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KPOP Tuesdays: Skrillex/Diplo/GD/CL’s “Dirty Vibe”
Olivia of WangGuk

Let me begin by offering my cold, hard, personal opinion by wholly unapologetically saying that this is the WORST song and video I may have ever witnessed. Now, this is of course my own opinion, but I will explicate how I feel and why in this KPOP Tuesday.
First of all, the song itself is nothing special. The mix on it is pretty terrible and it isn’t catchy to me at all— and I realize that the song may be considered catchy by a ton of other people. That’s fine. But as far as musical creativity goes, where is it? I couldn’t find one thing about the beat, words, or structure of the song that I found the least bit interesting or stimulating. I remember a time when I actually could turn on some of Skrillex’s work and sit through it (there weren’t many examples of this, but I did have a few pieces I could enjoy at one point in time). But this? I mean, there’s nothing I can really compliment about it. The beat isn’t catchy, the mix is not creative in the least, and the theme of the song is negative, tired, and hackneyed.

Speaking of hackneyed, was this not the most uninteresting music video I’ve ever laid eyes on? Yes. Yes, I dare say it was. It was awful. For way more than one reason. This whole club-kid-from-the-90s-goes-modern-day-occult-grunge theme is so over. I’m done with it. I don’t want to see it anymore. If you’re an artist and you want to make it in the industry, show the public something they haven’t already seen a thousand-and-one times. This stupid theme with all its occult triangles, slimy eyeballs, trill this and trill that, yin yangs, butterflies, aliens— it needs to end. Or at least just leave it alone for a while, and if you’re going to make a new song, have it be just that— SOMETHING NEW. I’m so sick of seeing the same theme used over and over; it just isn’t interesting anymore and it isn’t pushing any boundaries.

I also have to say that if this was supposed to be some big great break-through moment for CL and GD to couple with Diplo and Skrillex for a multi-cultural, multi-musical collaboration, boy was this an opportunity blown. I love the fact that more and more artists are trying to break into other cultures’ music industries— what a fantastic way to share culture! But this song illustrates the perfect way to not do that successfully. It’s disappointing only because I know CL and GD are capable of way better work than this. It’s honestly very shocking to me that they put this out and were okay with it. Number one, the lyrics are so unoriginal. I mean good gravy, how many times have we heard the I’m-a-bad-girl/boy-and-everybody’s-so-jealous-of-me crap? It isn’t necessary anymore. We understand: you’re some big famous rich celebrity who loves to rap about how great you are. After a while, it just gets old. And at a point, when must we say, “Okay, well…what else ya got?” It’s ridiculous to me that we can’t put the rap on a mainstream public pedestal which actually deserves to be there. The rap in this song is worthy of no such pedestal— no such anything even close to that.

There’s also the issue of GD spitting “mother-fucker” out all over the place needlessly, while a posse of awkward, confused-looking children trail him, copying his weird unattractive gimp-gait. I’m sorry but WHAT? Call me old-fashioned, but since when is it okay to spray “mother-fucker” all over some kids who are grossly clad in matching clothing to some person they don’t even know? That part really bothered me. Not only was it unnecessary and stupid, but we’ve seen it before— hello GD’s “One of a Kind” video; same deal. Little kid dressed up just like him copying his every move. Besides being kind of creepy, has GD really no more ideas? And finally, we have CL. CL, who is only slightly better-attired than the other women in this video. This is only because she is attired at all. The other women sport neon underwear while fawning over GD and his not-so-impressive rap. Speaking of unimpressive raps, oh CL, why? Again, there was nothing good about this at all. My (fake) favorite part was her “talk shit with the prettiest lips, blow a kiss, kick a hole in your speaker then split.” No explanation necessary. Let me say that I’ve never been truly impressed with CL’s rapping from day one, but this is horrible. It isn’t even rapping; to me, it’s an insult to real rap.

So needless, to say, I was beyond disappointed with this collaboration (if that’s what we’re even calling this; it really just sounds like four people made four different equally awful songs and smashed them together and let them play over each other). I really expected more out of at least GD. After “Baddest Female,” I learnt not to expect too much out of CL, but GD can do so much better and I know it. After “Crooked” and “니가 뭔데,” I really looked forward to the direction GD was moving in as an artist, and this song was just so disappointing. I hope in the very near future both GD and CL get their acts together and produce something that’s at least worthy of the time it took just to critique this.

KPOP Tuesdays: GD’s “미치GO”
By Olivia of WangGuk

watch video before you read :] >>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrwnL62HObI

This week, I’m going to write about a music video that I really disliked at first. In fact, it wasn’t until just this week, after ignoring it since it first came out, that I actually started to appreciate it. An unexpected love: G-Dragon’s 미치GO or MichiGo.

When this song and video first came out, I was like “Okay so Crayon but a slightly different beat and much more crazy and messed up. Cool.” I didn’t like it at all and I felt like, after Crayon had just come out, it was a complete cop-out and just a bad copy of everything in Crayon. I was actually really disappointed in GD for a while because I felt like the video lacked creativity.

This past week, as I have been falling in love over and over with his newest album (songs from which I’ll review in future posts), I re-visited some of GD’s earlier work. I always love to do this because you can really see an artist’s growth and development over time by looking through all of their work in order. I started with his super old stuff (all that hip-hop rap and more; that good old stuff) and I finally got to 미치GO, and I was like, “Well yeah but I hate this so I’m not going to watch it.” But then I forced myself to re-watch it (I often do this. I listen to a song I know I hate, try a food I know I hate for the 60th time— just to make sure I still hate these things). And upon re-watching the video, I discovered that I actually love it for a ton of different reasons.

