Why I personally do not think BTS’ Suga was in good faith. And to other Asians rappers/hip-hoppers, please stop trying to be black
ANOTHER DRAMA I LOVE IT. Now you since I have done a review on Suga A.K.A Agust D(eez Nutz) latest lead solo track “Daechwita” let’s talk about another problematic track on his solo release. Namely this track call “What Do You Think??” a track where Suga basically flexes on the haters with a “hey fuck all of you” mentality while he cock sucks all over his wealth and have a “I MADE IT” mentality. Which is funny because Suga is one of those KPop idols that came from, oh wait what was that oh right I forgot A FUCKING UPPER MIDDLE CLASS FAMILY. Although it is worth mentioning that BTS’ Suga while was cut off from his family for pursuing an idol career, I do not think he ever suffer because he has a plan B of just NOT being an idol if BTS never made it big and still return to his normal life. I miss the days when Gen 2 idols such as Heechul enter the idol game knowing full well if he didn’t made it, he would still be dirt poor. There was so much more at stake, unlike the newer Gen 3. So congrats Mr. Suga for flexing your wealth even though you were already kind of wealthy even before this BTS thing? Thank you for also using Hip Hop and Rap to describe your first world struggle going from wealthy to “a little bit wealthier”. Gosh he sounds like Jeff Bezos who just gained another $1 billion and decided to put out a mixtape saying “he made it”. “What Do You Think??” is kind of like Ariana Grande’s “Seven Rings” both gloating about their exuberant wealth. But where Ms. Grande succeeds in sending an additional message, beside the one that she’s rich and that if she wants something she got it, of a woman making as much money and having as much power (she wants it she will get it) as men in a world dominated by men, Suga’s track seems like an empty boast. It seems out of touch, it seems not so humble at all a trait which so many ARMY would attest to BTS members having.
Another problem on this certain track is Suga choice in sampling something. In rap, sampling something means almost to take it word for word and basically make a rap about it either dissing the said thing or agreeing with the said thing. In Suga’s track of “What Do You Think??” he samples a sermon from “The Reverend” Jim Fucking Jones word for word.
[Intro]
… though you are dead, yet you shall live, and he that liveth and believeth shall never die…
… faithful workers coming in night after night, giving me their heart, giving me the spirit of socialism….
Oh yeah fun fact, yeah if you try to search up “What Do You Think??” you will not get the lyrics above. Why? Because Big Hit Entertainment did some damage control and have now release a version basically removing all references to that.
Now of course there’s nothing wrong with sampling or even referencing the mass cult leader Jim Jones who subsequently with his final act killed 900 people (mostly African Americans) by coercing all of them into drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. Several american artist have made references to Jim Jones because his little cult movement have spawn the phrase “drink the kool-aid” which is pretty well known in American culture as a metaphor for basically foolishly following someone without question because you are seeing some high reward that is just not there. Yet with all the references, no one has ever sample one of his racist sermons until this man did. It had spark backlash from many within the KPop community for good reasons but as always loyal ARMY was on Twitter trying to put down the haters. They claimed that Jim Jones was famously “anti-korean” and that Suga included him to DISS Jim Jones
people. he knew what he was sampling & that was the point. JJ had a relationship with DPRK leadership. this is an issue that overlaps with with SK/NK relations. https://t.co/rJP4tLXeDC pic.twitter.com/qWzCR8eus4
— puppybunnies 🐶 (@puppybunnies) May 30, 2020
…..which makes no sense because again his whole song is about flexing his wealth and also the “Jim Jones is very anti South Korea” makes no sense because of this…..
Stop saying Jim Jones is famously anti-South Korean. No one knows him as that here. In fact no one really knows who tf he is. I’d rather take the idea of Suga having some artistic intentions over him trying to ‘prove to an anti-korean’.
— Danny Kim (@gyumstagram) May 31, 2020
Others in the ARMY hold their ground but at least put up more of a reasonable argument in that Suga probably had some other nobler intentions. What seems to run through all these lines of argument from the ARMY is the fact that “context matters” and also “Jim Jones well known anti-South Korea” (the latest trend is now I think ARMY are arguing that Suga was set up in that he didn’t even write his own song that someone else wrote it for him so it’s their fault. So much for BTS so talented they write ALL their songs). While I agree context matters, Suga never gave us the context. Even BigHit, when apologizing for Suga music said that those lines were included for aesthetics. So why did Suga put those lines in this song? Well we don’t know but as Suga would ask “What Do You Think??”
Well what do I think? Simply I think Suga was attempting to be woke. He was really trying so hard to make his song “woke” he was trying so hard to make his song into rap or hip hop because the act of sampling is usually only in that music genre. Suga not only wanted to be woke he wanted to be “not mainstream” because BROOOO mainstream is for losers. Unlike the ARMY I do not think he had a nobler intention other than he just pop those two lines in for aesthetics and to say “I DID IT, I SAMPLE I’M HIP HOP NOW!”. If I am right, which I am just speculating but I have an eery sense that I am right cause you know BigHit also agreed with me, I would actually be troubled. This is a trend that has to stop, Asians using blackness to earn cash or to seem woke even though on average Asians are probably the most racist race on Earth (I’m talking about the ones in Asia). At least white people have to live with black people which mellows out some of their racism (and yet they still kill unarmed black men, I can only phantom what Asians do to minorities. Oh wait I don’t have to phantom, we put them in re-education camps out in the middle of nowhere or we casually mention that you are not white enough to enter our store) the East Asian countries are literally homogeneous in that China is almost 100% Han, Japan is basically 100% Japanese Ethnicity and ditto with Korea. Heck DAVE CHAPPELLE agrees with me that Asians are typically racist in his skit….
