2. Origins: K-pop
• K-pop is an abbreviation of Korean pop which is the musical
genre made in South Korea.
• Its cultural origins are from the 1990s
• The genre is made up of a great variety of audiovisual
elements which is exposed through their music and music
videos being very expressed.
• It doesn’t only provide pop music but the wide variety of
music, covering R&B, dance-pop, pop
ballad, electronic, rock, hip-hop, jazz, classical, folk, dance.
• Hip hop however was introduced to Kpop by 1990 being
the turning point of kpop, as they become more
conforming to western culture and applied this to their
music, introducing rap, rock, techno and hip hop.
3. Key artists in the development of the genre / at the
moment (who has the biggest profile?)
G Dragon - Rapper
He is a well known rapper to be fitted into
the genre of ‘k-pop’. He is the leader of
the boy band Big Bang which is also a well
known international k-pop band which
was once featured and won the
international music awards. He as an
individual is a
rapper, singer, songwriter, dancer, lyricist,
producer, model, endorser and a fashion
icon. Besides being a in a boy band, he
has also gained achievements as a solo
artist from releasing his first solo album
‘Heartbreaker’ and his recent one ‘Coup
d’etat’ With his solo’s, in January 2013, he
embarked 4 dome tours in japan and 1st
solo world tour. With such great
achievements he has collaborated with
Grammy Award-winning Missy Elliot an
American musician.
PSY
He is well known for his
international 1 billion hit single
Gangnam Style which went viral in
the year 2012. He helped open
eyes to many countries on the
whole genre of K-pop. He is a
singer, songwriter, rapper, dancer,
record producer and television
personality. With his success with
the single, he was recognised as
the “king of youtube” and “global
superstar”. This allowed him to
release new songs and be
publicised else where but korea.
4. Audience
• The hip hop/rap genre is directed towards the younger
generation from to young adults as a majority because
their more open to the explicit language and
portrayals.
• However throughout the whole genre of kpop the
majority are orientals, most likely because other
oriental countries like China and Japan are closer to
korea and concerts are likely to be held at other
oriental countries rather than world wide.
• Due to the improvement of world wide communication
and publicity, Kpop is an international known genre.
5. Hip Hop
Rap
Oriental culture
Op
Girls
Dancing
Hip Hop
The moodboard consists of imaged of both fans and
artists and the majority countries that the genre is
popular in. The genre is famous for being apart of
oriental culture, giving up-beat music to dance to and
for the having a lot of groups. K-pop is the name
summed up for many other genre’s like hip
hop, pop, rock, indie etc. so the variety is very wide.
Boys
6. Sub-Genres
• The other genres link K-pop are known as Cpop (China), J-pop (Japan) and
Mandopop(China).
• These are the music genres located in other
oriental countries that link to one another. Kpop links to J-pop most likely because K-pop
artists expanding their audience also make
Japanese albums or short versions of their
own Korean songs into Japanese.
7. Public Perception
• It isn’t the type of genre open to all cultures, it
is gradually becoming known to the western
society more and more by the day or so from
being added to music awards shows
nominations, newspapers or magazines and
social networking. It is becoming a
mainstream genre to be listening to however
still at the niche side
8. Record Labels
YG Entertainment is one of the well known
labels because they contain the artists that are
known worldwide e.g Psy, BigBang/Gdragon and
2NE1 who all have international contact and
friends.
SM Entertainment is another label that is a
publisher of Pop music. The groups that go
under this label as Super
Junior, SNSD, Shinee, f(x), EXO.
9. Competition
They include famous featured artists such
as 2NE1, SNSD, MBLAQ etc. with sell lines
advertising ‘love advice’ ‘interviews’, movies
and the top hits and music producers etc.
They aim to relate to the public in a certain
personal way and their music taste.
10. Cross Media
• K-pop is covered with other media’s such as
TV Shows in Korea or in other oriental
countries however they also are mentioned
internationally through YouTube, fan based
blogs, websites that feature the new news of
music artists e.g Allkpop, Eatyourkimchi
(youtube channel)
11. Predictions for genre’s development
I think this genre is at the stage of great development
with PSY kicking in, K-pop as been worldwide known.
With Youtube and social networking it can be heard
through at a wider scale rather than just asia. The genre
will develop widely as perhaps American artists plan to
collab with one of the korean artists with their songs it’ll
open more doors to the genre and south korea itself.
Especially with K-pop adapting western culture e.g
rap, hip hop etc. it allows the people at the favour of
those genre’s to gain an open mind set to listen to k-pop’s
version of that genre. It is heading at a positive direction
towards more success as well as more recognition.
