Note: This timeline is Jaeyoung and I's attempt to chart a trajectory and some key hip-hop moments that could bring these cultures into the conversation.
As a result, the timeline does not cover all the events that happened in black and Korean hip hop history. Otherwise, it would be a long book and it would be a disaster if I had to dig further into my sources.
(Let me know if you need or want a PDF copy of this timeline and source post!)
1974 –The birth of "Hip Hop" as a genre in the United States.
While the basics of hip hopSongSet in 1972/1973, various sources state that the genre was not created until 1974. Additional sources state that Keith "Cowboy" Wiggins (of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five) actually came up with a name for the genre four years later in 1978.
1978 - "Rap music" coined as a term in the United States
this sourcehe claims that the music industry coined "rap music" in 1978, moving from DJ to MC. However, the etymology of the word "rap" and the African (and African-American) tradition of rhythmic language (often) in conjunction with beats is much older, and we have evidence that black artists in the 1960s used what which they called spoken word style. he performed "rap".
1978 –Afro-Korean singer Insooni makes her South Korean debut as part of the Hee Sisters
Born in 1957 to a Korean mother and an African-American soldier, Insooni is a soulful diva who remains one of Korea's best-known entertainers.She is a still active singer who performed at the 2018 Winter Olympics.It's important to mention her at this point in the project, as she's also a household name and cultural icon in Korea.nowand a sign that blacksfrom KoreaThey are known to the citizens.
1983 - Run DMC lanza su primer sencillo "It's Like That".
This group was formed in Queens, New York in 1981 by Joseph Simmons, Darryl McDaniels, and Jason Mizell and would go on to become one of the most influential musical acts in hip-hop history. "It's Like That", their 1983 debut single, peaked at number 15 on the US R&B chart.
1986 - Ice-T's "Six in the Mornin'" is released and is credited as the first "gangsta rap" single.
Ice-T himself fights backit iscreated gangsta rap and repeatedly bowed to Schoolly D's 1985 self-titled album and its track "P.S.K." in places like the documentaryHip-Hop-Evolution.
1988 – The Summer Olympics were held in Seoul.
The 1988 Summer Olympics are considered a turning point in Korean culture and history. Strict media censorship began to be relaxed, Korean-Americans and other members of the diaspora returned from abroad, and the combination of the two meant that black-created/popularized musical styles such as hip-hop, rap, and R&B (better) known by Koreans in the Peninsula. (The information is fromHanguk-Hip-Hopvon Myoung-Sun Song.)
1989 - Hong Seo-beom's Kim Satgat is released. This song is considered the first Korean pop song with rap.
Hong Seo-beom was a rock musician who rapped on his 1989 song about a 19th-century Korean poet.
1989 - Spike Leedo the right thingwill be released along with its popular soundtrack.
My timeline partner Jaeyoung includeddo the right thingon his own work on the timeline, as the film was noted not only for its music, but also for its impact on Korean audiences both inside and outside the United States thanks to the presence of Steve Parks Sonny, a merchant Korean.
MARCH 1991: Korean merchant Soon Ja Du murders 15-year-old Latasha Harlins.
Latasha Harlins was a 15-year-old black teenager who was murdered by Soon Ja Du, a Korean shopkeeper, who initially claimed the murder was in self-defense over a bottle of juice the teenager allegedly stole. However, witnesses at the store testified that Latasha was preparing to pay for the bottle before being accosted. While many people remember the era primarily for the Rodney King police brutality video, this murder, notable for the fact that Soon Ja Du got away with a slap on the wrist, further strengthened ties between black communities. and Korean in Los Angeles (negatively). father-in-law, who was already tense and escalated hostilities that would become one of the secondary catalysts for the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
This horrifying incident inspired black rappers like Tupac and Ice Cube to write songs that explicitly or implicitly reference Latasha's murder and/or the fight against blackness witnessed or experienced by Koreans in their communities.
Source: Like the Murder of Latasha Harlin's South L.A. changed a lot before Black Lives Matter (https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-0318-latasha-harlins-20160318-story.html)
SEPTEMBER 1991 - "The Low End Theory" from A Tribe Called Quest is released. This album served as a great inspiration for the men behind Epik High.
OCTOBER 1991 - Ice Cube's song "Black Korea" was released in direct response to rising tensions between blacks and Koreans in Los Angeles.
This song was created and released in direct response to the murder of Latasha and the rising tensions between blacks and Koreans in Los Angeles. The song relied on racist language/stereotypes, while also showing clear anger at the anti-blackness that Ice Cube witnessed and experienced from Korean-American merchants.
APRIL 1992: Seo Taiji & Boys debuted with "Nan Arayo" on the MBC talent show. This song and group are often credited with the birth of modern K-pop as we know it.
1992 April–May: The Los Angeles riots, which led to violent confrontations between police, African Americans, and the local Korean community.
