he’d been hunting for just flung on the back of a trash truck! That’s how little regarded physical albums were in Korea. So, while albums like De La Soul’s groundbreaking 3 Feet High and Rising would soon become next to impossible to make in America because of copyright restrictions and lawsuits, Seo Taiji in Seoul, Korea, was operating in a much more sampling-friendly atmosphere. [Insert example]
Accusations of plagiarism would dog Seo Taiji for essentially his entire career but I think these musical borrowings are really better understood in the context of that postmodern hip-hop practice of sampling. He was remixing and recontextualizing “samples” of foreign sounds and songs for Korean ears and Korean tastes. He wasn’t just blindly copying Western music but rather using the tools of the hip-hop revolution to make something new out of the vast sea of music available from his local black market music dealer, just like his counterparts in America. Seo Taiji was mining these records for melodies and samples to turn into something new, something Korean. A new sound that would influence a whole new generation of Korean musicians. [Cross fade these two]
But back to our story. So, YG is discharged with a heart condition and looks up the scraggly long-haired teen who had paid him a stupid amount of money to learn how to dance and he finds a now short-haired Seo Taiji, who says he is preparing for a solo debut with an album of hip-hop influenced songs. Dance music. Now this is something YG can work with. He wants in and talks Seo Taiji into forming a trio, recruiting his friend, one of the best dancers on the scene, the guy who had famously choreographed the memey “Pinnochio dance” for Lee Sang Woo, his old buddy from Spark, Lee Juno, who was a good few years older than both Seo Taiji and Yang Hyun Suk, to also join the new team.
This team would become the legendary Seo Taiji and Boys.
Seo Taiji had been shopping his demo album around with little luck. Not only were his songs a bit too out there compared to what was on the scene but, the real deal breaker, he also wanted to be involved in the production, something that was a big no-no for the major record companies. Remember Park Nam-Jung getting handed trot melodies? But like the Beatles getting rejected by the majors and ending up at small label Parlophone, with a producer whose previous work had been in comedy albums, Seo Taiji’s demo would end up at Bando Records, a small record label that had previously specialized in language instruction tapes and religious music.
Bando, perhaps looking for an entry into the lucrative new pop scene, took the gamble on Seo Taiji. Unfortunately, perhaps because of the lack of experience in pop, they also left everything in the hands of producer-manager Yoo Dae-Young, a Seoul scenester and experienced DJ and producer who’d previously worked with acts like Nami and Boom Boom, and their 1990 hit, “Like an Indian Doll.”.
Yoo Dae-Young’s role in the formation and debut of Seo Taiji has been mythologized by Yoo Dae-Young but as best as I can tell, at some point in late 1991/early 1992, he signed Seo Taiji and Boys to his “Young Planning,” worked out the deal with Bando and, crucially, hired Choi Jin-Yeol to road manage the new group.
Choi Jin-Yeol is a key piece here because he was an experienced manager with industry connections and know-how. If you remember from previous episodes, Choi Jin-Yeol at this point in 1991 had just quit the struggling SM Entertainment after their premiere hip-hop act, a somewhat wild and out-of-pocket singer named Hyun Jin-Young, had been caught smoking marijuana and sentenced to prison time. Choi Jin-Yeol liked the young Seo Taiji, who in Choi Jin-Yeol’s retellings, was a quiet, serious kid who didn’t like to party and would rather be shut up in his room playing with beats than out at the club, and willingly took on direct management of the group.
So with the team in place, the debut album Seo Taiji & Boys is released on March 23, 1992. A week or so later on April 4, 1992, the group appeared on MBC and kick started a Seo Taiji craze among teenagers with the explosive “Nan Arrayo.”
A lot of mythologizing has built up around this moment and I think it’s important to understand that—unlike how it’s often portrayed in English—“Nan Arrayo” wasn’t just dropped into Korean music scene like some kind of hip-hop cargo cult. Hip-hop sounds and dance had already been introduced to mainstream Korean teen audiences by guys like Hyun Jin-Young and Park Nam-Jung, not to mention Yoo Dae Young. There were other guys making beats in their bedrooms on Atari STs in Seoul. Seo Taiji and Boys didn’t revolutionize Korean teen music as much as they took a musical subculture that had been bubbling under and mainstreamed it.
