These are fantastic comments that make me like what I wrote a lot more. And Jvcki did say later that To. lordfxxker was a made up narrative (who knows) and I like your take on it.
The way she switches between rhythmic patterns in those flows - fast, slow, sing, speak - is pretty impressive
Do you have a link for where she said it was a made-up narrative? I found this by a fan on reddit: "some of her songs (like to.lordfxxker) are written from another people's pov or are stories from others" but nothing from her. --I still think my later point criticizing my earlier point is correct, though also like that she does seem to bring a teenage freshness to music even when no longer a teenager!
(5) I'd be a woefully incompetent choice to recount the history of Korea's use of auto-tune, but I've been recently thinking about and relistening to 2010, and I remember having my socks knocked off by the treated vocals that come in at 0:11 in 2NE1's "Try To Follow Me." Ice water shot right at my teeth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnP_kjDHzec
(4) Also recommend how, also in those same comments, skyecaptain (our friend Dave Moore), at my invitation, writes about modal vocals in hip-hop, which he's written about a number of times before and since. He's talking 'bout those vocals in relation to *American* hip-hop – I don't know if he'd heard Jvcki much at that point. But I'd love to hear his thoughts about how Jvcki's auto-tune, especially circa 2016-2019, compares to/contrasts with America's.
He also makes a connection between hip-hop modaling and the pentatonic scales in Metallica guitar solos: "in some sense, rappers are singing guitar solos, or their vocals are doing what the guitars do in thrash metal solos, but in slow motion."
And finally, also down in the comments, the convo I have with David Frazier about fromis_9 and Crayon Pop manages to connect up with the rest ("the members of Crayon Pop were subjected to the same rules and bullshit that many other idol performers are," I say): I link an interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdOA5BCwBi0) with Way of Crayon Pop where she talks of being forced into perpetual dieting and sleep deprivation and debt.
I have no idea if Jvcki Wai suffers the same sort of mistreatment. Optimistically I imagine she's not worked over and controlled like an idol. Her early label was The Ugly Junction and STONESHIP; who post music on Bandcamp. *Enchanted Propaganda* was put out by Indigo Music, which was started by the rapper Swings; her current label, AOMC, is also run by rappers, singers (previously Jay Park, DJ Pumkin, Simon Dominic).
"Go Back" and "Spoil U" feel more song-like than her earlier stuff and, to be honest, don't work for me as well. To end enthusiastically, though, here's a real good compilation of what the YouTube uploader yeojinace calls "Top 10 best rap flows of Jvcki Wai," includes live clips and proves (like you do) that she's got the same sonic personality with and without auto-tune. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckhiAyTdCNY
P.S. At this point I was double-posting on LiveJournal and on Dreamwidth (I've added in Substack, so these days I'm triple-posting) and when comments were coming in on one comment thread I transferred them to the other, which is why on LJ I'm reposting Jessica's and Sonya's and on Dreamwidth I'm reposting Mat's, Dave's, and David's. And for a decade and a half I've been linking on Tumblr, and recently Sonya and I have been talking about some of my DW/LJ/Substack posts there!
I may have a bit of a blind spot c. 2016 because there had been a lot of development of Autoune's use through hyperpop at this point that I mostly found irritating -- not because of the Autotuning, but because it felt too quotation-marked.
What I think was happening in this period was the normalization of a more radical potential for using Autotune: when Farrah Abraham's album came out, the Autotune sounded *wrong*, because in most cases Autotune was still fundamentally attached to *singing* and not vocal timbre more generally (especially *speaking* through Autotune). There are some interesting borderline cases c. 2009-2011, like Lil Wayne on "Rebirth," whose singing is so poor that the Auotune has a much more deranging effect, or Kesha playing around with Autotune in 2010.
I'd say by about 2014 there is increasing acceptance that Autotune is a much more expansive tool than an augment to singing (though I think that augmentation orientation is part of why modal rap catches on -- you can sing-rap with Autotune and create a pleasing drone in a way that *rapping* through Autotune doesn't get you, you don't see more Auotune rap until the later '10s with the rise of hypertrap).
By 2020 or so, there's not much distinction left between singing through Autotune and speaking through Autotune -- fairy trap in particular collapses this distinction. But need to listen to some of Jvcki Wai's earlier stuff to think about where she might fall (and honestly probably need to go back to the UK hyperpoppers).
Listening a bit more now. Jvcki Wai is interesting because, like many people using a similar modal rap-adjacent style, she doesn't have the rigidity of the melodic palette of the modal rappers (Lil Baby, A Boogie, etc). You start to see this in the second half of the 10s and especially into the 20s, a much more fluent use of little melodies along with the usual three-note-cluster modal drone. But you do hear both her rapping and singing being imbued with the Autotune filter indiscriminately (in that way that breaks down the singing/rapping distinction) as early as 2016. This is the Autotune style that I don't think you would have heard nearly as frequently in the first half of the 10s, though I'm sure there are more examples I'm just not thinking of now.
