This one is about K-Pop

Right now I'm sitting at Oakland Airport waiting to go back to Seattle. Why am I here? Well first let me tell you about this person, a friend from childhood. I don't know if she'd enjoy having her name all over a blog post so we'll refer to her as JB. We were very good friends in middle and high school and she was actually the real reason why I strove to be a straight-A student. At that time, both JB and I wanted to become doctors. Fast forward, only one of us actually became one (lol, not me). BUT when both of us had that dream, we sorta promised each other to try to get into Harvard and in order to do so, we needed the grades and college application to match the caliber of the school. Before I met JB, I didn't know that Harvard was ever an option for someone like me, well maybe it still wasn't because I didn't get in 💀. But her older brother got in, so to us that was proof that we could too, that there was a way, we just had to work hard for it.

Anyway, JB and I were also both video game, anime loving nerds and one day JB introduced me to Utada Hikaru, singer of the Kingdom Hearts (KH) theme song. I wouldn't get a PS2 until I think sometime after high school graduation (we couldn't afford it) so all I could do was consume content about and around KH and Utada-san via the internet. Simple & Clean, their breakout hit and the KH1 theme song, was a banger, it and all of its remixes, acoustic versions, re-releases, covers, etc.

But I needed some variety, more like this but not the same thing. I would eventually be shown people's blogs and LiveJournals where they would share new J-Pop releases, sometimes even dumping the full album to download. No one really stuck like Utada did (except BoA and Lead a little bit), but it was fun to hear music (mostly boisterous rock, slow solemn ballads and sickly sweet cutesy pop) from a different country whose language I totally did not understand, but I still enjoyed what they made and shared with the world.

One day, JB showed me a music video on YouTube from an artist named SE7EN. It was for his song "CRAZY". In it, he walks into like an underground krumping club(?) and does this dance battle while singing and rapping and his dance moves cause his opponents to like, turn to smoke and disappear. Like uh... jinns??? And this was one of the coolest music videos I had ever seen. I kept replaying it. The song was so catchy, he had such a cool aura, he was hot AF, N'Sync and Backstreet Boys were gone and I was like 15. It became an instant obsession. I listened to all his stuff. I was more into the higher energy music, but even in his ballads, he would burst into a rap mid-song, it was funny, cool, and endearing all at once.

To be honest, I didn't think I was super into rap at that time, but I did like hip hop, stuff like Lupe Fiasco and Kanye West, who was not totally off the wall publicly yet. I was more into his style of electronic hip hop and rap than like Tupac or Dre (please don't take my Black card). I think also because I was a sheltered 15-year-old Muslim kid with Moroccan heritage living in Miami, I couldn't totally relate to the big rappers of that time who talked about lifestyles I could not yet even fathom. Eminem included, but I did like his more pop stuff like Slim Shady. Listen, my music taste has expanded since then ok, so hold back your judgment.

Anyway anyway, SE7EN was under the music label YG Entertainment. And while waiting for more SE7EN releases, I looked at who else was under YG, not too many caught my eye, they just didn't have that cool bad-boy aura like SE7EN did, but I still would find a hit here and there amongst the other K-Pop groups. I think JB once again introduced me to another singer/rapper in K-Pop, he went by Bi ("bee") in Korean or Rain in English. And that man, that was my "first husband", LOL.

At this point, I was a full on K-Pop stan. But like, no one else at our school really knew what K-Pop was, and when I would show people what I was listening to or the music videos, they just didn't get it. Some people (unfortunately a large chunk were fully grown adults) were like, really racist about it and would say rude things. It was super disappointing and I never looked at those people the same again. I mean, we lived in Miami, which is such a melting pot of people. White people of non-Latino or Caribbean descent are a minority, and Black and Asian people even more so, but I thought because it was such a diverse and (relative to Florida in general) liberal city we could be immune to that sort of closed-mindedness. Unfortunately, this was a reality about the world I had to learn about during that time too.