Which is not to say that Seo Taiji and Boys could have been anyone. Perhaps it was because he wasn’t part of the existing scene around Moonlight Club that the former bass player was able to land on a fresh way of rapping in Korean. The way he played with syllables and rhythms was different to previous attempts at Korean language rap. The team also had a bold new fashion sense, as well as the best dancer and choreographer on the scene in Lee Juno.
They also had the advantage of timing. Like the Beatles hitting America in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, when the nation needed a pick-me-up, Seo Taiji entered the market at a time when teenagers, especially teen girls, needed something new and exciting to focus on. The teen idols of the past few years were gone. Hyun Jin-Young had been arrested; Park Nam-Jung was tired; Sobangcha had disbanded. And super popular foreign boy band The New Kids on the Block was caught up in the lip syncing witch hunt in the wake of the Mili Vanilli scandal.
Talent, luck, timing, and style. Seo Taiji and Boys had it all and the hysteria around the group hit hard and fast.
The trials and tribulations of Seo Taiji and Boys, before they finally disbanded in early 1996, deserve their own episode series so for right now I’m just going to focus in on a few key things.
Point 1. Seo Taiji’s rebellious business sense, which (allegedly) caused a lot of hostility towards him in the media. Right after they debuted, Young Planning CEO Yoo Young-Dae was ready to ride the wave of teen popularity by scheduling a barrage of performances, promotions, and events. This was a strategy that Seo Taiji, who considered himself an artist, not an idol, was extremely unhappy with. He wanted to be in his bedroom tinkering on his computer, not schmoozing at the club. The last straw, at least as legend has it, was CEO Yoo scheduling a concert for the group without consulting them. When he found out about the scheme, Seo Taiji felt that it was impossible to put on a decent show with such little notice. Again, he was an artist, not a dancing monkey. But they were unable to cancel, with advertisements already circulating and tickets sold, and Seo Taiji and Boys felt like they had no choice but to perform. But the strain and stress of doing it was just something that Seo Taiji did not want to repeat.
This concert had been scheduled because of the existing industry mentality of squeezing every last drop from a new artist before the fickle teen audiences had a chance to get bored. Make hay while the sun shines; oversaturate the market while you have teens’ attention. It’s a short-sighted strategy although one that you can still find in K-Pop. Seo Taiji was going to flip the script.
So, with Seo Taiji unhappy with CEO Yoo and his management… he fired him and started his own company, hiring on the experienced former SM employee, Choi Jin-Yeol (remember him?) to take care of management. This was arguably more explosive in the Korean music industry than the teen hysteria unleashed by “Nan Arrayo” had been. An artist firing his management and starting his own company? Can you do that?? Seo Taiji did.
After the debacle with CEO Yoo, Seo Taiji, now under his own management, leaned into a strategy that was the opposite of oversaturation. It was undersaturation. Or what would come known as the “Mystery Strategy” (신비주의 전략). Reserved by nature, Seo Taiji limited his public appearances, refusing to do the kinds of public relations that would have been expected of a musician-executive at his level of popularity. He believed that this strategy of undersaturation would prolong his shelf life as a musician, even if it ruffled some feathers in the short term. Unlike the Japanese-style idol strategy later employed by SM Entertainment beginning with H.O.T., with a focus on various types of media, including film, Seo Taiji and Boys only appeared on television to perform their songs… well, when they weren’t getting hassled for their costumes and lyrics.
Seo Taiji was a middle school dropout in a culture that (still) puts a lot of emphasis on formal education; he was a homebody and something of a teetotaler in a business culture that (still) revolves around drinking too much and partying; and rather than do business with the old men of the industry, he started his own company and did things his own way. But the negative press from following his own path didn’t seem to dampen the demand for his music. If anything, his rebellious image made him more beloved by his fans.