There were several elements that led to the confrontation, but the most important was the acquittal of the four police officers who mercilessly beat Rodney King when the video of the murder of Latasha Harlin was released. Secondary, as noted, was the murder of Latasha and the poor punishment Soon Ja Du received as a result, with a significant amount of anger directed at Korean shopkeepers in predominantly black neighborhoods. This incident marks the black and Korean-American community to this day and must have affected the Korean (and Korean-American) view of blackness.
1992 - Tiger JK, often credited with integrating rap into Korean popular culture outside of K-pop, was then a college student in California. He credits the Los Angeles riots with his desire to bridge the gap between the black and Korean communities, which sparked his interest in hip-hop.
1994 - Nas' Illmatic, one of the most influential rap albums of the early '90s, is released.
"It Ain't Hard to Tell" is the first music video from this album:
1994 –Jinuof Jinusean estreia "I was the captain"
1995 - Yoon Mi-Rae is discovered. This leads her to join Uptown, a hip hop group that debuted in 1997 when Yoon Mi-Rae was 16 years old.
JANUARY 1996 - Seo Taiji & Boys announce their disbandment.
September 1996 - HOT debut as the first "idol group" in South Korea.
MARCH 1997 – The Notorious B.I.G. Is murdered
I'll be honest here, I recorded this because it was the first big moment in hip hop history that I knew of. My sister will die of rage for Biggie's murder and I remember that it was something that influenced her as a fan of her work and style.
1999 - Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill becomes the first rap album to win the Grammy for Album of the Year.
1999 - Yoon Mi-Rae joins Tashannie - a hip-hop duo who released a single album
Late 1990s/early 2000s: The Korean Wave is taking shape.
OutsideHanguk Hip Hop: Global Rap in South Korea:
A conversation about K-Pop cannot be properly articulated without an understanding of Korean Wave or Hallyu. Hallyu is a term first coined by Beijing journalists in the late 1990s to describe the unprecedented popularity of Korean popular culture, primarily television dramas, in Asia. While the first wave of Hallyu focuses on K-dramas, the so-called second wave is largely attributed to the rise of K-pop.
2000 - R&B singer and dancer Rain is discovered as a teenage trainee for JYP Entertainment.
First discovered in 2000, Rain worked as an intern for JYP Entertainment. Before debuting her solo career in 2002 withway of wantingHe was part of the now-defunct boy band Fanclub.
2000 - Eminem's Marshall Mathers LP is released. It remains one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century.
2001 - Epik High meets South Korea's underground hip-hop diner.
Although Epik High was formed in 2001, they have not released their first album.map of the human souluntil 2003. His work inspired future generations of Korean rappers by introducing new styles of rapping and text creation to the masses.
(Video) history of the entire world, i guess
2001 - Yoon Mi-Rae makes her solo debut with "As Times Goes By"
2001 - Missy Elliot, Jay-Z, Nas, and Eve release albums that were the highest-rated albums of the year.
February 2004 - Outkast's "Speakerboxx/The LoveBelow" wins the Grammy for Album of the Year.
2004 - SE7EN's "Passion" is released in Korea. It has a remarkably similar beat to Usher's "Yeah," released the same year.
This is just an interesting little detail. SE7EN's"dedication"has obvious similarities to the backbeat of ushers"mi🇧🇷 Both songs were released in 2004.
February 2004 – Kanye West's debut, The College Dropout, is critically acclaimed.
2005 - Epik High's "Swan Songs" is released. It was supposed to be their last release as a group.
This album was praised by manynoand further boosted the group's careers not only in Korea (including mainstream audiences), but also in Japan and the United States. (The release of "Fly" appeared in the video gameFIFA 2007.)
2006 – Big Bang debut as YGEntertainment's B2K-inspired hip-hop group
From a 2005 article hosted onbrowser(and linkedTodoKpop), we know that Yang Hyun Suk talked about making Big Bang "an idol group like B2K". That's why his first looks are...quite similar.
2008 - Lee Myung Bak becomes president of South Korea.
The decade this happened (from 2006 to 2016) was a difficult time for any young, creative or progressive Korean and this era would have been formative for the young (more) idols that are currently active.
2008 - Barack Obama is elected President of the United States.
As the country's first black president, this should mark a more progressive turn for America. I'll be real here... It really wasn't.
2009 - Hyuna debuts in 4minute, a modern-style girl group that focuses on dance-pop and hip-hop.
I had to include Hyuna because her rapping style (particularly the nasal tone of her voice) is often copied by current girl groups. And you know... the PCA presentation I attended in April as a Wine Academic aunt.
MAY 2009: Epik High and Far East Movement tour the US, plus Seoul and two venues in Japan. Many of the concerts were sold out.
JUNE 2010 - Drake's debut album, Thank Me Later, is released.
2011 - Wiz Khalifa lidera un Billboard 100 con "Black and Yellow".
April 2011 – Rapper Zion.T releases his first single "Click Me" featuring Dok2
2011 - MC Meta (currently part of the influential hip hop group Garion) and Wreckx release "무까끼하이" on Satoori and it is censored by the stations.
