Korean Public Enemy No. 1 (and that goes for both North and South) Zico shat on fans this week with the release of his latest song, "Oppa Is Just The Worst, Isn't He?"




In an interview on KBS, the Block B rapper told reporters, "I personally read all of those pleas online telling me not to use racial slurs. But I was like, wtf  *s*o***! You want me to be less offensive? I'ma go harder."


On Nov. 6, the non-acclaimed idol rapper drew an angry online response with his new release, "Oppa Is Just The Worst, Isn't He?" which featured both racial and homophobic slurs. The new album comes seven months after his last song, the less controversial "Oppa Fucking Hates You."



Upon watching the new music video, netizens responded with "I used to love Oppa more than my parents, but now, they totally come first." And "When is he going to learn that slurs are not OK? I stopped buying his songs two releases after I found out what a terrible person he is." And "Go die Zico, u suk."



But seriously, why is everyone up in arms about Zico now? He's pulled this shit several times before.

I guess it was just one too many slurs for some people. Like 25 slurs = "It's OK Oppa. I still saranghae you 5ever"? But 26 — "You're a terrible person and bad things should happen to you"?

Or are his actions acceptable only as long as he's making good music?

Look, the lyrics and video for "Tough Cookie" make him look ridiculous. But what were you expecting? If this side of Zico surprises you, you haven't been paying enough fucking attention.



As for an MV review? "This song blows." There you go.

Entering the music industry on any level in 2014 is exceptionally difficult, yet there are many people who wish to become pop stars.  With the steady rise of k-pop's profile globally, Korea and k-pop is positioned in the hearts and minds (mainly the hearts) of young people around the world as a desirable field to hopefully break into.  How realistic are their dreams?  Are k-pop hopefuls being delusional, or do they have a realistic (if slim) chance of realising their goals?


Most importantly of all, if you were someone wishing to make a serious giving-it-100% attempt at breaking into the k-pop industry, what are the really important things that you would need to know?  As someone who has spent quite a while in the music business in various capacities, I'm now going to give you the dirt on these important questions, so read on if you dare!

TEN THINGS THAT ASPIRING K-POP STARS NEED TO KNOW

(I hope you all appreciate that I didn't make this heading the post title for clickbait purposes.  I could have easily done this, you know.)

1.  Korea's music market is tiny

I think this is something everybody knows, but are you aware of just how tiny Korea's music market really is?  To put the incredible teensy-tiny smallness of Korea's music business in perspective, let's take a look at the global music market share figures from the annual report of the RIAJ (Record Industry Association of Japan), which shows the top 10 countries for music revenue as of 2012 - the year when PSY's "Gangnam Style" was huge and barnstormed across the world.  The revenue displayed in the following graph is a combination of physical and digital sales, plus performance rights revenue (royalties) and synchronisation revenue (licensing for TV shows, movies, computer games etc), all together:


USA and Japan are on top, no surprise there, then we have some other countries, and.... hang on, where's South Korea?  Oh - it looks like the industry there is so small that it didn't even get on the chart, they're somewhere in that "rest of world (less than 1% each)" section in bright red.  Even with the help of "Gangnam Style".  Oh shit.

Looking at this graph, it should be obvious to anybody why Korean artists and labels are desperately trying to crack the Japanese and American markets - there's a pot of gold there compared to Korea, those industries are literally dozens of times bigger and even marginal cult-level success in the US or Japan would net more income than a #1 Korean hit.  It should make perfect sense why your idols are going overseas and doing stuff all the time.  Fans don't get it of course, they're all like "oh, Group X flopped in Korea so they have to go somewhere else", or "why doesn't Group Y concentrate on Korea, they are messing up by going overseas" - fucking dumbass fans don't get it.  Every time your faves escape Korea, you should be happy - there's at least a reasonable chance that they might be actually making money for once.

A k-pop hopeful from any random country would be statistically better off moving to The Netherlands and pursuing a career in Europop than trying to break into the k-pop market.  Unless of course, they already lived in The Netherlands, or any other of those countries listed in the top 10, in which case if they were going to move to enhance their music career, they should move to a country higher in the top 10.  And if they already lived in the US or Japan?  Holy shit girl - stay right where you are because you're already in the best possible place that you can be if you want to pursue a career in music.  Nobody from Japan is desperately trying to crack the Korean market, and nobody from the US or any other country in the graph above should be either.

This chart is working on two-year old data - China is likely closing in on the top 10 countries, and Japan has probably now overtaken the US.  Nevertheless, in strict money-making terms as far as the musical product goes, assuming all other factors to be equal, it's pretty clear that South Korea is not at the top of the list of "places you can go to make lots of money in the music business".

2.  You have almost no chance of making decent money

Of course, all other factors are not equal.  Any industry that carries with it a certain amount of fame (acting, singing, modelling, professional sports, etc) is considered a "glamour profession" and these occupations always have a far greater supply of people wishing to ascend to a sustainable level than there are positions within the industry to contain them. The result of demand for positions being far greater than supply means that a massive imbalance of power is generated - wages and therefore realistic opportunities are driven downward, because people with their eyes on the prize are desperate for a leg up over their competition, so they will often accept compromise now if they believe it will help them get closer to their long-term goal of career sustainability later.  And guess which part of the pop music industry has a lot of competition right now?


The above graph shows the amount of k-pop debuts (not comebacks, just new artists, solo debuts and subunit debuts only) between 2007 and 2013, with a trend line inserted so you can also see which way things have generally been heading.  Since 2009 until now there's been a steady stream of at least one new solo performer, group or subunit entering the k-pop scene each week.  Almost all of these people are native Koreans, and therefore they don't have to deal with any other nasty little hurdles like cultural adjustments, language barriers, racism etc... and if you're a k-pop hopeful all of these people are competing for the same market share that you will be, assuming you even get far enough to debut.

Looking at the bigger picture, even established, internationally famous western artists struggle to make an income from music these days.  This is because the market share is drying up - globally.  Here's another fun graph that I built from the RIAJ report, showing you the total amount of global music sales revenue in billions of dollars across all fields over the last 15 years:


Physical sales are declining fast, and while other income streams such as digital sales are definitely increasing, they're not increasing at anywhere near the rate needed to cover the gap.  So if you're trying to get into k-pop, you're:

• Aiming for success in a relatively tiny music market...
• ...in an industry that has been in recession for over a decade...
• ...with tons of competition from people more qualified than you...
• ...that is known for racism against people who are not Korean...

...and this is before we even take into account things like unfair contracts and massive unrepayable trainee debt as well as crappy wages even for the A-list groups.


"Fine, fine..." I hear you say "...if I have to live with no income and a horrible debt, I can handle it.  I'm doing it for the love of music and performance!  Kpopalypse oppar, please stop trying to talk me out of it, because I'm convinced that I want to do it anyway, and give me some advice that I can actually use!"

Okay then, so you really want to go down this road and maximise your 0.0001% chance at this.  Here's some advice for that.

3.  Start as young as possible

Remember when everyone made a fuss over complete k-pop noob Dani being recruited by KKS at only 13 years old?  "Gosh, that's a little young to school someone in the k-pop system, what about her regular schooling", said all the concern-trolls and general morons.  You might think that 13 years old is the minimum age that somebody would make a start in pursuing their k-pop dream... sorry, nope - it's more like the maximum age.  Add another zero between the decimal point and the 1 for each year that you delay working on your k-pop goal beyond the age of 13.  If you're starting training at high-school leaver's age, your chances of success as an international entry into k-pop have already diminished from 0.0001% to about 0.00000001%, you might as well just fucking forget about it with odds like that.  The maximum viable female debut age in an ageist society like Korea is probably about 23 or so years, and someone debuting at 23 has probably been training within the company since they were at most 19 years old and probably been training themselves outside of the company since they were 13 at the oldest.  Try to debut any older than that and... well, we all know how well Gang Kiz did.  Does anyone who got into k-pop from 2013 onward even know who they are?  Males might get a couple more years, at most.

4.  Don't sign any shit without a lawyer present

Not just any old lawyer, either, but specifically a music industry lawyer.  The garden-variety lawyer who helped you with your grandmother's will and helped settle a dispute that one time when your drunk friend mooned a college girl from a limousine that your dad was driving and the girl's parents sued the limo company who then fired your dad is way out of their depth with your music industry contract.  Why?  Because there are terms in music contracts that have vastly different meanings and implications from other types of legal documents and a normal lawyer will advise you incorrectly.  I'm not going to go into details here, and in any event you don't need to know the details anyway, just know that you need a fucking lawyer and they have to be music industry specific.