Point 2. Another important thing to note about Seo Taiji and Boys is that Seo Taiji and Boys had inadvertently kick-started something that I like to call the K-Pop Trend Generator. K-Pop, or at this time, gayo, in Korean, more than any other popular music industry I’ve encountered, lives and dies by the Trend Generator. In my opinion, at least, the K-Pop industry is at its best when there’s a strong, unique, artistic vision dominating the scene, giving lots of good material and inspiration for the rest of the industry. In K-Pop, a rising tide lifts all boats and an artistic vacuum sinks them.
Seo Taiji and Boys had inadvertently kicked off the Dance Singer (댄스가수) wave and it led not only to Hyun Jin-Young’s triumphant (at least for the moment) return to great acclaim with his album New Dance 2 and its title track “You in my Unclear Memory” which replaced “Nan Arrayo” on teen stereo systems across the country but also opened up room for acts like Cool, Turbo, Deux, Clon, Goofy, and an aspiring young singer named J.Y. Park.
But like any great artist, Seo Taiji wasn’t content to repeat himself. Not musically and not stylistically. Each new album cycle not only brought with it a new sound, but also new dance trends, and, very importantly, a new style. Seo Taiji and Boys understood they weren’t just making music, they were putting out a complete pop culture package with every comeback. The first album was known for Lee Juno’s whirlwind dance as well as the School Look (스쿨룩) which featured lots of bold primary colors, shorts, and the infamous overalls with one strap undone. Seo Taiji, himself, was especially striking in this look, which emphasized his youth and delicate appearance. Female fans, in particular, were drawn to his cute “Little Prince” look.
Seo Taiji and Boys next album Seo Taiji and Boys 2, released in June 1993, leaned heavily into Seo Taiji’s wheelhouse: heavy metal and rock. It even included a sultry sax laden power ballad, the lovely “To You.” But on tracks like the absolute banger “Anyhow Song,” you can hear the seeds of the maximalist sound that would feed into what SM music director Yoo Young-Jin would go on to perfect with H.O.T., a mix of R&B, hip-hop, and screaming heavy metal. Seo Taiji and Boys combined this sound with a fashion style influenced by reggae and hip-hop. They popularized baggy, oversized trousers worn low on the hips and, even, for the very fashion forward teens, a “Reggae perm” (레게파마). It was this look, specifically the “reggae perms,” more than the music, which got them banned from television and inflamed the critics and censors—already not inclined to cut Seo Taiji and Boys any breaks due to Seo Taiji’s combative attitude towards the industry as mentioned in point 1.
Seo Taiji and Boys 3, released in August 1994, switched styles again and had songs like the classic rock-soaked “Dreaming of Bal-Hae.” And to go with the Zeppelin-esque anthem, the style theme was sort of fantasy British Isles with Seo Taiji infamously even appearing in a kilt.
Seo Taiji and Boys 4, released in October 1995, is a return to the hip-hop sounds of the first album, something that YG himself would later take credit for encouraging. The group promoted the songs in nylon snowboarding gear and vivid multicolored hair, something that would later become a K-Pop style standard.
So, it wasn’t just the songs that hit big with the youth. These fashion trends pushed the envelope of what could be allowed on television and despite, or perhaps because of, the controversies around the reggae perms and kilts and vivid multicolored outfits and hair, teenagers were quick to jump on board and follow along. If we are to take Seo Taiji and Boys as the “fathers of K-Pop” then we need to understand that this absolutely includes both the boundary-pushing music, dance, and fashion.
Point 3. The last thing I want to touch on with Seo Taiji and Boys is his relationship with the fans. There’s an anecdote from Choi Jin-Yeol’s memoirs (a book I’ve only found in pieces online), which may be apocryphal so take it with a grain of salt. The story goes that Seo Taiji had given strict instructions that every fan letter was to be kept. However, one day, while he was in the office, he witnessed a fan finding a postcard in the garbage, and having something of a breakdown over it. Seo Taiji was furious and, from then on, only he would handle the fan mail.