From Sun Jung's article "Changes in Korean TV Music Shows":
The changing media environment has also affected music broadcasts not only in terms of the music itself, but also in terms of the fact that the performances of dancers and performers have been severely censored as part of this growing censorship. The new generations after democratization marveled at the unclear censorship processes. Hyuna's "Bubble Pop" was banned from TV networks because the dance was lewd, while MC META and DJ WRECKXMC y DJshe was banned due to the use of dialects in her rap (DH Lee 2011).
NOVEMBER 2011: Dumbfoundead, a Korean-American rapper who got his start on the underground scene, released his debut album DFD via TransparentRecords.
Dumbfoundead's work is technically sound and truly fascinating. He used his platform as a rapper to denounce being (under)represented and stereotyped in popular culture in the video for his song "East Asians in the USA."SAFE“.
One critical note: the decision to use a (probably Korean-American) cosmetics store in her video for the song "Mijangwon" is a good one...selectiongiven the still complicated relations between Korean-Americans and African-Americans in the United States. (And don't get me started on the unfortunate anti-blackness of East Asian salon owners/managers as someone who really needs to visit them...)
2011 - Hip-hop idol group Block B debuts with rappers Zico and P.O.
2012 - Show Me the Money airs on TV.
2013 –KanyeWest flies a Confederate flag on tour and sells flag merchandise.
2013 - Club In2Deep hip hop club opens in Seoul.
JUNE 2013: Small company Big-Hit debuts BTS, a hip-hop boy bandschool 2cool 4.
This still from his 2014 reality show American Hustle Life (whose songAlsospeaks) displays titles of articles about the group's supposed influence on hip-hop at the time.
BTS started out as a hip-hop group that basically gave teens "a hero who can give them a shoulder to lean on without even saying a word." Myoung-Sun Song talks about him in the monograph (whichamor) especially the chapter on authenticity and rap idols, but I think what is really relevant to my chronicle is this quote from the book:
During the training period, Big Hit Entertainment sent Son and a BTS member to a dance center called Movement Lifestyle in Los Angeles to train. "Since BTS is hip-hop, we were able to embrace the culture, not just the dance, but also the lifestyle, how people walk and talk, their gestures, etc. We were only there for a month, but we learned a lot." They are as cited in Cha and Choi 2013c). Their responses warrant caution and raise the question of how far mimicking gestures or movements and “getting a lifestyle” in a month can be construed as “real” learning.
The idea that BTS was able to authentically represent hip-hop (and essentially black people) after spending a short time with black people in our natural habitat was problematic and shaped the group's early look and sound.
2015 - Unpretty Rapstar begins airing as the female version of SMTM.Truedy wins the second season.
Like Show Me The Money, Unpretty Rapstar is a survival reality show focused on rappers. The winner of the second season of the show, Truedy, had already been mentioned in this project. I talked about them in the cultural appropriation video. His concept is basic blackface and his idolization of Afro-Korean rapper Yoon Mirae dehumanizes her in the process. 🇧🇷Como Truedy Yoon matou a Black Happiness de Mirae' the author writes:
Truedy grew up listening to Yoon's performances and hearing her references to being black and the discrimination she experienced. She then recorded Yoon's musical and physical performances anddegenerateher in her own version of what she perceives as "black" and "hip-hop style". Yoon's mixed background is not a secret in Korea, nor are multiracial Korean artists uncommon in Korean entertainment. However, anti-black sentiment in Korea manifests itself through the erasure of the non-Korean and non-"American" experiences of people like Truedy. Truedy has darkened her skin, curled her hair to look natural, created thick double eyelids when applying makeup, and also wears what she considers "hip-hop" clothing. Her music and references to blacks combined with the physical performance of blackness are quintessentially minstrelsque.
2016 – Hip-Hop-Girlgroup 2NE1 de YG Entertainmentdissolve.
2NE1 was one of the first girl groups I invested in, and it was biasedgoodits aesthetic and hip-hop sound. (I don't just want to say "that was the end of an era" because it's kind of silly, but when I heard the news, I definitely felt it.)
2017 - Forbes reports that Hip-Hop/R&B (classified by Nielsen SoundScan as the same genre)It is the most popular music genre in the United States.
2018 –Kendrick Lamar wins the Pulitzer Prize for Music for DAMN.This critically acclaimed album is the first rap album to win a Pulitzer Prize.
The Pulitzer Prize website calls DAMN "a virtuoso collection of songs united by their folk authenticity and rhythmic dynamics, offering poignant vignettes that capture the complexities of modern African-American life."
Rap music is a nascent but influential genre, and the fact that Kendrick Lamar has received one of the highest honors for his rap music speaks volumes about the role of rap in modern culture.
(Video) The Evolution of Dance - 1950 to 2019 - By Ricardo Walker's Crew
We couldn't have covered every bump in this 40+ year timeline, but we did cover moments that were important to us and/or the industries.
Is there a moment that you consider very important that has not reached this timeline? Share below because it's still valuable! I literally didn't have time to put together the huge timeline these industries would take if we had 100% coverage.