With the
ubiquitous Gangnam style making waves around the world, I’ve started to reminisce
about my small contribution to Korean music courtesy of the Kimchi Crew. What
we did wasn’t exactly K-Pop, more ex-pat indie hip-hop. A legacy of two studio
albums, a collection of B-sides and demos and a gamut of mostly mediocre
free-styles. The Kimchi Crew grew from a modest start- two guys with a dream
and ended as it started, modestly not much more than a year later. The crew was
my first (and probably last) experience at being a part of any type of band,
(in the loosest sense of the word), but I was hooked. All my spare time was
spent, thinking of rhymes, free styling not only in my head but also to bemused
kids I was teaching, trying sometimes unsuccessfully to edit out the
swear-words. I listened to the rough takes we had done, often. Every weekend
and some weeknights, we arranged a crew get-together, sometimes just to
freestyle (which I did poorly), sometimes to record tracks that we had wrote.
We rhymed about a variety of topics, from frivolous to issues of social
importance and even a short-lived enviro-rap crew called Secret of Elephants
that ended after one of our crew ate whale in Japan. We had the cliché weed
track, rhymes animating inanimate objects, tracks expressing our love for our
new and improved microphone (a 40,000 Won microphone moved us from Stone Age to
Iron age in recording terms). Nothing seemed out of our range. We talked up our
importance. Our friends and partners went through several stages of caring and
supported followed by annoyance, apathy and ending in downright hostility. We
made up a rival crew, the Bulgogi Boys, a fictional group from the city of
Busan. We needed an antagonist so we could write diss tracks, (even if our beef
was with a fictitous rival). The Bulgogi Boys would soon loom large in the Kimchi
crew mythology. At times, we might have even dreamed that there was a niche
market for five kimchi loving ex pat hip hoppers to light up the charts in
Korea.
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| First day in the studio. |
The crew was initially
made up by five rappers; David, “General Refuse”; Tarek, “Bongo 3”; Nixon “The
Wack MC/Golden fleece”; Aaron “Luke Warm” and myself, with a number of guest
appearences (Janine “J9 the Hookmaker; Justin “Chopsticks Tactix”; Chris,
“Bruno the modern relic” and Christine “C-Rex”). I gained not one but two stage
names, in the System Disrupter (which in turn gave its name to this blog) and
the Marvel of Invercargill. System Disruptor was spawned from a comment about
the habit of some people on a bus to push forward from the back of said bus
thus impeding the flow of those sitting up the front who are frustrated in the
bid to get out, in other words, system disruptors. More obviously, the Marvel of Invercargill was a reference to
my hometown. After two or so months of our collective output, we found
ourselves with about a dozen songs of varying quality. The pick of the bunch so
far was Nixon’s and David’s collaboration “Will rap for Kimchi”, an ode to
food, kimchi and all things edible. It was the first of our songs to have a
good hook, an uplifting “I will rap for kimchi, I will rap for food, I will rap
for anything that puts me in the mood”. This moved us away from our previous
ethos of fuck the hook, into more listener friendly sound-scapes (not that we
sold out).
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| Changing the flow. |
It was around this time that we decided that we
should lay down our tracks in a studio. Enquires were made and we found a studio
that would cost about 20 dollars an hour with a studio technician who knew his
stuff. We all concurred that it sounded like a good plan. Better than good. We
asked Janine if she could ring up and organize the studio for us. She did and
the date of destiny for the crew was set. We set off early one Saturday
morning, headed for Hongdae. The subway ride was one of nervous anticipation.
We listened to our demos, wrote out and read our rhymes, repeating them to the
beat, making changes where necessary. Talking was at a bare minimum, we were in
the zone. We arrived at the studio, buoyant. We handed our beats to our
producer, Hyun Ho. He probably didn’t know what to expect. He had told Janine
that we would be the first hip-hop group he had produced. So new territory for
all involved. Hyun Ho knew what he was doing even if he didn’t know much
English. We tended to skip between takes by going backwards and forwards
between cuss words, the universal language of rap. Hyun Ho put the beat on for
Beef Bully Bitches, the Bulgogi Boys diss track and Luke Warm was the first to
step up to the plate. “There’s no more fucking around because you’ve got to
believe that I’ve got mad beef with these fine strips of beef”. Soon, it was my
turn to step up to the mike. Donning the headphones for the first time was
surreal. I stood in the booth, oblivious to everything apart from the beat.