Seo Taiji disbanded the Seo Taiji and Boys official fan club, afraid that fan culture was becoming commercialized but, unofficially, Seo Taiji and Boys fans organized themselves into a powerful consumer block. Famously, they took over the entire third floor at the first Dream Concert in 1995—a feat that would become a mark of prestige for K-Pop boy groups in years to come. Seo Taiji might have been too ethical to try and milk his fandom of every last won but the industry was watching. Fans, especially passionate female fans, were a large and as yet untapped resource.
When Seo Taiji and Boys announced their disbandment in January 1996, just months after the fourth album release, it was a pure media circus. The group, still operating under the Mysterious Strategy of minimal press engagement, seemingly vanished. Popping up days later holed up in a hotel outside of the city before finally holding a press conference on January 31, 1996, announcing disbandment and Seo Taiji announcing his retirement.
Seo Taiji fucked off to America but YG and Lee Juno weren’t finished with the entertainment business.
YG took all of the profits he’d saved from his time in Seo Taiji and Boys and started a new company: Hyun Planning, and quickly launched his own three member boy group called Keep Six in July 1996. Unlike the rather wild styling and music of Seo Taiji and Boys, Keep Six were a very straight ahead R&B dance-vocal group. The guys were talented, had catchy tunes, and were quite handsome. Unfortunately they happened to debut a month or so before SM Entertainment launched H.O.T. on September 7, 1996, and unleashed a new wave of female fandom hysteria.
Keep Six’s debut album sunk without a trace, taking all of YG’s savings with it. All of that Seo Taiji money was gone. YG had played it safe and had lost it all. Everything. And remember he was the son of an electrician, not exactly a silver spoon family background. Fans new to K-Pop may think of YG Entertainment as this massive, eternal conglomerate but it came from very humble origins.
Even with nothing in his pockets but a dream, YG didn’t give up. He pulled on his greatest strength—well two of his greatest strengths. 1) Identifying talented people and 2) Bringing them all together to make things happen. Hyun Planning was bankrupt. Finished. But YG reached out to Yedang Music CEO Byun Doo-Seob and, with a new partnership in place, he tried again.
Yedang Music, a passion project of CEO Byun, a great lover of music, was doing quite well at the time and taking a chance on one of Seo Taiji’s “Boys” was right in line with what the company was doing. Yedang worked with the very popular group Roo’Ra, had picked up popular dance music duo Deux after their third album in 1995, and even distributed world class artists like Soviet rock legend Viktor Tsoi in Korea. The partnership with YG would end up serving both sides quite well while it lasted… which it did for some years. The earliest BigBang singles were even released on Yedang.
With everything on the line, YG could not and would not miss again. Rather than continue trawling the same old dance scene in Seoul, he’d gone scouting abroad. Specifically in Los Angeles, which had a massive Korean diaspora population. The crew he ended up gathering was the Majah Flavah or MF Family, which would form the core of what I consider the classic early era of YG Entertainment.
The story goes that in 1997, YG greeted Seo Taiji and Boys fans at a fan event and told them he would be debuting a new group soon and then he played a new song for them. That song was “Gasoline” and the new group was called JinuSean. Their debut album, Jinusean, would be released on March 1, 1997, and with it would come a new chapter in K-Pop.
Keep Six had been good on stage but they were missing something crucial: branding. Call it the Majah Flavah factor. YG was going to double down on MF. Not only was “Gasoline” a heavier hip-hop sound than anything YG had done before with Seo Taiji and Boys but it was also very cool and had more than just a touch of the American exotic. The music video was set in Los Angeles and even had some scenes set inside a prison.
But Majah Flavah wasn’t simple hip hop posturing. Jinu and Sean were both Korean-American. Sean was from Guam, an American military hub like Seoul, and Jinu from California. This new generation of Korean-American rappers brought with them back to Korea, attitudes and experiences that gave their lyrics and music a different feel to what was already on the scene in Seoul. Maybe even letting them tap into that growing diaspora market back in the United States.
