But Someone From Home

“They love to hear me cause I keep it real, y’all.”  I hear a lot of K-Pop.  I suppose my kids could legitimately say they’ve heard a lot of ‘dad’s stuff” too.  Some K-Pop has an edge, and much is soft and unconvincing.  I sat through an entire show of Super M at the Garden and left having felt the like I’d done the obligatory rathe than experienced something transcendent.  But Jessi?  Jessica Hyun-ju Ho? Jessi’s the shit. 

Jessi has made it on to my daughter’s play list more than a few times and whenever it hits I ask, more often than I should, who is that?  “Who dat B?  Who dat B?”  Listening to her rhyme on the song I just referenced it is crystal clear that Jessie did not learn her English in an online training course.  She’s flipping Korean to English to fakin'-Jamaican with dizzying rapidity and today my question was, listening to hear more carefully, where the hell is she from?

My daughter mentioned that she moved back to South Korea from the U.S. when she was fourteen.  "From where?"  "I don't know."  And when we got home and looked on line it turns out she was born in New York and raised in New Jersey.  I thought of the Ridgewood marching band I saw recently at the Korean day parade in Manhattan.  That’s why I like her.  She doesn’t sound like a west coast rapper nor one from Korea but someone from “home.”

Apparently, there is a whole scene she is part of dubbed:“unpretty,” which is worthy of attention and involves many young aspirants.  Considering her videos which are not a lush and polished at the Mamamoo and Black Pink the other big K-Pop girl band's extravaganzas but worthy, nonetheless, she is certainly attractive and decidedly un-unpretty.  My daughter said “guess ho old she is?”  That can’t mean she’s young.  "I don’t know:  Thirty?"  "Yes!  Can you believe it?  She’s Dan Dan's age!"  

Tuesday, 11/26/19