Music March: Mic Drop

Now that I've got my reviewing stride back, I've got ideas for a bunch of song reviews, so I'm going to start another Music March event.  To open it up, in honour of the recent Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, I feel like doing another K-pop song.  But which one...?  Ever since I stopped playing the Pump It Up! games, my knowledge of the Korean music scene isn't what it used to be (and it wasn't very much to begin with).  I suppose there's always Psy, but he seems like too easy a target.  ...Wait.  There is another.  There's this boy band called BTS, and they did a remix of one of their songs not too long ago, that featured Steve Aoki and Desiigner...  Wait a tic, let me check it out.

(Listens to song)

Oh ho ho, I think we've got a review on our hands, ladies and gentlemen!

"Mic Drop"

• Artist: BTS feat. Steve Aoki and Desiigner
• Album: Non-album single (Original version from Love Yourself: Her)
• Release: 18 September 2017
• Genre: Hip-hop/Rap
• Label: Big Hit (Sony)
• Writers: Pdogg, Supreme Boi, "hitman" bang, J-Hope, RM, Desiigner (remix)
• Producers: Pdogg, Steve Aoki (remix)

Before we continue, allow me to introduce our cast of characters.  BTS was formed in Seoul in 2013, and the name is an acronym of the Korean phrase "Bangtan Sonyeondan", or "Bulletproof boy scouts".  Then again, it has also been backronymed in English as "Beyond The Scene", so take that for what you will.  They have seven members, currently aged 20 to 25, and their names are Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Rap Monster, Jimin, V, and Jungkook, but I couldn't tell you which is which.  They have recorded in Korean, Japanese, and the random English phrases that are peppered throughout all Asian music these days.  The original version of this very single was also done in Korean and Japanese versions, in addition to the remixed, mostly-English version we have on our hands now.

Which brings us to our guest-stars.  Steve Aoki is a Japanese-American DJ of the deadmau5/Skrillex mold, and Desiigner is a Brooklyn-based rapper of the Future mold.  You may remember the latter from his inexplicable number-one single "Panda", but then again maybe not.  After all, what separates him from the other forty-six thousand eight-hundred fifty-three mumblecore rappers these days?  Also, what's up with the double "i" in his name?  ...Other than "because poor literacy is KEWL".

Now, this is where things get confusing.  See. there's the original version of the song, and then there's the remix, where some of the lyrics were replaced with English lines and Steve Aoki changed up the music a bit.  But there were two separate versions of the remix itself: the single replaces the first verse with a guest verse by Desiigner, but the one used in the music video (reposted above) still keeps the original verse, but still uses the Steve Aoki music.  And then there's a Japanese version of the original and oh no I've gone cross-eyed.  Well, let's try to make sense of it all, and review the lyrics from the video version, for the benefit of all of you playing along at home.

NB: Lyrics in italics have been translated from Korean.  Said translations were taken from the captions of the official music video (reposted above), and may vary with other sources.

Yeah, someone says my spoon's filthy (I come from a [adjective] background)
I don’t care, when I grab the mic, I beat them who got golden spoons

The first verse is kicked off by, let's see... J-Hope, who immediately hits us with an unusual metaphor.  Or maybe not; in English, at least, we use the phrase "the silver spoon" as a metaphor for luxury, so "golden spoon" would be close enough.  And J-Hope twists that around by saying that even though he does not come from luxury, his talents as a rapper are greater than those who do.  So, yeah, eat that, Puff Daddy.  Also, what's up with that additional line in parentheses?  I didn't hear anything in the song where that extra line would fit, so either that was just a translation note added for the captions, or the song itself really does have a [adjective] background.  ...Background vocals, that is.

I lash out
There are many rare steaks not cooked properly
I’ll be chewing over and over at the stars' dinner

Steaks...?  Yeah, it makes sense, it's just... silly.  Well, I'll give BTS this: they have no problem finding new metaphors to express their dominance over the haters.  Doesn't mean it's any less awkward, but it's more creative than anything I've heard before.