And JinuSean weren’t boyish teen idols. They were a well-matched set of tall, well-built, handsome, confident, worldly, and sophisticated men. JinuSean offered something completely different to what was on the market already. Not a dance music duo but a real hip hop duo.
Jinu, already in his mid-to-late 20s when JinuSean debuted, and famously the grandnephew of the very respected artist Nam June-Paik, had attempted a singing career a few years previously, debuting with 나는 캡이었어 in 1994 without gaining much traction, and he’d gone back to Los Angeles before getting scouted by YG.
Sean, also in his mid-20s, had been leader of the third generation of Hyun Jin-Young’s backing group Wawa, under Lee Soo Man and SM, before Hyun Jin-Young’s second arrest and scandal. Sean had also been a back dancer for Seo Taiji and Boys. He was the double threat—-rap and dance. Sean had also been known in the Moonlight scene for his cool dancing and, just as important, his cool fashion. Out and about around Seoul, Sean exuded hip hop fashion, with his Nike Air Force Ones, oversized t-shirts, and baggy jeans.
YG was not taking any chances with their debut album. If JinuSean flopped, it was unlikely he’d get a third chance at success. Every industry connection was used, including bringing in ringers like the talented Lee Hyun-Do from Deux, who was also under Yedang, and popular female singer Uhm Jung Hwa (who would a decade later become an honorary member of the YG Family). While it was the “authentic” hip-hop of “Gasoline” that would spark a generation of young aspiring Korean rappers, the upbeat love song “Tell Me” featuring Uhm Jung-Hwa was the hit. And it remains one of JinuSean’s best known and most popular songs.
Written and produced by Lee Hyun-Do, with JinuSean contributing their verses, “Tell Me” is a back and forth between a lady, Uhm Jung-Hwa” and her gentlemen lovers: JinuSean. “Tell me what’s really in your heart,” Uhm Jung-Hwa plaintively sings while JinuSean rap the man’s point of view.
JinuSean did well enough selling a reported 700,000 copies of the album that YG, after renaming MF Planning to Yanggoon or YG Planning due to some trademark issues, was able to launch their backing dancers as a new group, a four member hip-hop group called 1TYM.
1TYM debuted 18 months later on November 15, 1998, with One Time For Your Mind.
JinuSean were already adults at debut, but 1TYM were teenagers. They had an effortless goofy, floppy-haired teen boy vibe that was unlike anything else being done in Seoul at the time. Like JinuSean, they had something of ann American glamor and were 100% hip hop, but they were also positioned to tap into that large teen market that SM Entertainment had unlocked with H.O.T. They weren’t teen idols but they were idol group-adjacent. Cute and charismatic enough that girls loved them but also cool so guys didn’t have to be embarrassed to be fans.
1TYM’s leader was a kid named Teddy, who had been born in Korea but had gone to school in Los Angeles, where he’d met his buddy Danny. The two were massive rap and hip-hop fans. According to Danny, the pair recorded a rap demo at a local studio that ended up in the hands of YG, who’d been impressed enough to ask to meet them. The two LA kids would be joined by trainees Oh Jin-Hwan and Song Baek-Kyung, both from Seoul. And there was one more American recruit working behind the scenes—a guy named Perry, who was an old buddy of JinuSean’s Sean from Guam. A mixed-race rapper born in California but who had moved to Gaum with his family as a kid.
“Gasoline” is credited to Yang Hyun-Suk but is widely believed to have been written by Perry. Perry’s Guam crew had been called… Majah Flavah and he had even drawn the Majah Flavah logo. Perry is also all over the early 1TYM catalog. For all that YG likes to tie his past with Seo Taiji into the YG Entertainment mythology, in my opinion, anyway, it’s really that combination of Perry’s American hip-hop sound with Lee Hyun-Do’s more Korean dance music flavor, that was the calling card of this first generation of YG Entertainment—not the rock-based sound of Seo Taiji and Boys.