A lawyer to look over contract terms and conditions is so important that in the western music business, major labels have recently taken to the practice of forcing new signees to have a lawyer present to represent their interests at contract negotiations, no matter what, even if the artist doesn't want them there.  If you try to sign a contract with a major label and you don't have a lawyer, nowadays they won't even accept it, they'll say "get yourself a lawyer to look this over, then come back, because we don't want you claiming in the future that we misled you or that you didn't understand the contract or that we denied you the right to legal representation or fucked you over in some other way".  In previous years a few isolated artists have managed to get messy contracts terminated simply by claiming to the judge "I didn't know what I was signing because I was high as shit" so the business wants to put a stop to that so artists can't just walk away from binding contracts scot-free.  As for Korea, I'm not sure how this plays out, I suspect they're not that far advanced yet and they'll probably just not give a fuck and make you sign shit on the spot anyway.  Don't do it - don't sign anything legal that you don't fully understand without someone qualified there on your side, hired by you to explain to you exactly what it means.  The "get away with it by claiming to be high during signing" excuse probably doesn't work that well in Korea, for obvious reasons...

5.  Learn to be 'morally flexible' and tolerant

The first time I went electric guitar shopping on my own, I was probably about 14 years old.  I went to a local music store that was run by industry types and was attached to teaching rooms and a studio.  I was fascinated by the Ibanez guitars with custom paintjobs that they had on display at the front of the store and that my family on our one working class income had no way in hell of being able to afford.  I was told by my music teacher at the time that the Squier Stratocaster (the el-cheapo Fender-endorsed Asian-built copy of the iconic USA Fender Stratocaster which looks, plays and sounds about the same but retails at a fifth of the price) was an acceptable quality guitar for my budget, but I couldn't find any in the store.  I only saw the expensive Ibanez guitars plus a bunch of other cheaper stuff that I had never even heard of, so I went up to the front counter for some help.


"Excuse me... do you have a... Squier Stratocaster?" I asked the curly-long-haired guy at the front counter.

The man rolled his eyes with familiarity - this was obviously a common question.  "No, we don't stock any Fender-related stuff at all."

"Oh... why is that?" I asked.

"Fuck Fender, they're a pack of wankers." came the reply.  I jumped back a bit - a store attendant, talking like this?  I was only used to swearing from adults when my dad was mad at me.  Was the store attendant mad at me?  His language said yes, but the tone of his voice said no - he was smiling at me and basically had a friendly disposition.

Another store attendant doing string-changes on another counter piped up: "The Fender reps don't like our discount policy here.  We discount everything store-wide, but the Fender guys have set prices that they want us to sell things at.  They're total cunts about it too, they won't budge.  Fuck 'em."

The guy serving me laughed.  "Oh they sure do suck.  Pity though, that Fender rep, she's fuckin' nice..." - he turned to the other guy, and gave him a slight wink.

"I'd give her a discount." the string-changer guy replied.

The first guy continued: "Go to [another store in the city] if you want a Squier.  Tell 'em I sent you, they'll do you a good price.  Tell 'em Fender are dickheads for me, too - then they're definitely know for sure that I was the one who sent you!"  He laughed, but I could tell from the way he looked at me that he wasn't joking.

"O-kay... thanks!" I said, and walked on out the door, feeling somewhat awkward.

If I was an uptight prudish sort I suppose I could have made a fuss about this.  I think if my parents were in the store with me they probably would have said something, but I let it slide, and it was just as well because he was actually doing me a favour - I went to that other store, passed on the message "that guy doesn't like Fenders much" (at that time I couldn't bring myself to say "dickheads" to a store attendant) and received a hefty discount on my first electric guitar with a knowing grin from the staff.  That was my first encounter with a strange music industry phenomenon; people in the music business swear and talk dirty - a lot.  Some people don't like my writing because I use words like "fuck", "cunt" etc. but it's a music industry habit, and I actually have to converse with people like that from time to time just to get them on-side in professional situations.  If someone is in the music business and they don't swear much, they are generally not trusted by others in the business.  Why?  Maybe it's because people will think that they're an undercover cop, and why would that be a problem?  Well...

6.  There is a distinct crossover between the music business and the organised crime business

I can't talk much about this except to say that you should be streetwise at all times.  Don't just blunder around thinking that everybody you see has your best interests at heart - they do not.  Pay careful attention to details and what's going on around you.  Say 'no' to situations that make you feel uncomfortable.  You will probably see drugs around you from time to time, learn to say no to them.  You will hear about illegal shit happening around you all the time, learn to not get involved.  Especially be aware that organised criminals are directly involved in prostitution and prostitution is everywhere, so you can expect to see it in the music business too, especially in a place like South Korea where prostitution is HUGE, and by extension...

7.  The "casting couch" (or variations thereof) is real

Some true music industry stories, with names removed:

Singer B is recording a track for her album, she's a well-known sex symbol with a "sexy but cute" persona.  The studio engineer in the recording session notices that she's having a little bit of trouble getting into the mood for the part.  "I just can't get the right vulnerable feeling for this particular ballad", she says.  The engineer talks B into removing her clothes in the studio and cutting the vocal part completely naked.  "If you want to sound vulnerable, feeling vulnerable and exposed may help you get into the right feeling for the part" he says.  B complies and records the song without any clothes on.  She certainly feels vulnerable with the engineer looking at her, and indeed records the perfect vocal part, for what becomes a standout song on the album.  Later on in a TV interview after the album is released, the host asks about her performance on that track.  Noticeably embarrassed, she tells the story of how she recorded it to the host, to the complete astonishment of him and everyone else present - the host laughs and remarks "I'd like to meet that studio engineer, he sounds like a genius!"

Female-fronted Group D are hot in the marketplace and have a significant media buzz going.  They are negotiating a record deal with a large label.  The manager of the label is K, a male celebrity in his own right and ex-member of a well-known group.  Negotiations are going well, until K mentions "there's just two things; firstly, you have to change your band name, it's stupid and long-winded, nobody is going to remember it.  You need something short and punchy that sticks in people's heads.  Secondly, you [he points to the singer] need to get your tits out more.  There's no use hiding behind all those clothes, we need to see some cleavage, because tits sell records, we need to see them."  Group D are horrified and offended, they unanimously reject both suggestions out of hand.  K says "fine - but don't forget that I'm very powerful in this town - I won't sign your group and nobody else is going to sign you either, it's me or it's nothing".  Group D say "get lost, creep", leave the negotiating table refusing to sign anything, and quickly discover that he's right - their media buzz quickly fizzles out, no other labels show interest, and Group D disbands shortly afterward.

Singer J is a young hopeful wishing to make a start in the music business.  Lacking much in the way of characteristic attributes but very determined to succeed as a singer in a cutthroat industry, she makes a plan to "date her way to the top".  Fully aware of the "power of the casting couch" before entering the industry, J sleeps with several people who she knows can directly enhance her career, and as each person opens a door for her she walks through it, dumps them and moves onto the next person.  She starts firstly with band members who have valuable connections, then switches to DJs and studio producers as she transitions from a member of a group to a successful solo artist making electronic music.  J is still active in the music industry today, and doing quite well!


How to avoid running into "casting couch" kind of situations, while also not letting it impact your career negatively?  It's a good question with perhaps no definitive answer, but I will say this - just because someone won't give you an opportunity if you don't sleep with them, doesn't mean that they will give you that opportunity if you do.  Some "casting couch" type schemes do represent a genuine opportunity, but most are really just designed to keep stringing you along giving people free blowjobs for as long as possible until you wise up.

8.  Don't be a whiny bitch

On the one hand, you shouldn't have to put up with any sexual exploitation as part of your career (which doesn't mean that people won't try it anyway, especially in Korea).  On the other hand, if you start complaining about things which you really shouldn't be complaining about, you'll get a reputation as "difficult", and this can be fatal to a nugu's prospects.  Realise that the music industry operates on a kind of Chinese-whispers system, lots of people know lots of other people, and that anything you say which is negative, even if said innocently or without any true malevolent intent, could have a real impact on your career.  The "prima donna" types that you read about in blind articles on other websites who are impossibly rude and get away with it already have a large degree of success.  Until you've banked your first million, try not to be a cunt.  Same goes for any walk of life, really.