When it dropped, I was there. A couple of takes was all I needed. It felt good,
it felt real. We were the kings of this, the burgeoning ex-pat kimbob hip-hop
scene. The first song was completed in about 30 minutes. We all got through our
verses, we were feeling good. No guns allowed though, hookers and blow
substituted for Cass beer which flowed freely in the studio. My next time up at
the mike, it was time to drop my solo track, ‘Ajumma’s lament”, an ode to all
the unappreciated, suburban wives of Korea. Over a looped J Dilla beat, I
poured out my thoughts in one take, without cutting. It was half rapped, half
sung, 100% heart felt and probably not very good. I was starting to get over my
nerves and feeling relaxed in the studio. During that first studio session we
got through eight songs and a higher number of pitchers. After that first
experience, we were itching to get back to the studio, armed with expectation
and a few new tracks.
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| Spitting a rhyme. |
The next time we visited the studio, we brought Janine aka J9 the Hookmaker, partly for her Korean language skills to ease communication with Hyun Ho. But mostly, we had her there because of her great voice. She sang around Seoul with different groups. While we didn’t bring much, she bought the talent to the crew. This time, J9 helped out with some hooks. We felt like the real deal now, going over and perfecting rhymes and flow, doubling over some tracks, putting on some effects. We recorded a total of 19 tracks for our CD “Fermentin” plus nine tracks that Nixon and Justin did in a day and that was later released as the Shiwa Syndicate EP.
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| Artwork care of Eric. The hands spell out Kimchi Crew. |
In between studio
visits, as a surprise for the kids who had stayed at English Village for the
month, David, Aaron and myself decided to do a lunch-time concert for them. We
had talked up the crew all month to the kids so our show was highly
anticipated. We were under some pressure to perform. Could we talk the talk? I
was really nervous, practicising the song I was going to perform which was “Ban
on the side dish”, a paean to commiserate the banning of kimchi from the 2006
Asian games in Doha. I knew it back to front, I practiced all morning. I was
agitated, nervous. We met backstage, General Refuse, System Disrupter and Lukas
F Warm. I’ll let the General describe the scene.
“My bandana was becoming saturated with
sweat. My entire body trembled in nervous anticipation. This was the
culmination of so much planning, so many dreams. I was decked out to the max:
green basketball shorts emblazoned with gold stars, a white muscle shirt
accentuating nothing in particular, and the bandana – my blue gangster doo-rag
– was wrapped around the circumference of my head. In my left hand, I tightly
clutched a microphone. Beyond the stage and on the other side of the curtain, I
could hear throngs – well, at least two hundred faithful – of fans screaming
and jumping, urging us on to the stage.
“This is it boys. They want us now,” Keith’s words
resonated through me. He was energized and confident. His stage name was System
Disruptor, a moniker that altered his mindset and allowed him to slip into a
world of phat beats and dope rhymes. In his regular life he was a geneticist
from Invercargill, New Zealand, but now he was all hip hop; in the moment, the
stage and the fans were all that mattered.
“This is what we have been working towards. We’re
like Eminem in Eight Mile,” Aaron said. He was the crew’s motivator, our level
headed crutch and he calmed our nerves. Aaron also gave us new and interesting
similes to ponder. Today, he was
Lukas F warm – straight up gangster, a pure rap aficionado. The elementary
school teacher from Edmonton had morphed into a pants-hanging-so-low-that-you-could-not-help-but-see-his-ass
kind of rapper, a gold chain weighing him down while upping his gangster quota
big time.