Perry’s sound was clean and sparse. He liked layering different keyboard lines, forming melodies that caught in your ear and stayed there. “1TYM” from 1TYM’s debut album is a good example of the classic Perry sound. There’s that little synthesizer riff “do do do do do do do” that hooks into your ear and just sits there.
Perry was not only a talented producer but he was also a mentor in the studio, helping to create a culture at YG that encouraged the young talents to take an active role in creating their own music. For years it was this culture in the studio that set YG Entertainment apart from other K-Pop companies. Not that idols from other companies didn’t write and produce, of course, but it became something that YG Entertainment was known for. Danny from 1TYM describes hiding away with the members at a house and just recording their third album alone. Sure, maybe their third album wasn’t all that well received but the fact that YG let his acts do pretty much whatever they wanted, set the agency apart from other entertainment companies at the time.
And that trust YG had in his talents paid off. After bombing with their first self-produced album, 1TYM came back with Once N 4 All at the end of 2003, which was well-received and included the song “Hot,” now considered one of their signature songs, written and produced by… Teddy, although you can definitely hear that Perry influence in the beat.
Perry had stayed behind the scenes likely because he didn’t speak Korean all that well at the time but that kind of talent can’t be hidden away forever and, on September 4, 2001, Perry made his own debut with Storm. Hanging a lampshade on how unusual his mixed race ethnic background was in Korean pop at the time, Perry bleached his hair blond and wore colored contacts, which, on purpose or not, leaned into the fashion-forward looks pushed by Seo Taiji and Boys just a few years earlier. And on that title track on that debut was a rap feature by a talented young trainee, all of 13-years old, going by the name G-Dragon.
While hip-hop in Korea was generally booming, with Drunken Tiger, DJ Doc, Cho PD, and a young talent named Psy, all quite popular following in the wake of JinuSean and the MF cum YG Family. JinuSean’s “A-Yo,” in particular, the title track from their 2001 album The Reign, was a real hit and one that’s had a long legacy. I even came across a fancam of SM Entertainment idols rapping “A-Yo” at an SM Town concert in 2010.
Unfortunately, as the early 2000s dawned, the financial side of the music market in Korea was in the process of tanking. Record sales even for premiere teen idol group H.O.T. had started down sliding, let alone for the hip-hop-not-quite-idol group 1TYM or hip hop acts without the strong support of a teen girl fan base. Illegal downloads were cutting into revenues and although there were moves to try to mitigate this by cutting deals with the big tech companies who were manufacturing devices like the brand new mp3 player, it was like trying to put a box around the ocean tide. A losing battle.
There would also be a massive crackdown of corruption in the music industry in 2002, referred to as PR비 which we’d translate to English as something like PR-Gate. As far as I can tell, YG and his company, YG Entertainment, weren’t directly implicated in the corruption charges but the investigations threw a chilling effect over the entire industry as executives like Lee Soo-Man of SM Entertainment fled the country to avoid arrest. It was at this point in 2002, dealing with very low funds, that YG would bring on his brother, Yang Min-Seok, to manage the financial side of things.
So, anyways, for a number of reasons, while Perry’s album had been well received by hip hop heads, it hadn’t been the massive financial success that JinuSean’s rap debut had been just a few years earlier. But then nobody’s albums were selling even 300,000 copies anymore, let alone 700,000 like JinuSean’s debut. Old methods of generating a profit were increasingly unviable. Dance music was out; even idol groups were out. New revenue streams needed to be found and they needed to be found soon. And two avenues that looked promising were from 1) soloists and 2) from expanding overseas. JYP Entertainment had just debuted a promising young R&B singer/dancer named Rain and S.M. Entertainment had just blown open the door to Japan with a (very young and) talented singer named BOA.
Enter Se7en.
And enter he did, on a pair of Heelys, booting the sputtering K-Pop Trend Generator back into action and re-injecting life into the floundering agency.
The young Choi Dong-Wook, soon to be known across Asia by his stage name, Se7en, had joined YG Entertainment as a trainee when he was in middle school. Grinding away at rehearsals after school. He stuck with it, despite the objections of his father, and when YG was looking around for a potential teen idol, there was Choi Dong-Wook. He was the right age, could sing and dance well, was charismatic, and, importantly, he was very cute.