Re the point about Metallica riffs, metal guitar arpeggios and thrash solos are common in trap metal and there's one on the intro to 'Anarchy', played by the synth; there's a subtle metal finish to all Wai's solo work especially Neo Eve and Enchanted Propaganda
And farrah abrahams so far ahead of her time. I discovered her via Shitty Song of the Week podcast once I worked out that was where the interesting stuff was being kept
As far as I can remember, this "I Love Music" thread (Aug 6 2012) was the first I'd heard of Farrah Abraham. By the fourth post, which is by Phil Freeman (user 誤訳侮辱), comments are turning positive. "Makes Peaches and Le Tigre sound like Taylor Swift... This girl... is some kind of insane genius."
A good typical comment: "I thought people were exaggerating upthread but this is realllllly weird."
About a month later, Phil reviewed it for a science fiction site; afaik, he was the first person* outside the message boards to review it positively. "Phrases are of irregular length, and conform to no pattern. It’s a breathtakingly anti-pop performance. And the music is every bit as weird as the vocals, balancing synth washes and a one-finger melody with a bass line like a ghostly dub throb. It’s one of the most distanced, yet savagely emotional pieces of music I’ve ever heard; it’s like watching someone have a breakdown through a foot-thick sheet of Plexiglas."
And then, nine days after that, our friend @davemoore reviewed it for The Atlantic (also favorable, not surprisingly).
"Like Eraserhead, we only get flashes of realism to ground us in a recognizable world before descending into the stuff of nightmares. Abraham's description of the new pregnancy is distinctively Lynchian: 'This bump doesn't go away. Neither does the fear on my face.'"
"It seems obvious that Abraham's music is operating outside of lots of pop conventions, but very little reception of the music so far has grappled with what's really there, the lovely, maddening mess of it all. What is it?"
*Hard to tell whether to characterize this review back on Aug 7 by Maura Johnston as favorable or not, but she does give the song itself a 5/5.
If you read the Phil Freeman piece at Gizmodo, here's an important piece of information that I don't think I ever knew, Phil saying:
"the sarcasm hedge was inserted by io9's editor, who was afraid of commenter backlash"
That editor is appallingly fucked-up. I'm upset and it's thirteen years ago (and appallingly fucked-up times a thousand is happening every three paragraphs in the news these days, so I'll just take a few minutes to calm down; and then get upset by the next thing).
(3) But returning to that Dreamwidth/LJ post (https://koganbot.dreamwidth.org/373664.html) where I say "too much trap bullshit," what you should really read it for is the comment thread: the tremendous commentary by Jessica (belecrivain) and Sonya (sub_divided) on the Seungri/Burning Sun scandal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Sun_scandal) that you referenced in your post; belecrivain: "I provide this infodump to explain how I got the impression that mistreatment of women and general corruption are so deeply embedded in the K-pop industry as to render any and all demonstrations of 'personality' suspect in the absence of better evidence, at least on the male side. It's like Mark Granovetter's 'threshold approach' to riots (https://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~cslui/CMSC5734/Granovetter-threshold_models.pdf): presumably it's much easier to share molka, use/solicit prostitutes, etc., if everyone around you is doing the same. And... a huge chunk of my enjoyment of the industry has been rooted in enjoying the personalities..." "Part of my reaction to the Burning Molka scandal at this point is a reaction to the reaction: which is to say, I was expecting a lot more people to have their K-pop enjoyment interrupted than has seemed to be the case. An example: this Seoulbeats roundtable (https://seoulbeats.com/2019/03/roundtable-it-all-started-with-seungri) in which participants (who care enough about the industry to write about it for free) say things like, 'I'm disgusted, but not surprised' one after the other, and I'm like--wait, you're *not surprised* that there were multiple chatrooms devoted to unconscious women and sexual assault? You were somewhat expecting this and you're *still* publicly writing about this industry for free?"
[Frank here w/ some context. These comments by Jessica etc. are to a *general* post I'd written about the first several months of 2019 in music, so the context isn't exclusively about *Korean* music much less how – specifically – *Jvcki Wai* stands apart from a lot of Korean music and its sexism and exploitation, though that's what you and I are thinking about *now* (don't know if Jessica or Sonya had even heard Jvcki); also, I think of K-pop and Korean hip-hop being fairly different universes from each other, and I would categorize Jvcki Wai in the latter (though once again, even more than usual, I don't know what I'm talking about). Anyway, don't know how many other Jvcki Wai types there are in Korean music. I'm guessing a smaller percentage than in American. Singular or not, good for Jvcki Wai being Jvcki Wai.]