9.  If you are delusional, nobody will tell you the truth

Everybody reading this post, as soon as you've finished reading this post, go immediately to your favourite website for tracking down movies and try to find and watch an obscure and sadly almost-impossible-to-find Australian "mockumentary" film called Bigger Than Tina.  The film tells the story of an aspiring solo performer who's convinced that his career is on the up-and-up and that he's going to be "bigger than Tina" (referring to moderately-successful Australian singer Tina Arena, not Tina Turner).  It's obvious right from the first few minutes of the film to the viewer that the singer is delusional and has nothing special about himself whatsoever which would translate to a pop audience, and that his chances of vast commercial success are as good as nil, yet he has a steadfast belief in himself which is outright comical.  Many critics of the film have commented that the lead character seems hammy and exaggerated, but he definitely is not!   Having met several people just like him in my real life, I can confirm that the portrayal is eerily reminiscent of many different people who I've met who all believe that they could "make it" in the industry and that their time in the spotlight was just around the corner.  It's a perfect portrait of complete delusion.


Such delusion is exceedingly common but how does it propagate so vastly within the industry?  Because if you suck flat out, it's in nobody's interests to tell you the truth that you have no hope in hell.

• You parents love you and would never tell you that you suck, they're biased and love everything that you do.  In the rare cases where the parents hate you and would tell you you're crap, you probably hate them back and won't listen anyway
• You boyfriend isn't going to say that you're crap, he doesn't want to start a fight or be dumped - he knows how much your dreams mean to you, why rain on your parade just for the sake of being right?  Also, upset girls don't give blowjobs quite as often, rest assured you will never get the truth out of your boyfriend or girlfriend or partner of any sort
• Your friends won't tell you the truth for the same reason, they'd like to remain your friends, at least for now
• If you're crap your enemies will definitely tell you the truth, but they're your enemies so it's only natural that they'd say that you suck just to hurt you - they're not the best judge, so you're not gonna listen to those trolls
• Your music teacher's job is to make you better so she can't be negative, she has to keep you coming back to lessons so she can improve you, she's not allowed to say "you're crap" even if you are because you might get upset and give up
• Anyone you work with in a studio cutting a demo or whatever, you're paying for the studio time so they're paid to get the best result possible out of your ability, they're not going to tell you that you're shit and make you cry and cancel the session, that would do no good, it'd just be cruel

That's why when people get on crappy talent shows like X Factor, etc. and the Simon Cowell or whoever the designated "cynical bastard" on the panel is says "hey you're actually quite fucking shit", they contestants always look so disbelieving.  The girl in the video above isn't faking that look of astonishment - literally nobody has told her that she sucks before.  She's had her ego propped up and boosted by everybody around her so of course she thinks the judges are just being assholes.  It couldn't possibly be anything wrong with her, after all the people she cares about wouldn't lie to her.  Would they?

You bet they fucking would.

10.  Have a backup plan (for fuck's sake)

In the highly entertaining late 1980s video documentary "The Decline Of Western Civilisation Part 2: The Metal Years", several complete nugu metalheads in shitty 80s glam rock bands that would shortly be all swept into oblivion thanks to the change in music fashion and the rise of Nirvana and grunge, were asked in separate interviews if they had any backup plan should their music dreams fail.  The results are terrifying, and show just how common delusions of "making it" really are.

If you're an aspiring k-pop star or starlet and you only take one single lesson from this blog, make it this one - don't be like these people in the first 90 seconds of the above video.  Half of them are probably dead in a ditch somewhere by now.  While it's definitely true that perseverance is needed for success, it's also true that even if everything else in this blog post is wrong, and I'm just a horrible pessimist and you've actually got everything in your favour much more than I'm letting on here, your chances of success are still extremely marginal at best, and you need to think about what the fuck you're gonna do if it doesn't work out.

One thing that that netizens do that really shits me, apart from all the other mountains upon mountains of things they do that shit me, is that they criticise idols for getting university degrees.  Even the most successful idols of all know that nobody is an idol forever, they're making sure they've got some other qualifications so that if something should happen to fuck up and their dream ends tomorrow, they've still got something to fall back on and they're not going to be making their bed under a bridge with rags and cardboard boxes.  And don't give me that "but they never go to uni" crap, there's a such thing as a correspondence course - any complaints about "they never set foot on campus" are just netizens being bitter that they don't get bragging rights from meeting their precious celebs in the flesh and taking proof selcas.  Can you imagine being an idol and actually consistently turning up at university?  You'd get hounded so often by entitled me-generation fuckheads that you just wouldn't get any work done.  Idols are being smart, and so should you - pursue your dream if you must, but have a solid backup plan, just in case you're completely nuts and you don't realise it yet.

---

This concludes this educational post about how much the music industry sucks!  Hopefully you aspiring stars can get somewhere meaningful and sustainable without ending up with the inside of your mouth coated in jizz and nothing to show for it!  Good luck out there!

Ice to see you.

Another day, another Brave Brothers release. What's ironic about this one is that there isn't the signature "Brave Sound" shit thing in the beginning. (Do them and JYP record a new intro for every song or do they just have a stock recording?) I would have thought they would want to distance themselves from the Hello Venus comeback.. But whatever. I'm not here to talk about the song itself, but rather how this MV can help you pull off the biggest heist of your life.



Step 1: Steal tattoo guy's phone. It should have a video game on it that you can use to hack into the security system of the vault. (Oh, there's the Brave Sound.)


Step 2: Sneak into the security control room and start pressing buttons/turning knobs until the screens show thick lines.


Step 3: Sneak into tattoo guy's house by climbing up the wall. This is important: Make sure you wear your anti-gravity hairspray. One inside sexually look everywhere for something, taking care to bend over as much as possible. If he wakes up he'll just think it was a sexy dream, LOL!


Step 4: You should still have that phone from earlier. Go ahead and play some video games on it while you're in an air duct.


Step 5: Sexually make your way through security lasers to the vault door, again making sure to bend over as much as possible. You know you're doing it right if Choa is getting turned on by it.


Step 6: When the guards finally catch on to your masterpiece of a heist simply take them out. They'll be kind enough to wait patiently for their turn, one by one.


Step 7: Profit!

Well, 2014 is nearly over and most people are happy to put it behind them.  It hasn't exactly been an outstanding year for k-pop, with so many controversies, scandals and tragedies.  So what can we look forward to in 2015 and beyond?  Hopefully something better, right?  It's a good thing that I have my fantastic powers of ESP readily available to find out the truth of what the future holds!


My mother always claimed that she had Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP), specifically, the power to forsee the future and know that which is hidden.  If she guessed something to happen in the future and she was right (like the mass surveillance that Edward Snowden exposed - my mother was about a decade in front of Snowden himself on figuring that one out), she'd say "look, that's my ESP kicking in".  On the other hand, if she was wrong about something (like Australia electing a sensible leader instead of embarrassing arch-fuckwit Tony Abbott) she'd say "I still have ESP, but it just wasn't working that well on the day that I predicted that - I'm not perfect, you know".  Here's a picture of my mother, focusing her ESP powers through a mysterious crystal, which should totally convince you that she's legit:


Well actually, that's a picture of T-ara's Boram, but they look very similar, so it'll do.  I didn't have a good picture of my mother holding any mystical crystal shit handy so let's not get too fussy over the details here.

My mother was also a big believer in the power of hereditary genes and mothers passing on their talents to their offspring.  No doubt this was an appealing thought to her at least in part because it means she got to take some credit for my achievements - I was good at music, and so was her grandfather, so it follows that it's because she passed on the genes that I have musical ability, so therefore I should thank her and be appropriately grateful.  Although the power of genetic transference of all sorts of positive qualities was obviously a convenient belief for her to have, I'm not a genetic scientist qualified to dispute it - I've got no reason to doubt that she was right, so I'm going to run with my mother's thinking and claim that I also have ESP.  This means that all the following predictions that I make are absolutely 100% true and correct... unless of course, I'm having a bad day and my powers are a bit shaky in which case they may not be.  It'll still probably be more correct than whatever bullshit Allkpop predicts.

This post should also please people who were sad because they couldn't figure out my blind items in my "aspiring k-pop stars" post or complained that they weren't specific enough, because these predictions are so specific that it hurts.  Here we go.

Kpopalypse's completely 100% accurate and legit* predictions for the future of k-pop

Girls' Generation will continue - sort of.  Having transformed from The Divine Nine to The Hateful Eight (probably as a tie-in to Tarantino's new film), the illusion of picture perfect happiness will be anathema to young fangirls living in la-la land, and their audience will gradually decline.  The members of the group will gradually become less active, transitioning into full time entertainment media roles.  Just because it's easier to get three people to co-operate on a regular basis than eight, SNSD will undergo an "Orange Caramel" effect - TaeTiSeo will gradually become more popular and active than the full group.