After a test run song on a YG Family album in late 2002, Se7en made his debut on March 8, 2003, with an album titled Just Listen. Se7en not only got the nation’s teenagers wearing Heelys, he broke new ground (and new revenue streams) for YG Entertainment by signing onto a boat load of brand endorsements and other non-music projects. Se7en was part of the YG Family but he leaned further into the commercial side of things than the YG Family had previously ventured. It wasn’t that he was less authentic in his art than 1TYM or JinuSean but he was a lot more polished, having had all of that time as a trainee.
Se7en wasn’t marketed as a rapper but as an R&B singer/dancer, think of artists like Usher or the white Usher, Justin Timberlake, as examples. Se7en’s debut stage on Music Camp on March 22, 2003, for “Come Back to Me,” has him styled about 180 degrees opposite of the ragtag 1TYM. He’s got glowing skin, gently feathered hair, and is wearing a white suit that is a stylized version of a school uniform. A wind machine kicks in at the chorus…. 1TYM may have been cute, but Se7en was pure heartthrob.
“Come Back To Me” was a straight ahead K-Pop R&B ballad but Just Listen still has that classic YG Family sound on songs like “Luz Control,” written by Perry and featuring YG singer Wheesung and YG rapper Lexy, who, like Se7en, would also end up pushed in a more poppy direction.
Interestingly, at the same time that Se7en was being prepared to be launched into pan-Asian superstardom, YG Entertainment was also keeping a foot in the local Korean music scene by partnering with R&B Producer Park Kyung-Jin, who was responsible for debuting the very well respected vocal group Big Mama—who were deliberately promoted as being selected for their vocals not for their looks. Park Kyung-Jin also worked on Just Listen, mixing his R&B style with Perry’s hip-hop beats, really truly mingling the commercial and the artistic in a way that YG Entertainment would be known for, for at least the next decade plus.
And it worked.
Se7en sat on top of the music show rankings for over a month with title track “Come Back To Me” and his follow-up in 2004, Must Listen, with title track “Passion” did just as well. In 2005, Se7en made his official debut in Japan with “Hikari” and followed it up with a steady drip of singles. The media package around Se7en emphasized that he wasn’t just “riding the Korean wave” but was aiming to be the complete package like BOA.
As 2005 turned to 2006, YG Entertainment had left the doldrums of the early 2000s far behind and YG was even in the media floating the idea of an American debut for Se7en and YG Entertainment, bringing the Korean take on hip-hop and R&B back to America. Se7en was the present. Se7en was the future. Se7en was the hope for global domination.
But while Se7en was off conquering the global R&B market, YG couldn’t let the domestic market wither away. Thanks to SM Entertainment and TVXQ, boy groups were back and back in a big way. SM Entertainment offered polished vocals and dancing but what if YG offered his own twist on the boy group. Following in Se7en footsteps, this new group would combine the commercial and the artistic, leaning into the self-produced branding that YG had carried with him from his days in Seo Taiji and Boys. This would be Korea’s first boy group to really combine the hip-hop sound with the glitz of the idol world. Something that teenagers in Korea would really take to. Like 1TYM, they would be cool enough for guys to listen to but like Se7en, they’d have that heartthrob appeal to hook the ladies.
That group would be called BigBang.
And with that cliff hanger in place, I’ll send you out on one of my favorite tracks from JinuSean’s The Reign, their excellent 2001 album. Before working on this episode series I hadn’t really listened to much of JinuSean’s catalog but I found myself driving around town just blasting The Reign. Maybe that says more about my age than anything else but I was digging that JS flavor.
So, this is track three of The Reign, a little song called “Real Wunz,” music by Perry, and featuring B-Real of California hip-hop group Cypress Hill, who according to a 2001 interview with Jinu, waived his usual fee because he dug what they were doing.
The album is available on Spotify so you too can blast it while driving around town!