Every so often, an outsider manages to repurpose the tools of hip-hop with enough style and charisma to render questions of authenticity totally irrelevant: “Ginseng Strip 2002,” “Pop the Glock,” “Gucci Gucci”. “MAKGEOLLI BANGER,” by the Korean hyperpop artist Effie, might be the latest entry in this storied lineage. While the song’s basic outline might seem generic—a carefree party girl anthem soundtracked by fluorescent hyperpop—Effie’s performance makes the track feel singular. Slipping fluidly between Korean and English, she raps effervescently, borrowing slang and references with no regard for borders. She drinks makgeolli (sparkling rice wine) until she passes out; she feels like Yung Lean; she needs her boy to speak Chinese; she says “bang bang,” like she’s Chief Keef; she’s not sorry for her sins. The chorus feels defiantly celebratory and is fittingly punctuated by the sound of fireworks launching. This is music that can make you feel invincible for just under three minutes, a song as fizzy and intoxicating as its namesake drink.
Effie has been making pop music for the better part of five years, though her early work, which was both slicker and more subdued, had far less personality. This may have been due in part to her choice in producers; pullup to busan 4 morE hypEr summEr it’s gonna be a fuckin moviE is her first release working exclusively with the kinetic Korean-American producer kimj. After working extensively with American artists including NBA Youngboy, Rod Wave, Che, and glaive, kimj is now extending his reach into the emerging Korean hyperpop scene, producing for artists like the Deep. He draws a great deal of inspiration from PC Music—specifically A.G. Cook’s production—a sound that admittedly feels a bit stale in the post-BRAT era. (Even hyperpop’s biggest mainstream star is moving on.) But his colorful, chaotic beats seem to draw Effie out of her shell. She could sound almost clinical on previous releases: demure melodies, clean production, a touch of Auto-Tune. But she brings a surplus of energy to these songs—rapping, singing, shouting, and even pushing some of her vocals to the brink of unhinged, like the monkey howls at the close of “CAN I SIP 담배.” In a sea of polished K-pop stars, she sounds unrestrained—her voice grimy and compressed—and gloriously messy.
Her perspective seems to have evolved alongside her sound. While she initially adopted a detached, enigmatic posture (she cites Drain Gang as an early inspiration), these days, she sounds more like a flippant child of pop culture who’s equally fluent in Korean sensibilities and American hip-hop technique. Rapping in Korean on songs like “More Hyper,” she slides into different flows and fills the gaps in kimj’s chiptune barrage with squealed ad-libs that recall Young Thug. Effie sang and rapped largely in English until recently; she told Dazed earlier this year that she finds it challenging to sound fluid in her native tongue due to Korean’s syllabic structure. On these new songs, however, she seems to unlock a previously unseen nimbleness. Now, lines that begin in English sometimes end in Korean and vice versa; she makes stitching different languages and cadences into a single flow sound effortless.
pullup to busan 4 morE hypEr summEr it’s gonna be a fuckin moviE only runs about 13 minutes, but Effie manages to cover an impressive amount of ground in that time. On the rage rap number “2025기침,” she barks her lines one syllable at at time over a crunchy, blown-out beat. She coins a new way to bum a smoke on the wobbly, playful “CAN I SIP 담배,” (which translates to “Can I sip the cigarette?”), punctuating her bars with gasps. “LET’S FIND A GOOD MANAGER” is bouncy and shot through with sunny optimism: hyperpop meets pop-punk. Meanwhile, “thankie thankie,” which closes the EP, is sentimental and bite-sized; its spoken-word vocals sound like a late-night phone call.
The Korean music industry has achieved worldwide domination through brutal efficiency, producing an endless stream of impossibly slick, endlessly digestible pop—the sort of music that PC Music artists were cheekily imagining a decade ago. While Effie and kimj are clearly influenced by both of those camps, their end goal doesn’t seem to be either an imitation or a critique. With these six songs, they present a vision of what Korean pop could become: conversant instead of extractive in its relationship to hip-hop, texturally abrasive, mildly sleazy in the mold of blog house. On pullup to busan, Effie sounds like a 22 year-old having fun with her friends, but also like something more: a prototype for a different kind of global pop star.