We Asians seem to want to have the best of both worlds. We act like whites (espcially in pictures and dramas and acting) until we want to be woke and cool in which case we use UNO REVERSE and say “ayo we minorities, we color too!!!” or when white people fuck up like right now then we want to be black then we want to say “bro you know me I’m colored!”.
There’s no better place to look where Asians are trying so hard to be black then KPop. Just check out Suga’s fellow band mate J-Hope. There was nothing wrong with what he did, nothing wrong in remaking “Chicken Noodle Soup” but there’s something wrong with doing it while wearing dreadlocks for NO REASON AT ALL. Oh I know the reason, cause “Chicken Noodle Soup” was sung by a black guy and since blacks have dreadlocks to make your remake acceptable or “on par” with the original you must look black. I wonder why J-Hope just didn’t darken his skin for good measure, at least then I can say “that’s gangsta”. Yet while these idols are using blackness to seem woke, they are racist. Look no further than GIDLE’s Soyeon comment on “Ethnic Hip” because her songs, “Lion”, have some drums and you know those Africans really love the drums, any song that has drums must be African and Ethnic. Look at F(x)’s Amber with her “you know that black guy who was approach by the police for eating a sandwich, yeah he was wrong!”. That’s why now when Asians international artist are saying “bro bro bro what Whites did NOT RIGHT! YEAH WE STAND WITH BLACK LIVES MATTER” like Jay Park…
I tend to view that with a very skeptical eye. Also Mr. Park, really “black homies”? That sounds sorta off. I see them all as hidden Amy Coopers (who was by all measure liberal and believe in racial equality) during this time. Asians remind me of that one passage I read in “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”. Correct me if I am wrong maybe it was from another book but the author was talking about how he witness like riots when he was growing up and then Asians store owners in an effort to be spare put up signs that say “bro I’m colored EXACTLY LIKE Y’ALL”. We act black when there’s cash money involved.
Also just a note on Korean Hip Hop, I don’t care but please stop trying to sound cool and swell by acting black. Please be like the whites if you going to be taking from Black culture don’t try so hard to act black either, just take it like Elvis Presley style. Like for real stop trying to sound woke, saying “I came from the streets” when the streets in question are….
korean rappers “i’m from the streets”
the streets in question: pic.twitter.com/qXS4vWVJro
— azmi (@brolasuite) May 23, 2020
Like whenever KPop idols or Korean rappers put out music video they seem to be imitating music videos put out by the likes of Drake, or Travis Scott in which you know feature them with their homies in dreadlocks maybe a few cars maybe a few babes near by. It’s like these rappers/idols are thinking “SO IF I WANT TO MAKE HIP HOP/RAP MUSIC, THIS MUST BE THE AESTHETICS I MUST USED. I MUST LOOK EXACTLY LIKE THAT, AND MY MUSIC VIDEO MUST FEEL EXACTLY LIKE THAT”. Since they are NOT that, especially taken into account that most of these KPop idols (Suga, J-Hope both comes from well to do background) come from upper class families and we all know the wealthy tend to be the most racist and out of touch, they shouldn’t TRY to attempt that. If you really want to do Hip-Hop and make rap songs that is fine…. cultural diffusion happens by default. But at least get Hip-Hop/Rap right, not at the aesthetics, not trying so hard to be black, not at the music video but at the core of Hip-Hop. Correct me if I am wrong, to me Hip-Hop/Rap music is all about being “real”. That’s the core of it, black people invented Hip-Hop/Rap to be REAL and TRUTHFUL to their experience in adulthood, teenage hood, child hood, and hood (racism, cops, people looking at them thinking they are all thugs, living poor because of unequal opportunity). That’s what Hip-hop at least to me is about, it’s isn’t about “poverty” it isn’t about “childhood sufferings” no it is about being REAL to your experience with suffering and it just so happens that the people who invented it comes from “troubled background”. Hip-hop was a way for them to be real with themselves through a music medium. To OWNED their sufferings and to exceed past them. If you are rich and privilege, like most Korean rappers/idols hip hop wannabes don’t try to paint yourself like you ain’t got nothing growing up. Like you are plague with the same problems. Don’t try to paint sufferings that aren’t there. Don’t be like Troy from “Community” in that one episode where, in an effort to fit in, he makes up a story how he was molested by his uncle. You want to do Hip-Hop? BE REAL TO YOUR SUFFERINGS. I ain’t saying rich privelege people don’t got suffering of their own, a lot of rich kids (I’ve seen in dramas) do not feel much love from their parents. SING ABOUT THAT. A lot of rich kids feel like poor people are better because they know the meaning of family and helping each other. RAP ABOUT THAT. A lot of rich kids feel like they have to overinflated their egos and then throw money, fearing they are out of touch so they can’t make a lot of friends, at people so they don’t feel too lonely. HIP-HOP about that! Sure a lot of people might say “bro that ain’t Hip-Hop. Where’s the cars, where’s the dark alleyways, where’s the SUFFERING”, sure maybe you won’t sell as much because who the fuck wants to hear a rich kids complaining about his/her problems when they can’t even get bread on the table. But at least, at the very least in my definition of Hip Hop, you would have stricken at the core of Hip-Hop, being REAL and trying to convey your own experience and sufferings through music. At the very least, I would be a fan. I know I’m just one person, I know I probably won’t buy your album cause I’m a broke ass college student, but at least your music will have someone, a complete stranger, from across the Pacific Ocean listening to it… on Youtube.
PS. I’m not an intellectual, I may have offended people, I am perfectly aware that there are asians rappers and hip hop artist that do go through some of the same sufferings. This is my own opinion so please take everything with a grain of salt.
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