Seo Taiji and Boys

The debut song that swept the streets and the chart shows despite a harsh 7.8-point review. It is counted as the moment Korean-language rap entered the pop mainstream.

• Driving the song is the bouncy rhythm of a drum machine (drum sounds stamped out by an electronic device). The texture of new jack swing (dance music blending hip-hop beats with rhythm and blues melody), then all the rage in America, comes through intact.
• The verses are filled with rap, delivered like speech, and the chorus is sung. This structure, alternating rap and song, struck pop fans of the day as strange and new.
• Rather than rushing ahead, Seo Taiji’s rap sets Korean syllables squarely on the beat, one by one. That is why even listeners unused to rap could follow along.
• Onstage, the fierce breakdancing of Yang Hyun-suk and Lee Juno took up half the song. Whatever the judges’ cool verdict, the public went wild for exactly that performance.

The song that carried the first album’s promotion on the wave of “I Know.” It showed the debut had been no one-time fluke.

• The fast-tempo synthesizer (an electronic keyboard instrument) and electronic beat that storm in from the intro epitomize the sound of dance music in the early 1990s.
• Its rap sections are long and dense, so it sounds like a step further into hip-hop than “I Know.”
• It addresses the listener directly, urging them not just to chase dreams but to act in the real world. Unlike dance songs that were love songs to a one, its attitude of prodding the listener foreshadows the social-critique songs to come.

The second album’s title track, which borrowed its name from a sijo by Yi Bang-won and put metal guitar and taepyeongso in one song. It was the moment the group’s experiment turned into their biggest sales.

• Distorted electric guitar is laid down roughly over the rap and dance beat. It is the sound of the rock sensibility of Seo Taiji, the Sinawe alumnus, making its way into a dance track.
• The passage midsong where the taepyeongso (a Korean traditional wind instrument with a loud, piercing sound) enters is the song’s most famous moment. A fusion of Korean traditional music and Western pop rang out at the very center of the chart shows.
• The guitar solo (a passage where a single guitar takes the lead and plays as if improvising) is built at a length and speed you would expect only in heavy metal. For a dance group’s song, it was a radical departure.
• Just as the title comes from an old sijo that sounds out another’s heart, the song carries the impatient feeling of a young speaker trying to hold on to someone’s heart.

The third album’s title track, in which a dance group sang head-on about reunification. It was later included in high school textbooks.

• It is closer to a weighty rock ballad than a fast dance number. The third album’s turn toward rock shows from the title track on.
• Seo Taiji leads the song by singing rather than rapping. He starts low and restrained, then gradually lifts the emotion in the chorus.
• It addresses the people of a divided land, urging that one day they become one. Making it sound like a young person’s wish rather than a political slogan is cited as the reason so many generations embraced it.

The third album’s most controversial work, a rap metal song savagely attacking exam-driven education that even spawned backmasking rumors.

• The song opens with a low, rasping voice and heavy, distorted guitar. It is counted as the first moment rap metal (a genre combining rap with heavy metal guitar) entered the Korean pop mainstream.
• The rap is far more aggressive than on the earlier songs. Chopping the beat short and spitting out the words, it carries the anger undiluted.
• It speaks as if confronting the classroom that ranks students in line and the adults who built that mold. With this song, the group’s image as the voice of teenagers was cemented.
• A rumor spread that playing the intro backward revealed a strange message (the backmasking controversy), but a broadcaster’s current-affairs program confirmed it was groundless.

The title track of the fourth album, which threw the door open to gangsta rap. A song that spoke to teenagers who had run away from home, it was sung anew in 2017 in a remake by BTS.

• The tempo slows, and a thick, low bass and heavy drums take the lead. It sounds as if the gangsta rap of mid-1990s West Coast American hip-hop had been carried over directly.
• The rap flows unhurried and heavy, draped over the back of the beat. Set beside the crisp, deliberate rap of the first album, the change in flow (the way words ride the beat) across four years is unmistakable.
• Unlike the dark, rough sound, the message is warm. It speaks in the voice of someone gently urging wandering peers to come home.
• The baggy hip-hop outfits and knit caps worn on stage became street fashion along with the song. The dancing, too, shifted from the earlier albums toward groove (a rhythmic feel that sets the body moving on its own).

Caught by pre-release censorship, the song appeared on the fourth album as an instrumental only, then was reissued with its original lyrics in July 1996, after the review system was abolished.

• The 1995 album version has no voice at all. The empty space left by erasing the vocals entirely was itself read as a protest against censorship.
• A guitar-driven rock arrangement, in which a repeated rhythm-guitar riff (a short, recurring guitar phrase) drives the whole song forward.
• On the uncut 1996 single, the voice returned, sardonically needling the establishment and hypocritical adults. Listen to the two versions side by side and you can hear the system that changed between them.