EXO as a group will remain popular - and underpaid.  In the meantime, Kris and Luhan will give the Chinese industry a red hot go.  They'll have varying degrees of success but they'll still make more money in China than the rest of EXO put together.

Hyorin from Sistar will lose much of her hair.  She'll cover it up with wigs and extensions of course, but the endless abuse of hair-care products will take its toll.  Expect to see more misshaped Hyorin cranial action in the future as the thinning out of her scalp reveals her "upgraded" skull shape to all.  Meanwhile Sistar's popularity will nosedive as the group's fans transition to AOA and Girl's Day.  Soyou will have the most success in the group, continuing to do well releasing limp "Love The Way You Lie" clones with male rappers.

Apink will be fucking up and down the house.  The "cute" group concepts will stay, but behind-the-scenes they will become notorious as the go-to girls for a good time, they will be in and out of Shinsadong Tiger's bangbus on the regular, getting dick from male k-pop stars big and small (in every sense of the word).  Eventually, one of them will get busted, maybe by the paparazzi or maybe they will take a seemingly innocent selca and somebody will notice incriminating details, like suspiciously stained clothing, or Seungri towelling himself down reflected in a vanity mirror.

Sulli won't give a cao ni ma.  She's always hated standing in line to please industry fuckwits and she's had a gutful of idol bullshit in general.  She wants nothing more than to stay home and iron Chioza's shirts before Dynamic Duo concerts, and she'll continue to skimp on schedules and be sketchy as fuck with nearly everything else until her contract expires, upon which time she'll ride out of the k-pop scene on an alpaca to be with her one true love and live happily ever after.  In the meantime f(x) will come back again in the middle of 2015 like they always do reliably each year (you'd think fans freaking out about f(x) not getting comebacks would have realised this pattern by now, but then k-pop fans aren't the brightest lot), with "Yellow Piss" (they're going around the colour wheel).

Qri still won't care.  You think fangirls hate T-ara now - just wait.  Eventually it will be revealed who some of the other girls are dating, and netizens won't like it - just like with Soyeon, it will be discovered that they're dating completely respectable and desirable guys in the entertainment business, with good upstanding reputations!  Fangirl fury will be intense, many cyber-eggs will be thrown, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth (not to mention selectively-translated Netizenbuzz articles documenting the worst of it while ignoring the ever-increasing amount of morerationalopinions) and T-ara's new CEO at MBK will laugh it up while collecting all the website ad revenue.

Zico will get into more scandals.  But don't worry Block B fans, Netizenbuzz will always be there with her Internet shield to clarify situations and put them in their proper context, so confused international fans will be able to understand and forgive him.  Just like she does with every other group in a big career-damaging controversy... oh wait.

Woollim will take those who spread the Jisoo rumours to court - and win.  Having already completely shot their credibility to shit by fabricating most of the "evidence" against Jisoo, the judge won't believe anything else that the rumour-spreaders say either, once they are found and reluctantly dragged in to court to testify.  Woollim will walk away with the case with little effort and Jisoo will go down in k-pop history along with Tablo and Eunjung as yet another k-pop idol who had their career messed with just because someone woke up on the wrong side of bed one day and decided to spread lies to gullible kidlets with no capacity for critical thinking on the Internet.

Ladies Code will come back - but it won't be the same.  Realising that the girls are now more famous than ever before, their CEO will give them a short respite and then get them straight back into another Starex to make that money.   Their music will change from the sound that their fans from before the accident loved - upbeat songs will no longer be considered appropriate, and the new song will be a ballad, with deliberately ambiguous lyrics that could possibly be interpreted as an ode to Rise and Eunbi.  Fans will appreciate the thought and sentiment but wonder why the company didn't just change the group name as well if they were going to dump the old sound.

Way's Girls will become more active.  Crayon Pop will remain in the public eye as a popular group, meanwhile the amount of detractors and haters online will gradually decrease, despite the group accumulating scandal at roughly the same rate as everybody else in k-pop.  This syndrome will be noted and regular online haters being gradually won over by the cuteness of weird concepts despite the appearance of multiple scandals and baseless rumours will start to be dubbed the "Crayon Pop effect".  Nobody will notice that the haters aren't actually being won over at all, they're vanishing.

Raina will collapse at an event and get admitted to hospital.  The poor girl isn't traveling as well as the other OC members, with constant group, subunit and solo comebacks.  Soon her body will give way during a scheduled event and she'll end up in hospital where it will be revealed that she's been massively dehydrated and underweight for weeks.  Meanwhile After School fans will still whine for a comeback with all eight members even though the group already released a full album this year.

IU will complete her transition to a "more mature image".  She'll go onto that same TV show that Eunjung was on and blow everybody's minds (and loads) with her complex and nuanced understanding of sexual relationships, indicating an obvious wealth of experience.

Shindong will get bullied out of Super Junior.  K-pop fans of all ages and genders worldwide will continue to unanimously love and adore Shindong as a trailblazer for the acceptance of different body images in k-pop.  Meanwhile odd bruises will start to appear on his body, and he'll stop appearing at schedules.  Eventually he will leave the group to concentrate on variety TV and it will be revealed that the other SuJu members have been taking out their frustrations on Shindong physically - they've been bullying him because they're all on strict idol diets whereas Shindong can eat what he likes!

SM Entertainment will keep fucking with everyone else's shit.  Willing to stoop so low as to blackmail an author to take JYJ out of a worthless crappy coffee-table picture book, it's clear that SM is the k-pop company equivalent of that jealous possessive ex-boyfriend who still thinks you're cheating on him when you date a new guy a year after the relationship is over.  Intellectually neanderthal guys like that never learn that they're just sabotaging their own chances of happiness, and neither will SM.  Watch them fuck mercilessly with everybody and continue to get away with it.  Remember SM are so powerful that they can even control Google when they want to, don't expect anybody in authority in Korea to do anything any harsher to SM than give them the equivalent of a speeding fine.

Han Ye Seul and Teddy's relationship will deteriorate, boosting Teddy's song quality.  The honeymoon phase of the relationship will soon be over and they're going to be entering the "stop hogging the remote" phase soon.  Filled with newfound angst, Teddy will then channel his lack of getting his tip wet into his art and start writing better songs once again.  This will come too late for 2NE1, with Bom now languishing in apoplexy at the bottom of an opium den and CL embracing crass all-American suckitude, but the next girl group to debut on YG will be the beneficiary.

JYP will position GOT7 to replace 2PM as his main money-earner.  He'll try both self-penned and outsourced songs, but none of them will really light the fire under GOT7 that is needed.  Then one day, he'll have an epiphany - "I've stopped doing pointless cameos in my group's MVs, plus I'm not saying JYP anymore, what happened to me?!?", he'll cry.  The next song that he releases after realising the error of his ways and re-inserting the beloved "JYP" shout/whispered intro into his new songs will reignite his fortunes and GOT7 will ride high from this moment onward.

K-pop will continue to not take over the world.  Small victories here and there will continue but the much-anticipated cultural takeover will not happen.  K-poppers will continue to dream of western fame and them flop dramatically after much investment.  Mega-concerts will continue to be optimistically promoted and then cancelled at the last minute due to lack of bums on seats (plus shady event organisers who skip the event's country with ticket money, hello Naureen Gana if you're reading).  It's destined to be a cult phenomenon only in western countries, sorry folks.

Massive amounts of prostitution will jeopardise at least one record label.  Some nugu girl group is going to be discovered supplementing their income stream with streams of jizz from fanboys willing to pay top dollar for idol spelunking.  Fans will be able to go to the agency-run brothel and choose not only the girl but their favourite MV concept, which said girl will then recreate in private rooms.  Of course gays and hetero females reading this will be pleased/horrified to know that the guys aren't exempt either, and a similarly floptastic boy group will also be busted hiring out their meaty abs for executive-class fangirl hen's nights.

AOA will bring back the band concept, but you won't like it.  The label, not eager to kill the newly found source of golden eggs, will aim for a "halfway" band concept that consists of 10 seconds of band footage plus 3 minutes of the group shaking their asses, and the song will still be written by Bravesound so it'll sound just like all their other new shit anyway.  Not that it matters whether they play instruments or not - they're just some fucking girl group with manufactured songs but fans are acting like they were Led Zeppelin or something.  Still, I'll be grateful for Youkyung's release from the dungeon so I can resume fapping to her.