With this good scent, stinking is a foul
Mic, mic bungee

Also, "mic bungee".  J-Hope is so attached to the act of mic-dropping that, apparently, he put a bungee cord on his microphone so he can do it again at a moment's notice.  But what he failed to take into account is that this completely misses the point of the mic-drop.  You're supposed to just drop it and walk away, so the act serves as an emphatic punctuation on whatever it is you said.  But if you just pull the mic back into your hand, you clearly have something else to say, and the act thus loses its impact.  That is, assuming that's what he actually said and that wasn't just some Korean word that sounds like bungee.  But it's in the captions, so it must be true!  Meanwhile, Suga takes over:

Mic, mic bungee
Bright light, forward
You thought I was going down, but
I’m fine, sorry
My bad, Billboard
My bad, worldwide

Or, should I say, #SorryNotSorry.  I'm guessing he's fake-apologising for doing the mic-bungee thing too.

I’m sorry mom, your son is so killing it
Should I chip in for the duties you missed as a good child?

Okay, now you really mean #SorryNotSorry.  Wait, if you're able to remunerate your own mother, then what was that about not coming from luxury?  Are you and J-Hope on the same page right now, or what?

If you're so jealous and it hurts, then file a lawsuit, sue it

Well, since you opened yourself up to the prospect, I'd be wary of Desiigner.  You took his verse out of the video, so if anyone's going to sue you over your success, it's him.  But speaking of, the remix gets back on track with the main version starting with the first bridge, sung by Jungkook, V, Jimin, Jin.  I don't know why I just listed their names, since as we previously established, I cannot yet tell them apart.  But anyway, let's have at it:

Did you see my bag?
Did you see my bag?
It's hella trophies and it's hella thick

(laughs profusely)  There's just something about this line that cracks me up so hard!  I don't know, maybe it's the heavy slang, or the sudden transition from Korean to English, or just the thought of taking these lines literally, like they've actually lost some luggage with all their awards in it.  Of course, K-pop artists are no strangers to random English lyrics.  Why, BTS themselves gave us this gem from one of their previous singles, "Blood, Sweat, and Tears":

Peaches and cream
Sweeter than sweet
Chocolate cheeks and chocolate wings

And don't get the wrong idea: this isn't me doing some wonky translation from Korean.  No, this was originally sung in English.  While the original version of "Mic Drop" had some of these lines in Korean instead, BTS had re-written them in English themselves for the remix.  OMG, I want SO much for this line to become a meme!

What you think 'bout that?
What you think 'bout that?

I just told you what I think.  Namely, that the previous lines were some of the most gleefully ridiculous lyrics I've ever heard.

I bet it got my haters hella sick

One thing's for sure, the haters will be sick with laughter!  ...Okay, I'm cool now.  Let's just move on to the chorus, with... (let me see...) Jungkook, J-Hope, and Rap Monster:

Another trophy, my hands carry 'em
Too many that I can't even count 'em

Wait a tic, I thought you were using a bag to carry all your trophies!  Unless you got so many that it started overflowing and you had to carry the rest manually.  Given that you said you had too many to count, this is a distinct possibility.

Mic drop, mic drop
Foot, foot, watch it, your mouth, mouth, watch it

I don't get the structure of that sentence, unless it's telling the haters to put their foot in their mouth, a metaphorical statement used whenever someone says something stupid.  Which, given the context of the song, could have worked.  Mind you, this last line is in Korean, hence the italics I put on it, so maybe it is grammatically correct for all I know.

Baby watch your mouth
We come back around

The second verse, which my lyrics sheet tells me was sung by J-Hope, Suga, and Rap Monster, appears to confirm my previous analysis.

Once upon a time
We learned how to fly
[...]
How many hours do we fly?
I keep on dreamin' on the cloud
Yeah, I'm on the mountain, yeah, I'm on the bay

Then it's followed up by this odd line where they brag about being able to fly.  And surprisingly, they expand on that idea later in the verse, as if taking their boast literally.

Everyday we vibin', mic drop, bam

...Okay, if you can physically fly as you have so claimed, then that mic drop was actually well-deserved.  You've earned yourself an outro!

