Words of the Wise: Verbal

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"For me fashion links directly to music," he says. "I even care what color underwear I wear. When I'm tired, people ask if I use vitamins and supplements and stuff, but I just wear red underwear to remind myself 'today I'm going to be hot!'"

Smart man. I need to invest in some great power underwear. The rest of the article is here. I think he is one of the artists I would most like to meet. Not only is m-flo amazing and I love Verbal's raps, but he's not even Japanese. People say that BoA was one of the first Korean artists to open the door in 2002 but people always forget that Verbal and m-flo have been rocking out since before 1999.

I want to see more groups like Monkey Majik and Def Tech here in Japan. More (visibly) foreign artists making music in Japanese. There's Jero doin' his Enka and that's great but he's also part Japanese. The only other non-Japanese artist I can think of now, Himeka, was tapped for her appeal to anime fans: not that she can't sing, but I don't really see her getting a big foothold in the Japanese market. And then there's this girl from Britian that I can't even find the words for. If only we could all get famous by posting videos of ourself jumping around our bedrooms. Wouldn't life be grand?

Comments

[iaoiua.livejournal.com]

I definitely see your point; I think it's just a matter of nuance. BoA is not regarded the way she is just because she is Korean, but because she is a cross-over arist. The fact that Verbal is Korean has, for what it's worth, never been a "selling" point for (or highly emphasized in) m-flo, in my opinion (I always thought Lisa's mixed ethnicity was more interesting). In contrast, BoA was always marketed as a Korean pop star. She is the first artist from SM that embarked on a serious Japanese career, i.e. releasing Japanese singles that weren't just versions of her Korean singles in Japanese — to the extent that her career in Korea waned (relatively) while she concentrated on Japan so seriously.

As far as my knowledge of kpop goes (only until 2001 or so), the girl group S.E.S. (also of SM Entertainment) were either the first or among the first to attempt some sort of presence in Japan, at least in part because one of its members was supposedly fluent in Japanese (grew up in Japan or something). S.E.S. had a few Japanese versions of their singles, as well as a stand-alone single named Yume wo Kasanete (which was later released in Korean), but they really were never anywhere as popular in Japan as they were in Korea, in contrast to BoA.

At around the same time as BoA, K, a Korean ballad singer, best known for singing the theme song to 1 Litre of Tears, was also widely talked about as one of the first top Oricon charting Korean singers (but he wasn't popular in Korea, in contrast to BoA). Since BoA, every major kpop star has attempted Japan (Shinhwa, Rain, Se7en), some artists started off in Japan and then made it big in Korea (Younha), but only DBSK (and possibly Big Bang in the future) have been successful in both countries.

There's also an issue of when Korean imports were allowed into Japan ... I'm not sure of the details, but it hasn't been that long, supposedly, since Japan re-opened up Korean imports, and Korean entertainment companies decided to pursue the Japanese market more strongly. My guess is that this change correlates with the hallyu wave of Korean pop culture into Japan

Leehom's Japanese album was terrible. I'm quite sure he was just piggybacking off his role in that movie with Gackt and Hyde.

Sorry for the lecture! x: