THE KIMCHI CREW-A SHORT HISTORY

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.

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).

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. 

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.

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.”

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 (9^th 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”.

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.

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