Don't need too see you anymore, this is the last farewell
Don't got no words to tell, don't even apologise
Don't need too see you anymore, this is the last farewell
Don't got no words to tell, don't even apologise

Yeah, this is our last good-bye to you, haters!  ...At least the second time we sing that line.  And we have no other words to mince with you!  ...Other than these next four lines.

See, you end up just like that
Just so fizzy, we're like cola
Your cornea gets shocked when it sees us
Quite, quite stylish, s-s-stylish yeah

Your metaphors aren't quite what I'd call stylish, but what do I know.

---

Now that I've finally run out of lyrics (for now...) let's take a break and talk about the music.  The original has a down-and-dirty hip-hop vibe.  It does the job, but BTS aren't quite the most hardcore of gangstas, so I for one can't take it a hundred percent seriously.  If you want to hear what that version sounds like, I've reposted a fan-made animated video which uses it.

The remix, meanwhile, takes bassline from the original and evolves it into a pseudo-dubstep arrangement.  Unfortunately, once you hear the high-pitched riff, you'll never not hear it.  Still, I appreciate the fact that this remix actually re-mixes the music, instead of the increasingly popular approach of just using the same song but with an extra rap verse.  Seriously, I love Bruno Mars's "Finesse" as much as the next guy, but just slapping on that Cardi B verse and calling that a "remix" is kind of a cheat.

---

As mentioned before, the single version of the remix features Desiigner in lieu of the first verse, so as a bonus, let's look at what he has to say.  The song starts with Desiigner doing a few ad-libs before entering his verse proper:

Playing that basketball, uh, we playing that a lot, huh
I'ma just get to the chicken, whip it, then I flip it, then trap it all, huh

Basketball... and chicken.  Way to play off black stereotypes right off the bat, Desiigner.  Actually no, "chicken" in this context is slang for a kilogram of cocaine, so that means he's throwing drugs-dealing into the mix.  Yay, more ghetto stereotyping! (thumbs-up into face-palm)

I gotta get to the dolla, all them haters, back 'em off (back!)
Smoking on gas a lot (gas!), ready to wack 'em all
[...]
This what I did to the haters, the choppa hit 'em, tell 'em back 'em off, huh

I'll give him this though: since the rest of this song has an overarching theme of one-upping the haters that apparently exist in BTS's collective lives, this at least fits that theme, which is more than I can say for most guest verses these days.  Mind you, I doubt BTS's methods of serving the haters involves murdering them, as is apparently the case for Desiigner, but their name does mean "bulletproof boys", so what do I know?

She like Apple Jack, huh, I like apple sauce, huh, huh

Oh ho ho, I think Desiigner just outed himself as a brony!  Or maybe he's dating a pega-sis.  ...Actually no.  "Apple Jack" in this context is a type of liquor distilled from apples.  Still, knowing this fact makes the pony character Applejack a teensy bit funnier, so either way, I'mma call this a win and move on.  There's really nothing else for me to point out in this verse, until the last line:

I'ma just get to the kitchen, and trap hard, with all my

...And that's it.  Desiigner's verse just cuts off there as the song goes straight into the pre-chorus bridge.  You know, the "Did you see my bag?" bit.  Granted, I appreciate any excuse for him not to drop the N-word, as I assume this line was going to lead to, but if not, at least let the man finish his thoughts!

As for my thoughts, this was a fun little song.  It's not the greatest thing ever to happen to music; the beat has its annoyances in both versions, and the lyrics aren't that deep either (which, in retrospect, I admit was also the case with "Gangnam Style").  But it's not bad either, and was in fact good for a laugh.  I may even seek out more from BTS in the future.  And who knows, maybe I'll branch out further into other K-pop from there!  Thank you, BTS, for teaching me how to love again.