It never occurred to me to remember lockdowns, but an independent artist with a still-growing profile is exactly the sort of performer to have had their whole career put on hold during that period.
(2) I returned again, several months later (https://koganbot.dreamwidth.org/373664.html), with the same enthusiasm that's not free of condescension: "She's socially and politically on a good side, calling for anarchy and calling out capitalism and religion, trying to be smart while not miring herself in worthiness; a lot of it seems like acting out, which maybe helps it not feel like worthiness, and acting out is what you want artists to do, it's their job, some of 'em, some of the time. 'Dding' lyrics are comparatively disappointing, too much trap bullshit, ice on the neck and all that though played for a double metaphor (not just diamonds but keeping her head cool while she makes everyone else crazy)." Note how my criticism of the words to "Dding" reads more like an endorsement.
Most sociologically acute thing I ever said about Jvcki Wai was this in an email or thread comment to Dave Moore (but only useful to a reader who already knows in advance what I'm like): "Behind this year 'cause pulled-in by Tom's polls. Lil Pump always good on guest spots, not always enough to rescue the tracks. Bali Baby too tough his year, Jovi an off year, Sanelly great on everything but her own stuff. 6ix9ine ?????. Jvcki Wai I'd want to be friends with." (Compare to my alienation back in 2012 when I saw Big Bang on Lee Hyori's variety show. https://koganbot.livejournal.com/289604.html. I actually bring this alienation up in the Dreamwidth comment thread I linked earlier.)
That's gold. The SoundCloud rap undertow is the thing, or maybe the Thing. "Pull me under with your rattle, smash my soul and let me dream" is how I put it in my song INVOCATION (the New Existentialists)
(1) George, believe it or not, yours is the first full-scale analysis of Jvcki Wai I've read (have run across some Korean news stories about her over the years); and thanks for the link to Irosa's review, which I hadn't seen. What you say here is on the nose:
"that voice, with its autotune compression, whip-like phrasing and microglitch edits."
Hope you don't mind my using your comment section for notes, explorations, rough drafts.
See, looking back to what *I* have written about Jvcki Wai over the years, there's not a lot – and what there is makes me disappointed with myself. I mean, it's favorable and enthusiastic but I don't even attempt to explore her voice, the phrasing, the great use of auto-tune. And I barely dive into the lyrics.
Honestly, I feel like a beginner.
I nominated "Spika" for one of Tom Ewings's People's Pop Polls (World Cup Of Opening Tracks, back in 2021) but uncharacteristically I had nothing to say. (She scored a middling 41 votes, third place in her qualifier, which wasn't good enough to advance.)
I'd discovered her from my online friend Mat; he'd recommended "Work Out," I'm not sure where. And then he showed up on one of my comment threads (as askbask) recommending her again: "I guess one thing I like about Jvcki Wai is her ability to move so smoothly between flows, to hooks, to jamming freely and dreamily. Anarchy is a good example of that. She's working double time." https://koganbot.livejournal.com/373506.html?view=5215490#t5215490
And on that thread I say, "Jvcki's like a sixteen-year-old who's just discovering anarchy and anticlericism – which is pretty appealing, even in a twenty-two year old"; which on reflection sounds fairly condescending on my part, especially given that Mat linked me a lyric video for "To. Lordfxxker" with a translation of the Korean verses, where she says she was molested by an uncle who called himself a pastor, and she was put in a closet in church and beaten up, her fanatic parents being too intimidated and helpless to offer any protection. So, hardly "just discovering."
These are fantastic comments that make me like what I wrote a lot more. And Jvcki did say later that To. lordfxxker was a made up narrative (who knows) and I like your take on it.
The way she switches between rhythmic patterns in those flows - fast, slow, sing, speak - is pretty impressive
Do you have a link for where she said it was a made-up narrative? I found this by a fan on reddit: "some of her songs (like to.lordfxxker) are written from another people's pov or are stories from others" but nothing from her. --I still think my later point criticizing my earlier point is correct, though also like that she does seem to bring a teenage freshness to music even when no longer a teenager!
Maybe here
https://www.reddit.com/r/khiphop/comments/h86evr/jvcki_wais_revocation_of_her_musical_identity/
(5) I'd be a woefully incompetent choice to recount the history of Korea's use of auto-tune, but I've been recently thinking about and relistening to 2010, and I remember having my socks knocked off by the treated vocals that come in at 0:11 in 2NE1's "Try To Follow Me." Ice water shot right at my teeth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnP_kjDHzec
Wow, that's really great.
