BIGBANG: K-pop princes of gender-fuckery and family dysfunction

Bad Boy acapella: sounds like church music.

Roz, weren't you calling Daesung a tragicomic?

yep. He's got that whole sad clown thing going, you know? outside of Bigbang, he's a throwback to the classic Korean entertainer before the idol machinery was created. (There's that joke that BigBang have managed to conquer all demographics, including senior citizens, because of Daesung and his love of trot and musical theatre.) And it's taking really long for him to release a full solo album because I think YG's trying hard to reconcile those two extremes.

And really, it's a crime that he doesn't have one yet, because zomg his voice. When I saw them live, I was just awestruck by how much control he had over it - powerful but never overpowering.

TOP and Dae are my ws/wkiw respectively, but G-Dragon's definitely the one I'm most fascinated by. mainly because he seems the most messed up. Also I want to raid his wardrobe (he looks about my size).

re Monster: GD's said before that it was a conscious attempt on his part to recreate the mood of Haru Haru and Lies. I dunno, it doesn't have the same dramatic effect for me as either of those - the piano is pretty, but it just feels a little overstuffed.

yeah I definitely find g-dragon the most interesting

have been tempted at several points this year to get my hair dyed platinum blonde though like TOP

Only if you wear it with your princess tiara. XD

Okay that Bad Boy acapella is really tripping me out! I never noticed those harmonies in the final choruses before.

It's really something, isn't it? This is another trippy one: http://youtu.be/bjLPR4LQE5k

GDragon reminds me of my ex.

That was maybe a bit dramatic. My ex has a number of mannerisms that are similar GDragon's, probably because she's a fan. She was also the ego-prop of a narcissistic parent, like GD was (still is?).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/dec/16/big-bang-review

It's so lazy and condescending that find myself tempted to be one of those righteously aggrieved fans who write long forum screeds about how the reviewer is wrong wrong wrong wrong because the group is so so so so much more. Sheesh.

oh boy...

actually, hearing that Taeyang performed a CB song did piss me off. seungri though... smh

as for the review, well, it seems as if VIPs have already taken care of that in the comment box.

There's a kind of condescension, or at least ethnocentrism, to that Guardian review: their stage is "world class" because Laurienne Gibson is involved, one wonders whether Seungri even knows what he's saying about Chris Brown and Rihanna, the most notable thing about them is that they are indistinguishable from other teenybopper pop acts (not foreign at all!), etc.

The comparison to a Bieber or a One Direction concert is fair, and appears to have been meant as a compliment. It is misleading, though. The core difference between those acts and BigBang isn't polish, spectacle, passion, or style of music - that's the difference between One Direction and most K-idol acts. What sets BigBang apart is that while they technically occupy the "safe boyfriend" space discussed in e.g. this WSJ article, they are, in fact, not safe at all.

I forgive Taeyang covering Chris Brown because it's a good and appropriate song. Also because he and Seungri appear to have switched places on GDragon's naughty/nice list and I just feel bad for the dude. Seungri's joke, on the other hand, was in poor taste - but then that's Seungri all over.

http://vimeo.com/57595669#

Have been expecting this moment (when GD finally declares himself G-O-D) forever. Thought he'd done it at the Mnet Asian Music Awards, but that turned out to be a mishearing(?) of TOP declaring himself T-O-P. But here it is finally.

this is one of those moments where I just find him too embarrassing to look at. the edginesssss... it hurts. thank you based GD.

lol

http://25.media.tumblr.com/ede8292c06dc725df7ca3444ab2a190b/tumblr_mh3qyvcTxe1qzjb8ko1_1280.png

man why aren't these songs in my life right now?

Damn.

:O

Yeah, and what ever happened to the tracks Ludacris and Travie McCoy were supposed to have collaborated on???

Not to mention Skrillex/TOP (just kidding).

Maybe the Missy Elliot track, the Ludacris track, and the Travie track will be on GDragon's solo CD (take 2), due out later this year. I mean, we can only hope.

i'm kind of worried that the reason the track's been held back is that maybe it's... not very good?

that's one possibility.

actually, I think it might be Teddy. There's been rumours that he's suffering from an extended creative block or something - he's also apparently the reason 2NE1 hasn't had anything new released in over a year, apart from "I Love You". :/ as good as GD is with melodies and lyrics, he can't handle the actual production side on his own.

LEDApple 'Love Song' (cover). It's honestly... way better than the original, ha ha. Well, they are a rock band.

And their Mr. Taxi is great and hilarious as well.

Harlem Shake - GDragon Edition

And Big Bang make cameos - as Teddy bears! - in labelmate Lee Hi's It's Over.

A friend says that because the song is about dumping a bad boy, they are there to represent all Bad Boys everywhere. Let's go with that interpretation (please).

Seo Hyun Seung, YG's in-house video director, is seriously my favourite person ever.

actually, considering the attention given to K-pop videos, I'm surprised there doesn't seem to be a lot of talk about directors in general - really think some of them deserve to have a Directors' Collection series like the ones they used to compile for guys like Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze.

I'd buy Hwang SooAh's. Doesn't she direct like 90% of Loen's music videos? Including all those famous ones by Brown Eyed Girls.

Oh yeah, she's great. She directed Ga-In's "Bloom" as well, one of my favourite videos ever, because of how matter-of-fact it is about sex/masturbation/female sexuality.