I'll leave the last exciting prediction for AOA themselves:


*  Remember folks that according to Wikipedia "a great deal of reported extrasensory perception is said to occur spontaneously in conditions which are not scientifically controlled, and that "such experiences have often been reported to be much stronger and more obvious than those observed in laboratory experiments".  In other words, I'm right and if you try to prove me wrong using an evidence-based scientific approach, you're wrong.  Unless of course I'm wrong, which I could be, but you're still wrong anyway.  Unless you believe that I'm right.  Which I may or may not be.  Make sense?  If not, good - you're getting the idea of how ESP works.  That's all for now, Kpopalypse will be back in the future!  I have forseen it!

Maybe not a god ,but there are two hot goddesses

Today -'ve found out today someth-ng wh-ch -'ve suspected for a wh-le but wh-ch has now been conf-rmed - F-ve Dolls have d-sbanded.  The label haven't released an off-c-al statement yet, but none -s needed; the label's new webs-te doesn't l-st them as an act-ve group, and w-th several members hav-ng left the company, -t's easy enough to see what's happened.


S-nce - felt that F-ve Dolls' f-nal -ncarnat-on d-dn't really get enough attent-on when they were act-ve, -'m now go-ng to overcompensate w-ldly by wr-t-ng my f-rst k-pop album rev-ew!

-'ve never done an album rev-ew before s-mply because - mostly don't see the fuck-ng po-nt.  -f you want to hear any mus-c by anybody these days, you can just pull up your -phone or go to your favour-te p-rate webs-te and hear -t for free anyt-me.  All the art -s also ava-lable somewhere onl-ne should you care to search, and let's be honest, the album -sn't really even the product anyway, -t's the g-rls themselves and the -dea of them as enterta-nment ent-t-es that you can love, cher-sh and fap over.  However s-nce probably no more cop-es of the F-rst Love m-n- album are l-kely to be made -n the future from the company beh-nd th-s flop group who have now d-scarded them and left them on the nugu trash heap, -f you're a F-ve Dolls fan you may just-f-ably wonder; -s -t worth p-ck-ng up one of the last rema-n-ng phys-cal cop-es?  Let's answer th-s -mportant quest-on w-th an...

ALBUM REV-EW: F-VE DOLLS - "F-RST LOVE" M-N- ALBUM

 

THE G-RLS

Let's start th-s album rev-ew w-th the most -mportant th-ngs f-rst.  S-nce -t's the members of the group wh-ch are the real commod-ty -n any k-pop release, we'll beg-n there.  So, who are (were) F-ve Dolls?


- f-rst suspected that F-ve Dolls m-ght be d-sband-ng when - heard last week that Nayeon had left the group and now res-des -n Ch-cago.  Amer-can readers, look out for a Nayeon near you!  Nayeon has qu-te good command of Engl-sh apparently, so -'ve asked her about maybe do-ng an -nterv-ew somet-me but - th-nk she's busy study-ng so probably doesn't have t-me for my bullsh-t.  Oh well.  -'m here and ready -f she changes her m-nd!


Seunghee -s very attract-ve, fresh-faced, off-c-al Kpopalypse b-as l-st approved and has apparently reta-ned her contract w-th MBK.  We'll probably be see-ng more of Seunghee soon -n terms of s-ng-ng, mus-c v-deo cameos (l-ke her great turn play-ng the slutty wench -n The Seeya's "Tell Me" MV), act-ng or other act-v-t-es and -t's just as well because - th-nk -'m gett-ng some ser-ous blue balls.


Hyewon certa-nly has someth-ng -nterest-ng about her v-sually and w-th her short ha-r g-ves off a v-be s-m-lar to Hae-n from Gangk-z - she doesn't possess qu-te the same -mpress-ve rack, but she's also not as far off as you m-ght th-nk -n that department (see "You Cheated", below).  She's also an exper-enced model and actress and has a cameo -n T-ara's "Love Dovey Zomb-e vers-on" MV as well as T-ara N4's "Jeon Won D-ary".  Hyewon has now reportedly left the company but here's hop-ng that she's landed on her feet somewhere n-ce (l-ke my house).


Yeonkyung -s cute and also a member of The Seeya, so even though F-ve Dolls are no more, you'll st-ll get to hear lots more from Yeonkyung -n the future, assum-ng that The Seeya have some more comebacks planned.  Ballad groups l-ke that tend to have a longer shelf l-fe than -dol pop stuff so -'m opt-m-st-c that MBK w-ll trans-t-on The Seeya to more and more of a Dav-ch- style d-rect-on, wh-ch m-ght be quest-onable for mus-c qual-ty purposes but w-ll be a pos-t-ve development for Yeonkyung fap.


Hyoyoung -s notor-ous among k-pop c-rcles as the s-ster of T-ara's Hwayoung, Korea's #1 net-zen troller and hyg-ene advocate.  Let's not let Hyoyoung be overshadowed though, she's st-ll w-th MBK and has been bu-ld-ng up for herself qu-te an act-ng resume, and -'m not talk-ng about act-ng l-ke her leg -s hurt m-nutes before go-ng onstage.  She also has some n-ce boobs under that hanbok, hopefully she'll learn from her s-ster's -mpress-vely slutty ant-cs and we'll get to see them a l-ttle more -n future.


Last but not least, who can forget the lovely charms of Eunkyo?  She's so adorable that - made her a cl-ckable -con on my personal webs-te, know-ng that no human al-ve can res-st the urge to cl-ck on the Eunkyo and be taken to wonderful and myster-ous places.  She's left the company now and also deleted her Tw-tter so who knows what the future holds but s-nce K-m Kwang Soo has also left the company - wouldn't be at all surpr-sed -f he's kept Eunkyo all for h-mself.  Too conven-ent to be mere co-nc-dence, they're probably cuddl-ng on a deserted -sland somewhere far away from Korea's tax -nspectors as you read th-s.

Oh and yes -'m well aware that there were other g-rls -n F-ve Dolls but they're not on "F-rst Love" so - don't g-ve a fuck.  Th-s -sn't W-k-ped-a you wh-ny cunt.  Anyway, now that we've gotten to know the lovely g-rls of F-ve Dolls, let's move onto...

THE PHYS-CAL PACKAGE

Now we move onto the packag-ng, wh-ch -s -mportant.  After all, -f you d-dn't want the package, why would you buy -t at all?  -t's not l-ke all mus-c -sn't ava-lable completely free these days.

Here's a great unbox-ng v-deo w-th a m-n-mum of fuss and wank that shows you the contents of the box and all of the photocards, =t'll save me some ty-ng.  Yes, there's even a photocard for "F-ve Dolls fr-end" Dan-!


The package -s the same s-ze as T-ara N4's m-n- album and only a few m-l-metres smaller than m-ss A's "-ndependent Women part 3", but a very s-m-lar des-gn to all of these.  -t's not the eas-est des-gn from the po-nt of v-ew of acces-ng the contents but -t's better than most k-pop package -deas for keep-ng safe frag-le photocards.

The unbox-ng v-deo makes reference to s-gned ed-t-ons of th-s m-n- album.  These ed-t-ons are probably by now very rare, they've certa-nly sold out on YesAs-a a long t-me ago, - know th-s because - bought one.  Here's a scanned copy of my s-gned album cred-ts foldout, sorry for the scan qual-ty, my scanner -sn't -n the best shape and leaves ugly l-nes on everyth-ng.

 

THE MUS-C

Lastly, let's take a look at the songs on th-s m-n- album.  There are s-x songs -n total, and they are:



Eas-ly one of the best feature tracks of 2013, "Can You Love Me?" was the song that Ap-nk have always threatened to do but have never qu-te managed for some reason, and -f Ap-nk had actually released th-s song -nstead of that rubb-sh "Secret Garden" crap, -t would have no doubt been huge for them.  What makes "Can You Love Me?" work where other songs l-ke th-s often fa-l -s that although the song -s -n ballad cloth-ng -t's not really a ballad at all; the tempo -s actually qu-te br-sk, plus suspended harmon-c movement -s explo-ted a lot more often than -n most songs of th-s type wh-ch tend to go for a lame nusery rhyme harmony -nstead.  Dan-'s guest rap (wh-ch -sn't techn-cally a rap at all but whatever) -s the -c-ng on the cake and far more smooth sound-ng than anybody had a r-ght to expect g-ven that she couldn't even speak Korean at the start of 2012.  -'ve just started learn-ng Korean now and -f -'m a tenth as good as her -n the aount of t-me she took to learn that song -'ll be very happy.  To top -t all off the v-deo -s great and del-vers ample schoolg-rl fet-sh fap.



