MY MUSIC JOURNEY PT. 2

After building a pretty strong foundation in rock music, I was slowly drawn to Korean music and hip-hop through various influences over the rest of my time in high school. As in the last post, I bolded song titles and artists throughout this post and put them in a Spotify playlist if you would like to listen along.

My first exposure to K-pop (besides, like, Gangnam Style in elementary school) was in Mary Walker's K-Pop Agora class during my Subbie year, but I didn't take a particular liking to it. A couple years later was my first encounter with KR&B, and although this is sort of a subcategory of "K-Pop," I felt much differently about it. Elijah introduced me to "Instagram" by Dean for me to learn on guitar. I loved the mellow sound a lot more than the bright, pop sound of a lot of other "group" K-Pop I was recommended. I took an instant liking to artists like Dean and pH-1 especially.

I also discovered the K-Indie genre while looking for Korean guitar songs, although HYUKOH was basically the only K-Indie I listened to until 2021. I first learned about HYUKOH through songs like Wing Wing (위잉위잉) and TOMBOY. I quickly fell in love with the them, becoming my favorite band of any genre, as they remain to this day. In the year 2020, "K-Pop" was my most-listened genre on Spotify, just because KR&B and K-indie fell into that category and had defined so much of my year. This year I also branched out to the amazing voices of JANNABI and Jukjae in the K-Indie genre and have been enjoying them.

[Explicit language and themes in some songs in the next few paragraphs]

In the summer of 2020, my journey to discovering my love for rap/hip-hop was kicked off by the soundtrack of Street Fighter III: Third Strike. I wasn't even a heavy player of the game, but I loved the whole feel of the soundtrack. It was mainly hip-hop, but was heavily influenced by jazz. I especially loved songs like the character select theme (called "Let's Get It On") and "Jazzy NYC." Somehow the soundtrack was on Spotify, and the Spotify algorithm, Ryland, and my basic household knowledge of the genre led me to discovering hip-hop groups like NWA and Mobb Deep, as well as rappers like Big L (still my favorite rapper) and Biggie. My love for this music kind of exploded over the next year up until now as I discovered the consistency and superiority of East coast rap. My favorite group right now is A Tribe Called Quest. Nterestingly enough, my favorite works by them reflect the same jazz-inspired hip-hop sound present in the Street Fighter III: Third Strike.

A huge influence on my musical journey I need to mention came from my heavy use of CD's to listen to music. My car doesn't have an AUX cord to plug my phone into, nor a cassette tape player to plug an AUX cord adapter into. It does have a CD player, and I had a supply of blank CD's at home from my parents' youth, so I taught myself to burn CD's. I first put the entire discography of HYUKOH onto two CD's (they are a newer band so it all fit), which I listened to every time I went to work during the summer of 2020. My CD collection expanded as I found more music I liked, and on the first monday of this October, I stumbled into the CD section of the library on accident and left with around 9 CD's of modern albums I had been meaning to listen to but never had the chance to. I now have been on a journey discovering new music, just picking CD's of popular albums I recognize the name of (mostly hip-hop and R&B), listening to whole albums through and occasionally posting short reviews of them on my private Instagram story for a few people to see. Through these CD's my music taste has shifted towards artists like Mac Miller and Kendrick Lamar, with some of my newest favorite albums being Circles by Mac Miller and Untitled Unmastered by Kendrick Lamar, as well as Awaken, My Love by Childish Gambino.

I have found myself coming full circle after LIFE club just started a challenge two days ago (11/9) to listen to only Christian music for one week. It's been a poetic couple days for me, as I combine my earliest roots in Christian music that I mentioned in my last blog with my new appreciation for hip-hop/rap, as I listen to rappers like Aha Gazelle and Andy Mineo. I'm finding songs I really like and might listen to more often.

At this point, I have no idea where my music taste is going to go, but it's interesting to see my music taste laid out in this way. I hope this has encouraged you to consider your own music journey similarly to how I did, or that you at least had fun reading.