The fans were growing restless – “Kimchi Crew, Kimchi
Crew!” Their chanting increased in intensity; great waves of sound thundered
throughout the middle school gymnasium, bounced off the walls, echoed all
around. The stage was calling. I was the first member of the crew to take the
stage and when I did I was struck by a wall of sound. Screaming Korean middle
school students became drunk with rapture, no longer able to contain the
excitement welling up from within. “Good afternoon. How y’all doing today? Did
everyone have a good lunch?” I asked, sweat beading from my brow. “My name is
General Refuse and we are the Kimchi Crew!!”
The fans – they were not so much fans as they were
our students for the month who were given no choice but to watch the show –
went nuts. The beat kicked. Hands
went up and began bouncing; the roof was being raised by the masses…… We were
rappers.”
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| Some adoring fans. |
It was true. We
were rappers, rappers with a professionally cut CD to show off and some nicely
done artwork. If a review had appeared, it may have read something like this.
“Apparently the Kimchi Crew are popular with middle school kids in
Gyeonggi-do and I can’t for the life of me see why. The quintet rhymes are
dense with similes and metaphors and dripping with post modernism and pop
culture references that seem to be so far beyond the English ability of your
average 15 year old Korean school kid as to make it impossible for them to even
understand anything they were rapping about. Yet, to the listener whose native
language is English, these devices serve to keep you hooked, if left feeling a
little bewildered at times. What the hell does dressed as a goat at a toga
party mean? With a varied display of producers on board (9th Wonder,
J Dilla), the crew jump from topic to topic with an admiring earnestness. For five guys living in a foreign country, their situation
lends itself to stories about life as they saw it in their adopted country.
This was reflected from the pseudo-gangster track “Bootlegging”, an ode to the
curious practice of ddongchimm in “Verbal Ddongchimm” * and even “Ajumma’s
Lament” a touching song to dis-satisfied married women in suburban Korea (which
incidentally all feature hooks from new talent J9 the Hookmaker). Not
surprisingly, given their moniker, this first up effort has a strong emphasis
on the fermented muse, especially the Wack MC who rhymes on “Kimchi Clout” that
he would give up sex for a taste of the ‘chi. And you know that he would.
The album kicks off with fan favourite “Will Rap for Kimchi”, which sees senior
member General Refuse and Wack MC rhyming about their favourite foods without a
touch of irony and actually making it sound good (how many other songs do you
know about food that are good). There’s the obligatory diss track "Beef Bully
Bitches" directed towards the South Coast Rivals, the Bulgogi Boys.
Flowing over the beat, the crew casually tear strips of the beefy boys,
explaining why the Busan based crew are the most wack ex-pat crew found in
Korea. You get the impression that maybe they didn’t need to perform it-the
Bulgogi Boys are well below their level, but rather that they enjoyed
unleashing their poison tongues on these unwitting and unwilling victims.
The five have distinct but complementary
rapping styles. Luke Warm rhymes are concise 16 bars, pumped up with name
checks, check out 69 personalities to see what I mean “you be hearing my
sounds, like DB Cooper I’m unknown, effects like Malcolm X, I’m aware of my
skin tones” and bravado. Wack MC tears up the tracks with a rhyming canter,
somehow managing to get in aid, tirade, brigade, grenade, shade, blockade,
homemade, trade, charade, masquerade, laid, swayed, weighed, unpaid, portrayed,
decade, invade serenade and fade in a sprawling verse without managing to sound,
well, wack. Bongo 3 is the post modernist, spraying his rhymes “like a bad
aimer at a urinal.” jumping around from topic to topic, best shown in Steve Jobs
where he describes about 40 odd jobs he may or may not have had. General Refuse
makes great use of imagery “in the cinema of my mind” although you would have
to ask him exactly what he meant by pooper jam while the System Disrupter seems
to be conflicted, varying between telling the Bulgogi Boys about his
relationships with their mothers to a warbling touching rap concerned with the
day of a life in a typical suburban wife.
Overall, a sprawling first up effort from the self-proclaimed
kings of the kimchi scene sees a major new player arrive in the ex-pat kimbob
hip-hop scene of Gyeonggi-do. They seem to have all bases covered, as well as
three continents. It might even inspire me to rap for kimchi”.
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| Live capture. |
We were pumped
and ready to do more. Sometime around this time, we had a received an email from Talib Kweli's lawyer that asked us not to use a beat (we
had “borrowed” a beat he had used for one of our demo tracks which we had posted
on Myspace). That made us feel even more big-time. Unfortunately, Nixon
couldn’t stay and continue with the crew, leaving to return to New Zealand. His
departure influenced the direction of our second album, “Post\Hummus”, a
concept album with a tighter, darker and more focused direction than our debut.
The concept, ridiculous in hindsight, was that the Wack MC had been killed by a
dodgy batch of hummus given to him by the Bulgogi Boys. With hindsight, it was
at this time that the crew descended into a myopic fantasy world of diss tracks
and revenge dreams but it made for a rich seam of inspiration. Soon, only a
couple of months after finishing Fermentin', the crew (minus Nixon) returned to
the studio with twelve new tracks to lay down. Another review follows.
Post\Hummus starts off with an AFN news broadcast of
Sgt Chris Fish, highlighted by General Refuse’s heartfelt paean for the Wack
MC. This sincere plea sets the scene as the crew is clearly trying to work out
exactly where the disappearance and presumed death of the Wack MC leaves them.
Rivals, the Bulgogi Boys, are clearly in the crew’s sights, with another harsh
diss track “Hummus Wars” as well as several references in other tracks
featuring on the album. Second track Senior Vs Junior shows it isn’t just
relations with the Bulgogi Boys causing friction but that there are serious
internal divisions as well. This battle for the heart and minds of Korea isn’t
just between the North and South but also in the crew itself. Luke Warm
expresses his doubts about the leadership that the General is exhibiting,
urging a strong retaliation. General refuses to lay blame at the feet of the
Bulgogi Boys, instead believing that the Wack MC is merely missing, not dead
and expresses that he is hopeful that the Wack MC would be back soon. This
theory is expounded on “Sure lock Holmes” a collaboration between the two
senior members, Bongo 3 and General Refuse, who propose that the Wack MC fled
back to New Zealand after staging his death as he was concerned that the crew
would sell out and leave behind their kimchi inspired roots. The other members,
Luke Warm and the Marvel from Invercargill, clearly believe that the Wack MC is
gone for good and seem set to take retribution (that is if they can get over
their country bashing track Kiwilish). The General seems insecure with the
division in the crew, complaining about a crew with two faces. Only Bongo seems
unperturbed about the loss of Wack MC, saying if he hears one more word about
the subject he might crack. While the crew does seem overly preoccupied with
Wack MC, the album isn’t all doom and gloom and is lightened by a number of
tracks with a less serious outlook. The album starts off with a welcome back
track called unimaginatively “We’re Back”, that features a bizarre sounding
chorus that seems to have been inspired by either Mickey Mouse or a fondness
for abuse of helium. There are tracks celebrating kimchi, life in Korea, luck
and bizarrely, an extended discussion about battling a robot. J9, a sweet
singer of hooks who had a few guest appearances on Fermentin’ finds herself
with an enlarged role on a couple of tracks, especially “Fresh Produce from the
Village”, which gives an exhibition of her singing talent if not her rhymes,
which are at times curious.
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| Post/Hummus cover. |
The story of the
Kimchi Crew mostly ended here. The rest of the story consists of a few
half-baked ideas and unfinished tracks, and an abortion of a live performance.
People left for homelands and collaboration proved more difficult than expected,
even with the advantages afforded by the internet. Despite the promises of
on-going collaboration and commemorative side-dish tattoos, the crew has fallen
by the wayside. I’m not even in touch with most of the other members
anymore-creative differences maybe. Our Wikipedia page fell into wikibin for
not being notable enough. But what is left are the memories and a couple of
albums, probably only on the iPODs of 10 people worldwide and some sort of
legacy.
* For an explanation of ddongchim- see http://systemdisrupted.blogspot.co.nz/2011/02/ddongchim.html