So it was just me and JB and eventually our sisters, and eventually some of our sisters' friends, and people we didn't know nor speak to online geeking out in English about this new emergence/wave of hot Korean idols singing, dancing, and rapping their hearts out. 1TYM, f(x), Shinhwa, TVXQ/DBSK, Epik High, BEAST (they used to write it as B2ST so we would jokingly call them Batoost), Block B, B1A4, SHINee, B.A.P., T-ARA, SNSD/Girls' Generation, Super Junior, 2PM, 2AM, BIGBANG, 2NE1, miss A, EXO. One after another were making their debuts, vying for our views, our fandom, our money (I had none to give them but gave plenty of the first two). Somewhere along the way we found out about the YouTube and blog duo Simon and Martina and their Eat Your Kimchi YouTube channel that talked about K-Pop and living in South Korea and the amount of English content about Korean culture slowly grew.

It was an exciting time, learning about K-Pop, what it was like being a trainee, the dramas, secret boyfriends, diets and plastic surgery rumors. Who possibly slept with who, who looked at someone a certain way on a variety show. All the parasocial relationship stuff a teenage girl loves to engage in as she herself begins to discover her own self, beliefs, and place in the world.

And thanks to the internet I was able to participate in a culture and media that was literally on the other side of the world from me. It was an escape and a comfort in the day-to-day stress of my childhood of overachieving, I didn't have to be a responsible older sister when I was binging K-Pop videos, I didn't have to worry about grades and homework or making money, or becoming a doctor when I imagined myself as Rain's wife, lol. There were only cool vibes and good music, and I have no idea what he was saying in Korean but it's probably fine, all we needed was love and we'd figure it out. Hahaha xD.

That brings us to today, or rather, last night. In 2006, when I was 16, BIGBANG debuted, and this weekend they had their 20th anniversary concert in Oakland, California, and due to the wear and tear of time, only 3 of the original 5 members were there: G-Dragon, Taeyang, and Daesung. Fun fact: my bias was Seungri (mostly because someone else in my friend/sister group claimed Taeyang. Being a teen is funny.), but he was charged and convicted of various bad things so... needless to say he is no longer part of the group. The other missing member, T.O.P., officially left to do his own thing, but he is still homies with what remains of BIGBANG. The concert was great, lots of fireworks, confetti, fire, old songs, new songs, solo songs. BUT NOT TAEYANG'S WEDDING DRESS SONG, I WISH HE DID IT, AAAAAH!!! One of my sisters booger cried multiple times, it was pretty funny, and pretty priceless it turns out. It was fun to be at a concert with just my sisters, being our very childish selves again and fangirling, 20 years later.

BIGBANG fans are called VIPs. There were lots of VIPs at the fan meetup and even at our hotel who were handing out their handmade BIGBANG swag. Like stickers, pins, trinkets, keychains, cards that they made of the band members, it was so cool and wholesome, I was really surprised to see it, and well of course I have a lot more BIGBANG swag than I started with. My sister who lives in Seoul also brought us some hoodies, hats, and light sticks from Korea so we were properly dressed for the concert.

There were also a lot of "cosmic" (the tour is called Cosmos by the way) coincidences that happened. There were three of us sisters, 3 BIGBANG members, and our hotel room number was 333. We went to the planetarium to kill some time on concert day, the show we watched was about trying to observe the light and energy from the beginning of the universe, you know, THE BIG BANG, ehehehehe. We went to Lake Merritt and checked out the gardens and there happened to be a dahlia show, one of my sister's favorite flowers, so she was shook and geeked. And the concert had lots of space visuals so we kept saying "just like earlier today". So we collectively agreed this was a trip written by fate regardless of the mishaps we ran into while trying to make it happen. Just, lots of 😮 face throughout the trip, and we had a great time.

I found myself feeling really inspired during the concert, it had been 20 years, BIGBANG had gotten older, the members had gotten wiser, their energy a smidge slower, but their spirit the same as before. G-Dragon still brings the chaotic energy, Daesung still leans into his goofy side, and Taeyang still hits the high notes and still has a great set of abs. They hinted at more new music, this wasn't the end, more to come; and I felt the same way, I still feel like there is more for me to say in this world, there is still more to create, more to experience, more to love, also I gotta work on getting my own set of abs LOL. So that's my real takeaway from this, 2006 me and 2026 me are not the exact same, some aspects of me are not here anymore and had to be left behind for now, and that's ok because the music doesn't stop, we can keep creating and we can keep loving ourselves and each other and appreciating art and the world no matter what changes we undergo as time passes.

Alright, please make sure to give a hug to your teenage self no matter how cringey and fangirly they were. That's all my preaching, BYE!