Although not qu-te h-tt-ng the h-gh standard of "Can You Love Me?", "You Cheated" -s st-ll a very sol-d m-d tempo song -n a s-m-lar ve-n and -s only enhanced by a v-deo des-gned spec-f-cally to portray the g-rl's boobs -n the best l-ght poss-ble.  The jumper colours as well as the f-tt-ng of the suspenders-and-pants combos have been carefully selected to a-d boob percept-on, mak-ng th-s one of my favour-te "under the radar fap fest" v-deo concepts.  Observe carefully how Hyweon at the top left of the screen always has her body on an angle so her boobs catch the stud-o l-ght and the-r volum-nous prof-le -s always clear, that's surely no acc-dent but clearly extremely f-ne fanserv-cey v-deo d-rect-ng.  She was no doubt told to stand exactly l-ke that for th-s reason and - only left Hyewon out of my boobsposts so - could drop th-s Easter egg here -nstead and blow the m-nds of unaware boobs perverts everywhere.



The f-rst of two non-feature track songs, "LOV" comes from the pen of k-pop h-tmaker Sh-nsadong T-ger, and you know that a m-n- album has got some qual-ty mater-al on -t when T-ger wr-tes a song for -t and that song doesn't even end up mak-ng the grade for feature track status.  The "l-ke this" interludes sound a l-ttle b-t daft (remember th-s -s the same songwr-ter who "l-key l-key d-s and l-key l-key dat" so - guess he just can't help h-mself) but everyth-ng else -s great.  Espec-ally awesome -s that h-gh synth no-se that descends every two bars, -t's the sort of th-ng that you can po-nt out to people -n order to -rr-atate them and the cont-nually s-ng when they're around to p-ss them off, always a worthy cause.



Here's the second feature track and -t's absolutely fantast-c, the sort of end-of-concert torch pop song that a group can trot out as an encore and make the aud-ence super-sad that -t's the-r last song and they have to leave for the next show soon.  You can almost hear the tears of fans -n the m-x and -t's just a p-ty that F-ve Dolls probably never played a concert where they could have used the tune for -t's clearly -ntended purpose.   Oh well, you'll just have to l-sten to -t at home, turn down your l-ghts and wave your c-garette l-ghter or glowst-ck -n front of your computer screen -n t-me to the beat.  Cons-der -t a goodbye song for the ent-re group before they sa-led off -nto the Sea Of Nugu -f you l-ke.

The f-rst feature of the revamped F-ve Dolls wasn't "Can You Love Me?" but "Soulmate #1", a d-sco number that comb-nes several aspects of T-ara's "Roly Poly" w-th the horr-ble "Funky Town" by L-pps -nc. -nto an overproduced mush to create a result that -s unfortunately completely screechy and unl-setnable.  They get the -mage r-ght w-th an appeal-ngly retro-styled v-deo cl-p, but the horr-d repet-t-ve chorus comb-ned w-th way too much vocal layer-ng all throughout d-lutes the song's few good qual-t-es (a decent br-dge, some cool d-sco rhythm textures) and the result -s just not good.  - guess every album's gotta have a dud on -t.



A typ-cal worthless rem-x -n the extens-ve trad-t-on of po-ntless CCM rem-xes where they only s-gn-f-cantly change the song's -ntro and leave just about everyth-ng else pretty much the same.  A total waste of t-me even -f you l-ked "Soulmate #1", you'll be h-tt-ng the "sk-p" button to go back to the f-rst track every t-me th-s comes on your CD player.

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Overall, - th-nk -t's one of k-pop's best m-n- albums ever.  A 66% good song/bad song rat-o m-ght sound l-ke not much of a recommendat-on but for me -t's a pretty good h-trate for any k-pop release at all, and the good songs are really, really fuck-ng good.  More -mportantly, the g-rls are hot and the package -s h-gh qual-ty.  So, should you buy th-s?  Honestly - couldn't g-ve a fly-ng fuck, that's between you, your wallet and how much you l-ke fapp-ng to photocards.  Hopefully you've at least enjoyed read-ng th-s self-ndulgent rev-ew just as much as any of the other garbage that - usually wr-te.  Maybe -'ll rev-ew another album one day -f - can f-nd a just-f-cat-on for do-ng so... but - probably won't.  Unt-l next t-me, fap safely!

The regular blog series where Kpopalypse brings you fresh/stale nugus for your enjoyment and/or bemusement!  Read on as I shove down your fucking throat another group of k-pop performers that you don't care about and will probably forget the names of as soon as you're finished reading this, in the name of good humour and a misguided unrealistic belief in music industry equal opportunity.  Let's get started!

Observant followers of Kpopalypse will notice that I don't like k-pop ballads very much.  I don't understand the fascination others have with ballads - uptempo cool songs were what got every single one of you reading this right now into k-pop in the first place so why some of you people actually pretend that you want to spend more than five seconds of your time listening to ass-felching shit-gorging turd-munching slow tender love songs for vacuous brain-dead superficial fuckwits is beyond me.  But hey - I'm all about catering to popular opinion and not wanting to offend any stupid fucking cuntholes so I can be as most liked as possible by everybody at all times, so here's some random ballads so I can be more popular like Zico and G-Dragon.

Usual Nugu Alert rules apply: less than 20k YouTube hits, less than two of your friends know/care about them.  Let's start with:

Atomic Kiz - Lovers

The word "Kiz" seems to be the stamp of nugudom for any k-pop group, and any startup k-pop agency would be wise to not bother putting the word "kiz" anywhere in their debut group's name lest they jinx them heavily.  Let's look at the track record of groups with "kiz" in their name:

• Gang Kiz - great songs, big agency, one of the most expensive k-pop MVs ever made, nobody cared.
• Bad Kiz - great songs, hot girls, agency whoring the media play like a motherfucker, still can't get attention.
• Monday Kiz - great s... oh no, wait.  Never mind.

So it's a bold agency that debuted Atomic Kiz, the latest cookie-cutter five-member boy group that will probably be erased from your memory by this time next week when some other near-identical cookie-cutter five-member boy group comes along, if they haven't already done so by the time you read this.  The super bland acoustic ballad certainly doesn't help their cause to become known, nor does the fact that they look like they've all been dressed by their mothers and that whoever's controlling the camera seems to have trouble keeping them in focus for some of the group shots.  Maybe the plan was to go for some sort of 80's soap opera style soft-focusing to increase the romantic mood but the overall effect just looks like one of the boys themselves set up the camera depth himself before pressing "record" and bumped the focus control a little bit too far before running back to stand with the others.  I bet it was that guy wearing the sunglasses indoors who no doubt can't see shit, because he also seems to be having some trouble getting his dance moves in sync with the rest of them.

Atomic Kiz furthermore carries with them the ultimate nugu stamp, that defines all nugus as nugus in the true k-pop industry sense of the word where music sales don't mean shit but attracting sponsors is everything:


Lack of sponsorship.  Where the arrow is pointing, the logo on the headstock of this guitar has been pixellated out.   The guitar has the design of an Ovation guitar but chances are that it's a cheap copy by a Korean company like Crafter that nugus tend to use because who's got the bucks for an Ovation... either way, they get no promo from Atomic Kiz because they didn't want to help fund this MV.  I don't know why not - judging by the way the finished product looks it would have cost them less than the price of changing the strings on that instrument.

YouTube views at time of writing: 8674
Notable attribute: entire group and song so dull that they are upstaged by an unusual-looking bookcase in the final scenes
Nugu Alert rating: high

Hawon - Silence

The title of this song is weird because after the first bass drum hit there is actually a second or two of silence before the snare drum comes in.  I thought for that tiny second they were going for a very literal interpretation of the song title like John Cage's "4:33" but then the actual song kicked in with proper music (kind of) so I guess not.  The whole thing isn't bad musically if a little dull, and it even has some seriously oddball heavy guitar in the loud bits that sounds a bit like a doom metal group got together with a k-pop singer and they had a bit of an argument about musical style so they all decided to meet each other halfway, which sounds like the latter-day careers of a lot of doom metal groups now that I come to think of it.  I guess it might make an impact on you if you've never heard anything like this before, but I think if you want shitty half-assed doom-pop you might as well forget Korea and go out and buy something from The Gathering or whatever.  The video is boring as fuck though, with lots of pointless wandering through the small hill with a few trees just up the road from the recording studio deep mystical forest, pouring water on things, mutilating the local flora for no apparent reason and general angsty standing around looking at nothing in particular.  Also, did you know that there are over 9000 moving parts inside a piano?  You soon will, because the video director of "Silence" seems intent on showing you each and every one of them.