First, this song and video are completely GD. This video doesn’t lack any creativity (no idea what I was thinking before; I was probably on my period or something), nor does it lack musical quality. And although musical quality can be very subjective, I think we must agree that GD never lacks in this department. And 미치GO is no exception. The beat is in fact unique and quite different than Crayon’s beat and backdrop. Some have complained that it is annoying and repetitive and there is no depth to the song itself. COMpletely false, in my opinion. We’ll explore why.

If we look at the visual effects in the video, there is A LOT going on. I mean, there’s this freaky crazy subway with bowl-cut GD riding some giant pink elephant, there’s curly-cue GD who’s trying to read his book, there’s these creepy weird people with masks for faces, and everyone is dancing crazy like someone just dropped a serious acid-bomb on this train. Visually, it’s a lot to take in. Especially if you’re just going to sit through it once and think you’re ready to judge it as a whole. Once we get out of the subway for a little while, there’s this scene where poor curly-cue GD is at the doctor’s office, trying to fix his now suddenly elephantine feet (how did these suddenly grow out of nowhere?), which is spliced with a scene where afro-pic-wearing GD is peeing in this creepy green-lit bathroom— peeing but trying to dance at the same time. This is further spliced with the scene where GD is getting spanked by his mask-face mother and father, as he says “feels goooood.”

It continues with these scenes, also spliced by a library scene where little curly-cue GD is still trying to read under a table, but keeps getting interrupted by all the other crazy GDs and people dancing and jumping and screaming all over the place. This leads to the scene where a fancy Thom Browne-coat-and-trousered GD is shooting the feet of curly-cue GD with a GD-branded laser-gun, making him dance and flail so as not to get zapped.

Yes, visually, it’s a lot to take in. Especially if we’re just going to call this a weird hodge-podge mess of a bunch of randomly selected weird, creepy, or somewhat-disturbing ideas thrown together into one MV. But it’s so much more than that. Let’s break it down.

I don’t think anything in this video is random. Everything coincides perfectly with the lyrics. The lyrics consist of a GD saying “today I’m michigo, today I’m michigo, today I’m michigo” and other things he repeats several times, like “dirty mad fiesta” (found several translations and it seems that no one really knows what he’s saying there; I think it’s “fiesta”), “today I shake it” and other things. The title of the song, “MichiGo,” is a mix of Korean and English. “미치” (pronounced like “michi”) means “crazy” in Korean and “go” is in English. So put together it literally is “crazy go”— “go crazy.”

This is repeated throughout the song, which is fitting because the song itself is chaos. It’s about going crazy. The reason I like this song so much is because, to me, it almost feels like a video that illustrates the inside of GD’s mind. Now, I’m not GD and I don’t presume to know or comprehend what goes on in his mind, but to me, this video is like an encompassing picture of what GD’s life is like. He starts off as this scared innocent little kid and then he jumps on this express train that takes him into another world. In this world, he meets all of his alter-egos and subconscious selves. There’s the crazy twisted GD who doesn’t even recognize his parents anymore (“mother, father, who are you?”) and then there’s the little boy GD who’s still a kid and who’s still trying to survive, reading under the table, amidst all of the crazy different GDs who keep emerging.

The feet, to me, are a metaphor for this. The scenes where little curly-cue GD’s feet are getting too big communicate the crazy GD trying to take over the body of the little kid GD. All of these GDs are trying to fit in one body and he’s just one guy, so this swelling of self occurs, so to speak. And throughout the song, GD keeps saying “dance, dance!” like it’s a command, almost like he’s telling himself to dance. Also, at the beginning and end, he says, “I want to go back—No! Shut up!” almost like there is one GD speaking to another. If we roll with the idea that this song is a bunch of GDs fighting to be one body or one whole person, these lyrics become like a dialogue between his alter-egos. Like all his different selves fighting each other and talking to each other. And the rest of the chaos going on, like the guys carrying stacks of books and boxes that keep falling, just solidifies the image of chaos that’s inside him. It’s like GD the kid, who started writing music when he was six, is still there, but now he exists amidst a GD who is constantly changing and developing, going crazy with fame and fortune and all the rest— like the kid’s just trying to keep up with the celebrity. And at the end, when GD the little curly-cue kid gets off the train, he’s got this weird virus, almost like all those GDs are dancing around in him, fighting for control. He’s now got both inside him— GD the kid and GD the crazy. Who’s the real GD? All of the above. It’s a crowded room in there. It always is inside a human mind, I think. We’re each so many different selves in one.

So this might be completely not what GD was thinking when he created this, but for me, I learned to appreciate it by viewing it in this manner. After seeing it as a picture of the inner GD, it really struck me as not only artistic and strikingly creative, but also rather sad. It now sounds like both a crazy fun dance party song sung by the crazy artist GD and also a lament and cry of chaos from the innocent little boy GD that’s still in there too, whose life is moving too fast for him. It’s just a creative piece altogether. GD’s always one to make me think twice. And now I love it more than I ever thought I would.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrwnL62HObI

photo credit to:
www.kpopstarz.com