From my mid-teens to my mid-twenties, the main genre of my playlist was Korean hip-hop. My favorite musician was Kebee, and my favorite album was Baechigi’s third album, “Out of Control.” Judging subjectively, the hip-hop of the 2000s was quite poetic. It seemed as though Movement, Budda Baby, and Soul Company poured themselves into their music and expressed themselves as if squeezing it out.
Not entirely sure, but I suspect it was an era where self-observing was still more important than self being shown. After a few gusts of wind blew and flowed away, today’s hip-hop seems to me to be nothing more than an expression of various kinds of arrogance, past bonds blurred by conflict, flashy and diverse technology, and the online people evaluating it.
My day in Amsterdam was too short. Regretting the shortness of time, I walked briskly to make the most of my trip, and at the last piano bar I visited, I recalled my first encounter with hip-hop back then. Common pop and jazz music played, and the musician’s joke were satisfying enough, but an unexpected thrill arose just as unexpectedly.
In that ‘Lose Yourself’ by Eminem, which someone requested as if it were a joke, a precocious woman sitting at the piano bar raised her hand high, and shyly grabbed the microphone and sang before I could even finish saying I wanted to sing it.