YouTube views at time of writing: 2114
Notable attribute: singer's boobs carefully obscured by hair and/or camera angles in every single shot - the ultimate tease
Nugu Alert rating: very high

Magic Flow ft. Rumble Fish - Blah Blah

The guest Rumble Fish isn't completely nugu and quite a few of you older k-pop fans will have heard of her (or her band of the same name), but Magic Flow sure is straight from N-town.  Do you know how hard Magic Flow is even just to find?  A search for "Magic Flow" on YouTube just got me a bunch of Mexican rap kids and some stupid hippie Earth-mother ecstasy-taking bullshit music, but luckily my powers of nugu detection were up to the task so I can now present to you this distinctly average and forgettable ballad, which won't be stuck in your head after you play the video because it's not catchy in the slightest.  Mr. Flow only managed about 15k hits even with Rumble Fish's nugu-boosting help, and 15k might seem like a lot compared to the other videos here but this isn't AsianDreamVOD, the perfectly-titled-given-its-quality "Blah Blah" has been sitting on mega-distributor 1theK's YouTube channel for over three and a half years.   That averages out to about 10 hits per day, and it's such a low priority for 1theK that they couldn't even be fucked subbing it into English like everything else on their YouTube channel.  You can tell that this video is a few years old too because there's actual lip-to-lip contact in it, something that k-pop videos seem terminally afraid of these days.  In 2011 a guy and a girl could politely peck each other on the lips in a music video, but not anymore - why so puritanical, Korea?  Maybe there was a massive herpes simplex epidemic in Seoul that I hadn't heard about, and struggling to contain the outbreak, the government decided that all they had to do to contain the issue and ensure that their problem would solve itself easily was to remove fictional representations of relationship skinship in music videos.  Even this hardcore relationship-porn with an established star didn't do much to help Magic Flow achieve his k-pop stardom dream.  1theK learned the true power of nugu-boosting a few years later when they teamed IU with both Fiestar and HIGH4, but their skills came too late for Magic Flow who is probably busy right now magically flowing some tap beer into pint glasses to pay off his nugu debts.

YouTube views at time of writing: 15183
Notable attribute: wedding ring at the start of the video probably represents majority of the MV budget
Nugu Alert rating: extreme

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This concludes another edition of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert, the blogging series that you love to hate to love!  This is also the last Nugu Alert for this year!  Kpopalyspe will return with more nugus to annoy you in 2015!

Idol life is tough.  There you are, sitting on a chair in a fake backyard by a fake white picket fence, holding a fake ice-cream made by food stylists with coloured frosting and powdered sugar, shooting a promotional music video.  The video shoot sure is dragging on, it's 4AM and you've been awake for 26 hours straight, yet it's your duty to look alert and extra cheerful for the cameras - what a chore.  You sure wish you were doing something else, but this is what being an idol is and you're stuck with it for now.  On take 153 of your lines in verse 2, a thought pops into your mind... but what could it be?

I've been meaning to write an article for Anti Kpop-Fangirl that somehow incorporated my areas of expertise, aka the bullshit I studied for 4 years of my life at college. I see how you all like it when Kpopalypse talks about his industry skillz, so I figured why not give it a shot.

And thus we come to my groundbreaking model for the wide range of... "behavior" we see in KPop fandoms today. Without further ado, I present to you, THE BELL CURVE OF CRAZY.

As presented by Fei. If there's anything I've learned from Kpopalypse, it's that people will pay more attention if hot people are used to present the information.

IMPORTANT TERMS USED:

• mean (μ, lowercase Greek mu) - a measure of the central tendency of a probability distribution, this value is simply the the sum of all possible values divided by the total population
• standard deviation (σ, lowercase Greek sigma) - a measure of the average amount of variation from the mean, hence STANDARD deviation. The calculation for this is a little complicated, so it's not as important for you to know it for the purposes of this article. A HIGH standard deviation means that you have a set of data that is spread out over a large range of values. A LOW standard deviation means you have a set of data that tends to cluster around the mean.
• outlier - a data point that is very distant from other data points. An example of this would be a set like [41, 43, 39, 37, 40, 100], where most of the data points are clustered around 40 except the 100 data point.

Ready to SASAENG

True Neutral??

Person A recently stumbles across Group B, a 5 member group of cute girls who have debuted for around 3 years now to average success. Group B have mostly kept their noses as clean as their idol image, not really making any waves one way or another aside from the odd fanaccount praising them for their down-to-earth humility and bright smiles for fan and staffer alike. Person A gives their entire discography a listen and downloads a mini album or two, but ends up deleting most of the tracks save a couple of gems in the sea of balladey-filler trash and the promotional singles. Person A figures they'll just buy the group's first full album to make up for it, whenever the hell that one comes out. Maybe it'll come with a poster and a photocard of that Idol C that's caught their eye because she's the hottest, got a fine ass to match, and an outgoing personality that makes them smile at her antics on her occasional variety show appearance.

One day, Idol C is caught up in a dating scandal and it is revealed she has been dating Idol D (the hottest guy from a senior group with over 5 years of experience under their belts) for months now. Person A doesn't give a shit, and is happy for Idol C, privately wishing her and Idol D a happy relationship.

68% of the population lies between 35 and 65. 99.7% of the population (mostly everyone) lies between 5 and 95.

Thanks for reading. l0l

Youngji celebrates her 100th day as a Kara member today.



I remember watching Baby Kara and the shitstorm that ensued after Youngji won. Sure, I wanted Shi Yoon to win, but I wasn't an unbearable cunt about my favorite one not getting into the group. I calmly accepted Youngji because I knew she was the best choice overall for Kara.

Overall, I am glad Youngji joined Kara. Jiyoung is over in Japan on her way to doing gravure and (hopefully) JAV while Nicole isn't missed at all with the terribly boring "Mama" that she released.

I guess this is all I have left to say for all three of Youngji's haters out there: Hi.

Nice.



AKF has let me know that a lot of fat Americans love to body shame Asian women for having healthier bodies. He told me that people demand inclusiveness in certain posts. So, if an Asian woman's ass doesn't do anything for you:

It's Thanksgiving here in America, and I have asked every American author to write about what they're thankful for in regards to K-pop.




zaku: "God bless Kpop for all the cute grills."



Fany Pack: "I'm thankful for rain."

Soyeon Friend: "60 FPS videos."

Krakenoid: "The salty tears of fangirls and the sex goddesses."

WTFisastarship: "I'm thankful for all the people I've been able to talk to because of Kpop."

아저씨: "4k 60fps fancams and the unequivocal nugus of the year, 7학년1반."

sulli_fag: "I'm thankful for Sojin's butthole."*

HanYeSeul_Fag: "I'm thankful that YG stans are such crybabies."

Anti Kpop-Fangirl: "I'm thankful for the AKF staff sticking around while there are many changes in my personal life. I recently got hired for a full-time position starting in the summer. I am thankful for my real life friend HanYeSeul_Fag for taking over the day-to-day work of the site so that I can just focus on writing when I have the time to do so.

As for Korean entertainment, I am thankful for AOA, especially Mina. I am also thankful that Han Ye Seul finally got to come back. I can't convert more people to Yeseulogy if Ye Seul isn't active in the industry."

*I have no way to contact sulli_fag, but I am assuming he would say something similar to this.

Warning: May feature males* you find unpleasant.

*Male is a conditional term

Do I have to apologise for posting this?

I think he needs new pants. Those are loose and hideous.

That face you make when you shat on your career in white pants

Lee Dong Wook does his laundry as he showers

We're working on it.

Could you tell this was Jang Hyuk? I couldn't.

I don't even know this dude's name, I googled up "Korean guy abs" and took the first few shots I saw.

Top it off with a badly photoshopped criminal

I've often been accused of being very gender-biased in my blogging, and that as a heterosexual male I haven't been doing a lot of catering to those who would like to see some hot sexy men being reduced to objects for the voyeuristic pleasure of readers.


Since I'm obviously guilty as charged, let's rectify the situation immediately with a hunky k-pop guy post for all you heterosexual women and gay men out there!