Lyrics: 3 mics out of 5
Music: 2 mics out of 5
Performance: 4 mics out of 5
The Call: 3 mics out of 5 (C)

Music Review: Gangnam Style

"Gangnam Style"

• Artist: PSY (Jae-sang Park)
• Album: PSY 6 Part 1
• Release: 15 July 2012
• Genre: Hip-Hop, Dance
• Label: YG, Republic (Universal)
• Writers: Gun-hyung Yu, Jae-sang Park
• Producer: Hyun-Seok Yang

On the week of Tuesday, 18 September 2012, a song sung entirely in Korean has achieved the #1 spot on the United States iTunes store. Concurrently, that same song also peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. And I have even confirmed rumours that the song in question has also been played on American top-40 radio. This was not supposed to happen. I'm not saying it shouldn't happen, it's just that since America's entertainment industries have grown self-sufficient over the years, any attempt by foreign media to make a break on our shores will get swept away by the natural forces of marketing. And I'm not a fan of that either; I want us to play nicely with the rest of the world. (That means buy more anime.) But as such is the fate of "Gangnam Style" by PSY, I was too in awe of this feat to not want to take a closer look.

Before I begin the review proper, you may be wondering how "Gangnam Style" could've possibly caught the attention of us Yanks. Welp, as always, the Internet is to blame. The song's music video received Retweets and other buzz from celebrities including Robbie Williams, T-Pain, Tom Cruise, Katy freaking Perry, and last but not least Britney Spears, whose attention led to PSY making an appearance on the Ellen Degeneres talk show. The way I see it, once you make it on network television, that's it, you've become a fixture of our pop culture. And I can't blame them for lavishing the song, and in particular its music video with all this attention. The song seems to have taken bits from some of our dance-pop songs of recent. The most prevalent influence is "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO, in particular the powerfully-sung bridge that breaks up the rapping between the verses and the minimalist chorus. Speaking of which, I for one keep confusing the bass track from the "hook" with the one that starts off "Blow" by Ke$ha. And the rhythm of the raps within the verses reminds me of... oh [noun], "Fergalicious" by Fergie. The video, at least from a purely visual standpoint, seems tailor-made for American audiences, almost to parody levels. You can follow along below:

Excessive wind with tiny bits of paper thrown about? 0:32.
Random explosion in the background? 1:08.
Gratutitous close-up of a woman's curvy hindquarters? 1:36 - during a yoga session, no less.

And let's not forget the dance that the video is making popular even as I type this. Basically, most of its motions evoke riding an imaginary horse. And yes, someone has played it on top of the imaginary-horse-riding scenes if Monty Python and the Holy Grail. My opinion is that the whole dance looks a little dorky, and the illustration depicting it on the single's cover do not dissuade me from that prejudice. But it's not a dealbreaker, and besides it's better than the last time someone tried to make a dance craze go viral, or for that matter the last time a song got famous through the Internet.

But "Gangnam Style" means a lot more to its intended audience of South Koreans, so I'll take that excuse to explain what the heck "Gangnam Style" means. A little geography lesson for you peoples: Gangnam is the name a district within the city of Seoul, and more specifically, its culture and fashion centre. See also: Shibuya in Tokyo, Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, SoHo in London, and... gosh, does Philadelphia have one worth mentioning? Gangnam boasts some of the most expensive real estate in the world, and with stakes that high, appearance is everything. Gangnam has given rise to a social class of girls called "deonjangnyeo", literally "soybean paste women", who show off their disposable income in public (i.e. drinking expensive coffee), only to make sacrifices within their private life (i.e. eating cheap ramen) [1]. But rather than make any comment explicitly disparaging or even endorsing this lifestyle, it's merely used as a metaphor in order to pick up chicks, as exemplified in the first verse, translated below:

A girl who is warm and humane during the day
A classy girl who know how to enjoy the freedom of a cup of coffee
A girl whose heart gets hotter when night comes
A girl with that kind of twist

I'm a guy
A guy who is as warm as you during the day
A guy who one-shots his coffee before it even cools down
A guy whose heart bursts when night comes
That kind of guy

So basically, PSY is saying to his romatic prey that she know when to restrain herself and when to act wild, and that he is capable of the same. I'll tell you one thing, it's nice that America still hasn't managed to export its permissive views on sexuality within popular culture. (I'm pointing at you, Enrique Iglesias.) Further dispelment of the machismo that we Americans have come to expect fom the dating game may be found in other lines such as "A girl who covers herself but is more sexy than a girl who bares it all" and "A guy who has bulging ideas rather than muscles". Don't get me wrong, I'm nowhere near opposed to fanservice of the female variety, but there are times when it's just not sensible, you know?

And who could he be trying to put the moves upon? Well, it just so happens that a clue resides in the one line that was included by enforcement of a ruling from the International Songwriters' Conference of 1992, which states that all popular music originating from an East Asian country must include at least one word or phrase of a Western language, preferably English. And this song fits the bill by using the words "Sexy Lady" within the chorus, occasionaly interspersed with its trademark "Oppa Gangnam style". Well, that's generic enough to work.

"Gangnam Style" works on so many levels. On its surface, it fits well into the dance-pop that has been clogging our charts for the past few years, but without being obnoxious. (I'm pointing at you, Pitbull.) But to those of us who have experience with the Korean language and the culture of Seoul, or to those of us (like me ^_^) who simply do the research on the song itself, it becomes so much more. It may not be setting out to fix the social inequalities which exist in and around Gangnam, but such quirks are referenced tastefully and provide a cute context for a "let's pick up chicks" type of song. That the rest of the world managed to take notice of it is a tribute to the positive power of the Internet. And I, for one, welcome our new Asian overlords.

Just kidding; he's gonna be a one-hit wonder over here, I know it.

Edit 12 June 2013: I was wrong.  Sort of.

Lyrics: 4 coffees out of 5
Music: 3 coffees out of 5
Performance: 3 coffees out of 5
The Call: 3 coffees out of 5 (C)

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[1] Fisher, Max. "Gangnam Style, Dissected: The Subversive Message Within South Korea's Music Video Sensation". 23 August 2012, Retrieved 2 October 2012. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/gangnam-style-dissected-the-subversive-message-within-south-koreas-music-video-sensation/261462/.

Dance Dance Retrospective: The Competition

It has been said by Nintendo's Satoru Iwata that "[...] the history of entertainment is also the history of imitation", and this certainly rings true for the Dance Dance Revolution.  Considering how it and its Bemani brethren have all but crafted their own genre, it was inevitable that other companies would try and take a bite of Konami's apple.  Some of these even had lasting effects on the Bemani franchise, so it was also inevitable that I'd have to talk about it at some point.

One thing I should point out before we start is that a lot of these imitators, particularly during DDR's earlier days, originated from the Republic of (South) Korea.  They have an excuse:  For decades after World War II, the two Koreas banned Japanese products in response to what the former empire did during its earlier colonisation of the peninsula.  (Not their finest hour, I'm willing to admit.)  Of course, this included video game hardware and software (although some Nintendo and Sega products were re-branded and sold by South Korean companies).  South Korea's ban expired in 1998, but the damage was done: Personal computers, not consoles, stuck as the Koreans' platform of choice for playing computer games.  And, as we will see below, they saw themselves as having some free reign to adopt Japan-originating gaming concepts as their own.

Pump It Up! (1999-Present, Andamiro (South Korea), 18 games)
Pump It Up! (PIU), by Andamiro, is not only the most prolific of the games to copy Dance Dance Revolution, but is the most direct clone.  The game uses a dance pad of five panels arranged in an "X" shape, essentially, the inverse of DDR's controller.  The soundtrack has primarily composed of contemporary Korean pop licences and original songs by "Banya", their counterpart to Naoki Maeda of DDR.  But ever since the mid-2000s, once Andamiro noticed how their games were taking off in Central and South America, they started throwing Latino songs into the mix as well.  The end result is that there's virtually nothing recogniseable to North American ears, so you'll pretty much have to explore the tracklists blindly to find something you'll like.  But PIU also innovates in its own ways, like the nonstop megamixes, the quest modes (think Dance Master Mode from Extreme 2, but you can save your progress with a USB memory stick), and much harder high-level charts.  These advancements in difficulty have inadvertently (?) resulted in an uneven difficulty curve among the three difficulty levels (think Normal = Light, Hard = Standard, and Crazy = hard than Heavy).

Believe it or not, I have faint memories of playing one of the PIU games even before I heard of DDR.  (I bombed. ^.^;)  Since I discovered DDR, I have had a love-hate relationship with this series.  Initially I was opposed to it in a manner similar to how I regard Shrek to this very day - which is bad.  But after only a couple of years I got over myself, and recognised that both series have things they could learn from one another.  Andamiro could learn to licence more songs Americans would be familiar with (we're 300 million strong, don't count us out), smooth out the difficulty curve from the Hard to Crazy levels, and put some honest-to-blog trance songs in the mix.  And Konami could learn to get creative with their high-level charts, especially since jumps with 3 or more simultaneous arrows are commonplace in PIU yet unheard of in DDR, and start letting us use USB devices to save profiles instead of forcing their eAmuse system upon us (as covered here).

For the reasons I detailed at the beginning of this article, PIU has had much less success on the home console scene compared to DDR.  Only one console release was sold in either Korea or North America: Pump It Up Exceed (PlayStation 2 / XBox, 2005).  Apart from that, they also released PlayStation Portable versions of PIU Exceed and Zero within Korea, but bear in mind the PSP has no region restrictions, so if you're inticed enough, feel free to get importing.  The most recent game, Pump It Up: 2011 Fiesta EX was released worldwide in 2011.

EZ2Dancer (2000-2004, Amuseworld (South Korea), 5 games)
EZ2Dancer can best be described as a hybrid between Dance Dance Revolution and DanceManiaX (refresher).  The control setup utilises three floor panels to step on and two hand sensors to wave over.  The last game, EZ2Dancer Super China, was released in China in 2004.

TechnoMotion (2000, F2 Systems (South Korea), 2 games)
TechnoMotion branded itself as a fusion of Pump It Up and Dance Dance Revolution, in that it utilised the gameplay styles of both franchises.  The two dance pads each boasted nine panels, allowing for modes supporting four (DDR), five (PIU), or eight panels (all except the centre panel).  As awesome as it would be to play songs from both series on one machine, we were sadly not granted that luxury; the soundtrack was almost exclusively K-Pop licences.  The last game, TechnoMotion: The 2nd Dance Floor, was released worldwide in 2000.

In The Groove (2004-2005, Roxor (United States), 2 games)
In The Groove comes to us courtesy of Roxor Games, made up of programmers for StepMania, an open-source DDR clone for computers.  The control setup is identical to DDR's 4-panel layout, but so many more tricks: three- and four-panel jumps, Mines (pressing the panel will deal damage), and Rolls (like Freeze Arrows, but the panel must be tapped repeatedly).  Sadly, it was too similar to DDR for its own good; in 2006, Konami sued Roxor, and bought the rights as a settlement, preventing a third game and a home port of the second game from being produced.  But the news isn't all bad; the team members later jumped ship and developed the Pump It Up! Pro games, blending the music and concepts from both PIU and ITG.  The last game, In The Groove 2, was released worldwide in 2005.

Guitar Hero (2005-2010, Activision (United States), 11 games)
Don't laugh.  I'm lumping the Guitar Hero series in here not because it involves dancing - it doesn't - but because it represented a shift in music gamers' mentality.  In focusing on rock & roll music, Guitar Hero was, from what I've inferred, more in tune (no pun intended) to most Americans' taste in music, allowing it to take off in ways DDR could never hope to out of its native Japan.  And take off it did, a little too well in fact - with so many of its spinoffs and competitors crowding the market, on top of the traditional once-a-year installments, Activision put the series on an indefinite hiatus after 2010.  The last game, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock was released worldwide in 2010.

Just Dance (2009-Present, Ubisoft (France), 15 games)
With Just Dance, dancing games have finally come back into vogue - but not as you remember them.  This new paradigm involves mimicking dance steps and poses with your whole body, either by using the Wii Remote, or with the PS3 or XBox 360 motion cameras.  As usual, many competitors have emerged, the most prominent being Dance Central and Konami's own Dance Masters, and even DDR tried to incorporate this kind of gameplay at some point (the Choreography Mode in DDR 2010).  The most recent game, Just Dance Wii 2, was released in Japan on 26 July 2012, with Just Dance: Disney Party currently in development.

But enough about these pretenders.  On the next episode of Dance Dance Retrospective, our main event is making its long-awaited return to the arcades!  But... does anybody care anymore?