Don't know for sure if Seo directed that Lee Hi MV but I wouldn't be surprised if he did - it's kind of messed up! Typical of YG videos generally of course but still, pretty sinister for something that's supposed to be really cute and fluffy.

I mean, if the blue bears are really supposed to represent bad boys/the boys of BigBang, and the other pink animals are supposed to represent women/Hi, you've got:

- the narcissistic bear reading about himself in Complex magazine (which helpfully says Bad Boy on the cover)
- the puppeteer bear
- the bear who's carrying Hi, drops her then goes ¯\(º_o)/¯ "What?"
- the bear riding and spanking a pink rocking horse (holy shit.) (also, this is definitely Seungri right? Haha.)
- the playboy/two-timing bear - in one scene, he's surrounded by a gazillion pink animals, in another he's cuddling a pink bunny and a pink bear at the same time
- the violent bear who knocks over and kicks her shopping cart
- the addict bear with candy all over his mouth
- and of course, the obvious G-Dragon and Taeyang bears

http://omonatheydidnt.livejournal.com/10769135.html?thread=1071842543#t1071842543

Where I steal from Roz and go into exhaustive psychoanalytic detail on the BigBang bears.

For the record, I find the Taeyang bear to be the most hilarious one.

my favorite is jelly bear

kinda feel sorry for Lee Hi that that video tells you so much more about BigBang than about her, esp since she already tends to come across as a bit of a blank, personality-wise.

Yeah, and she is being aged backwards, too: from cute teen who wants to be adult and sexy, to cute teen in baby-doll clothes.

She's the baby of the company, and she is cute, but at the same time it's gonna be hard to grow up with that image. Although if she keeps hanging out with those crazy people at YG, "old beyond her years" will soon become a reality - matching her voice.

xp GDradgon goes trap:

https://soundcloud.com/reefanee/g-dragon-michigo-go

as pointed out on Omona... "MichiGO" seems like it was ahem, "inspired" by:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRQifBeJtKo

He loves @badgalriri, that's his fuckin' problem

Ha!

crossposting from k-pop 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrwnL62HObI

not sure what to make of the A$$ referencing

I see a Harlem Shake reference, a split between "nerd GD" and "maniac GD", and a looooot of kink either way.

And now I wonder whether he or was Zion.T's Babay.

Commenters on omona point out that there's a red shoes-ish storyline to the MV, along with lots of imagery suggesting that dude has a huge dick.

you mean his big shoes? lol

big feet

Big feet + that giant pink bouncy thing from the beginning of the MV, yeah.

not sure what to make of the A$$ referencing

lol GD is pretty much Nicki Minaj? Increasingly outlandish hair and outfits, multiple personalities, healthy dose of gender-play, ability to appeal to multiple fanbases at once...

<img src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/fe15c5523b4be0bc66ce37584f27e76b/tumblr_mq0qye6cqe1qzjb8ko1_500.jpg";>

Relevant to thread title :)

Whoops, html.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/fe15c5523b4be0bc66ce37584f27e76b/tumblr_mq0qye6cqe1qzjb8ko1_500.jpg

Nice, very Andrej Pejic of him. All three covers are pretty great.

Not necessarily in this particular shoot, but it's always fascinating to watch him navigate between super-feminine/alpha-male extremes.

GD's PR people working overtime on damage control:

http://omonatheydidnt.livejournal.com/11549876.html

Can't really defend this one, it's pretty bad.

http://oi44.tinypic.com/2hgu175.jpg

It's not even good trolling: at least when Big Bang dressed as Bloods made it onto the world(starhiphop) radar, there was a pretty good song to go along with the viral outrage. This time the backlash against - not even cultural appropriation - but straight-up racist caricature, only spreads an unattractive picture of GD around.

And by unattractive I mean unattractive on the inside, of course.

Yeah he doesn't deserve a pass on this one (or on the other examples either tbh) and it's way past time that he/YGE got called out on it. Like it's impossible for them not to know that this stuff upsets people, given that the language barrier isn't exactly an obstacle for YG artists as it might be for other K-pop companies.

Bauer x GD x MIA

https://soundcloud.com/julie-zerbo/temple-full-mia-g-dragon-baauer

MIA is much more in her element here, but it's pretty cool that GD raps a lot of this in Korean

MORE rappers freestyling over Big Bang karaoke beats, please:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0MWCxgFW9w

He's a legit fan too, takes it all the way back to La La La.

nooooooo :(:(

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/lifestyle/bigbang-s-t-o-p-hospitalised-for-suspected-drug-overdose-report-8922202

If any of them were going to end up (publicly) in the ICU, it was going to be TOP :(

Only three months into his service though, that's rough. I wonder if he'll wind up with a medical exemption like Swings.

Anyway I'm just glad TOP is still with us, for now.

RIP Big Bang / OT5.

Seungri sacrificing himself for the sake of the group as a result of his own bad behaviour seems extremely... in character.

https://www.soompi.com/article/1309402wpp/breaking-seungri-announces-retirement-from-the-entertainment-industry

And I thought it was just about being caught smoking a joint again or something:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/14/entertainment/jung-filming-sex-kpop-scandal-intl/index.html

Yeah. Seungri has always been a douche-y frat boy so the chatroom stuff, while gross, was not particularly surprising. It's likely not even the only one among Korean celebrity circles.

The pimping/sex trafficking allegations though... ugh.