When writing a post like this, I run into an immediate problem, and it's a problem that has stopped me writing about this kind of topic many times in the past - as a heterosexual male, I can't "see" sexiness in other guys, and therefore I have no idea what their sexiness looks like.  I have no doubt that they have it, I just can't detect it reliably without help.  I know for instance, that Johnny Depp and David Bowie are considered more or less universally attractive amongst women, but I only know this because heterosexual women tell me this all the time, so it seems to be true (and don't argue with women about this stuff if you know what's good for you).  I also know that Steve Buscemi is generally not considered to be attractive because he has buggy eyes or something, but I only know this because women also tell me this too, I wasn't able to detect his ugliness without their help.  However, I don't understand the qualities that makes one attractive and the other not - why are buggy eyes unattractive?  How buggy do they have to be?  If Johnny Depp had buggy eyes would he also be as ugly as Steve Buscemi?  If not, why not?  If Steve's eyes suddenly "got prettier" like Minzy's nose, would he then be considered attractive?  If not, why not?  What qualities offset what other qualities by how much?  What's the perfect combination of qualities that makes a man attractive, or ugly?  These questions and dozens of others like them, I can't answer.  People often insist that my inability to determine this stuff is just wilfull ignorance or homophobia but really it isn't or I wouldn't be making this post.  It's not that I don't want to answer these questions, or that I'm afraid of answering them, it's just that the part of my brain that can answer them doesn't exist.

However, what I do have at my disposal is experience talking to a lot of female friends and partners over the years who all have strong opinions about what they like to see in guys, plus I know quite a lot of gay guys too (what can I say, I work in the music business) and I also frequently get their opinions on the art of guy selection.  Through conversations with these people of discernment and taste I've managed to distill the information that they've presented to me down to some key points which I believe we can use to locate the ideal k-pop guys.

CONFIDENCE

Confidence.  This is a big one for all people, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.  Taste in appearances vary wildly, but all straight women and gay guys tell me that "confidence is sexy", this seems to be a universal truth and I can't find a single man-seeker anywhere who says that they would prefer a man who isn't confident in himself.  If confidence is therefore sexy, I think we can safely say that JYP is a very sexy man.


Look at those pants.  I know you've probably all seen this image before, but really look at them this time (you know you want to).  How much confidence would you need to be able to wear those pants and strike a pose like that... and pull a facial expression like that while doing it?  And then have that image be distributed all around the mediasphere - with your blessing?  More confidence than 99% of you reading this, I'll bet.

If that's not enough confidence for you, did you also know that JYP did a whole Disney-esque movie about The Wonder Girls breaking into America?


I only just found out about this shit today.  As if any of this was ever going to fly in the States... but JYP is completely oblivious, he's putting in his best effort anyway, acting his heart out and giving the girls the benefit of his worldly wisdom with important life instructions:


Imagine the shame of telling your friends that you were even in some shit cheesy movie like this at all even as an extra let alone "I made my own Disney-ish movie about some girl-pop group and I also star in it".  You need some balls-out confidence for this shit, and JYP has it.

MASCULINITY

People who are into men want their men to be men... otherwise, they'd be into women instead, right?  And nothing says "I'm a man" more than flipping your sports car after going out on a hot date with a Japanese model, having some "classy sexy" fun, jizzing on her tits and then throwing her a towel.



Girls prefer to clean themselves off after sex - they don't want you to do it, it's enough that you got them all dirty in the first place, they can sort the rest out thank you very much.  Seungri knows this and is willing to provide you with the right equipment to get the job done but you're not getting any more help than that, because he's a forward-thinking masculine guy for the new millenium who isn't afraid to take charge of things (like where his cum lands) but also wants you to be independent, empowered and in control (of the toweling-down).  No "oh I'm so helpless, please help me get this spunk off" for you - this is 21st century choke-sex for the new generation of empowered spunk-catchers.  Seungri is a man's man.

SENSITIVITY

Sure, masculinity is important BUT... that doesn't mean that male-seekers don't also want some sweet, tender lovin' in between all the jizz-wiping.  I never had a relationship with anybody who didn't like cuddles and being cozy on the couch every once in a while.  I know a girl who started dating a guy when he was a bit overweight and had a beer gut and actually got a bit sad when he started losing the extra pounds and getting all buff.  "He's not as cuddly now, I don't like it as much!" she said.  So who's the coziest, most tender, most cuddly man in kpop?


As the sole representative for "cuddly" in idol pop, Super Junior's Shindong has all the bases covered.  Not only does he have the right physique for the task, he's also in touch with his emotions:


Shindong doesn't care about your society's taboos, if he's gotta cry he's gonna cry and you'll just have to deal with it.  This is the kind of manliness that people want these days - the man who is so secure of his own manliness that he doesn't have anything to prove to anybody.  No fake image here, just direct emotion straight to your soul.  Can you handle the raw emotional power of the 'dong?

FINANCIAL STABILITY

Strange as it may seem, being gainfully employed and financially stable makes men sexier.  It's not just simple money-siphoning greed on the part of their would-be partners, it's more the fact that a man is sexier when he's on a mission and has a purpose in life, and gradually wasting away his months and years climbing at seismically slow speeds out of acres of debt is a purpose.  Of course, the more money there is to go around, the better, because anyone with rational self-interest at the forefront of their mind would naturally ask themselves "why live like a pauper when you can live like a princess".  So which man has got the financial security to make potential partners happy?


SM Entertainment's ex-CEO Lee Soo Man has your financial needs covered.  If you're worried about your future fret not because he'll look after you, even if it means you have to sign something that looks a bit fishy.  Sure, you might be signing your life away, but if you're going to sign a slave contract it might as well be with the big guns rather than some nugu agency who can't do anything for you anyway.

Don't think he's all work and no play, though.  He still knows how to have a good time with the boys:


You're assured a good night out on the town with Lee Soo Man, he'll pay for all your drinks and party with you until the early morning.... for the next 13 years, exclusively with him.  Or else.

INTELLIGENCE

It doesn't matter how much butt-fucking and sperm-catching you're going to be doing with your man, you're still probably going to be spending more time talking to him than doing anything else, so it's important that he can cut the mustard in the important area of intelligent conversation.  So who do we know for sure has got the smarts to cut it in any conversation?  Yang Hyun Suk, CEO of YG Entertainment, that's who.


Think about all the shitty songs his label has been putting out lately, that people just lap up like a dog laps up another dog's piss.  This guy actually put out trash like Akdong Musician and WINNER and managed to get people to buy it and think it was the latest and greatest thing ever.  Clearly he's a fucking genius beyond compare.


You'll have some amazing candlelit dinner conversations with this guy over a bottle of red and a perfectly-cooked steak.  "Tell me again how you managed to get people to like literally any old garbage as long as it has your label's logo on it", you'll say, and he'll tell you all his secrets... or maybe just a few, to get you hooked, and draw you in closer to the spider's web...

SENSE OF HUMOUR

We all know this is important stuff.  Humour is apparently the number one most desirable trait a man can have when it comes to meeting women, and that's because everybody likes to laugh.  That's why if you like to laugh, you've probably been following the activities of this man closely:


The adorable prankster of k-pop, Core Contents Media CEO Kim Kwang Soo has been laughing it up for years at the expense of everybody.  Imagine having him as your partner!  It would be a chuckle a second!

"Hey, let's tell everyone that we're going to put a 12 year old in T-ara!  The reactions from everybody will be hilarious!" he tells you, while gently stroking your hair.

"But you're not really going to, are you?" you reply, in between sloberring on his throbbing knob and tickling his asshole.

"Don't be silly - of course not.  I'll just tease it a bit here and there until they figure me out, it'll probably take them a few years.  But imagine the comments!" - you both start laughing so hard that snot starts coming out of your nose.  You wipe it on his dick as lubricant and get back to work.


This man caused so much hilarious butthurt that CCM doesn't even exist anymore and he hasn't been in charge for a very long time now (he quietly stepped down over a year ago!) and people are still whining like little babies about everything he does, as if they know anything at all about what he's even doing or even what's actually involved in being a CEO of a label.  But one thing's for sure - he's funny as fuck, and that shit gets people hot and hornier than anything else.  You are turned on right now.

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So that wraps up my list of k-pop's hottest guys!  I hope this has pleased those of you who are into hot sexy men and that you are able to now reduce these multi-faceted hot guys with hopes, dreams and aspirations into mere objects for your sexual pleasure so you can fap smoothly and safely!  If your fave isn't here, maybe you can suggest some other hot k-pop guys below in the comments - but it'll be tough to beat this lot!  Bye for now!