(4) Also recommend how, also in those same comments, skyecaptain (our friend Dave Moore), at my invitation, writes about modal vocals in hip-hop, which he's written about a number of times before and since. He's talking 'bout those vocals in relation to *American* hip-hop – I don't know if he'd heard Jvcki much at that point. But I'd love to hear his thoughts about how Jvcki's auto-tune, especially circa 2016-2019, compares to/contrasts with America's.
He also makes a connection between hip-hop modaling and the pentatonic scales in Metallica guitar solos: "in some sense, rappers are singing guitar solos, or their vocals are doing what the guitars do in thrash metal solos, but in slow motion."
And finally, also down in the comments, the convo I have with David Frazier about fromis_9 and Crayon Pop manages to connect up with the rest ("the members of Crayon Pop were subjected to the same rules and bullshit that many other idol performers are," I say): I link an interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdOA5BCwBi0) with Way of Crayon Pop where she talks of being forced into perpetual dieting and sleep deprivation and debt.
I have no idea if Jvcki Wai suffers the same sort of mistreatment. Optimistically I imagine she's not worked over and controlled like an idol. Her early label was The Ugly Junction and STONESHIP; who post music on Bandcamp. *Enchanted Propaganda* was put out by Indigo Music, which was started by the rapper Swings; her current label, AOMC, is also run by rappers, singers (previously Jay Park, DJ Pumkin, Simon Dominic).
"Go Back" and "Spoil U" feel more song-like than her earlier stuff and, to be honest, don't work for me as well. To end enthusiastically, though, here's a real good compilation of what the YouTube uploader yeojinace calls "Top 10 best rap flows of Jvcki Wai," includes live clips and proves (like you do) that she's got the same sonic personality with and without auto-tune. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckhiAyTdCNY
P.S. At this point I was double-posting on LiveJournal and on Dreamwidth (I've added in Substack, so these days I'm triple-posting) and when comments were coming in on one comment thread I transferred them to the other, which is why on LJ I'm reposting Jessica's and Sonya's and on Dreamwidth I'm reposting Mat's, Dave's, and David's. And for a decade and a half I've been linking on Tumblr, and recently Sonya and I have been talking about some of my DW/LJ/Substack posts there!
I may have a bit of a blind spot c. 2016 because there had been a lot of development of Autoune's use through hyperpop at this point that I mostly found irritating -- not because of the Autotuning, but because it felt too quotation-marked.
What I think was happening in this period was the normalization of a more radical potential for using Autotune: when Farrah Abraham's album came out, the Autotune sounded *wrong*, because in most cases Autotune was still fundamentally attached to *singing* and not vocal timbre more generally (especially *speaking* through Autotune). There are some interesting borderline cases c. 2009-2011, like Lil Wayne on "Rebirth," whose singing is so poor that the Auotune has a much more deranging effect, or Kesha playing around with Autotune in 2010.
I'd say by about 2014 there is increasing acceptance that Autotune is a much more expansive tool than an augment to singing (though I think that augmentation orientation is part of why modal rap catches on -- you can sing-rap with Autotune and create a pleasing drone in a way that *rapping* through Autotune doesn't get you, you don't see more Auotune rap until the later '10s with the rise of hypertrap).
By 2020 or so, there's not much distinction left between singing through Autotune and speaking through Autotune -- fairy trap in particular collapses this distinction. But need to listen to some of Jvcki Wai's earlier stuff to think about where she might fall (and honestly probably need to go back to the UK hyperpoppers).
Listening a bit more now. Jvcki Wai is interesting because, like many people using a similar modal rap-adjacent style, she doesn't have the rigidity of the melodic palette of the modal rappers (Lil Baby, A Boogie, etc). You start to see this in the second half of the 10s and especially into the 20s, a much more fluent use of little melodies along with the usual three-note-cluster modal drone. But you do hear both her rapping and singing being imbued with the Autotune filter indiscriminately (in that way that breaks down the singing/rapping distinction) as early as 2016. This is the Autotune style that I don't think you would have heard nearly as frequently in the first half of the 10s, though I'm sure there are more examples I'm just not thinking of now.
Re the point about Metallica riffs, metal guitar arpeggios and thrash solos are common in trap metal and there's one on the intro to 'Anarchy', played by the synth; there's a subtle metal finish to all Wai's solo work especially Neo Eve and Enchanted Propaganda
And farrah abrahams so far ahead of her time. I discovered her via Shitty Song of the Week podcast once I worked out that was where the interesting stuff was being kept
As far as I can remember, this "I Love Music" thread (Aug 6 2012) was the first I'd heard of Farrah Abraham. By the fourth post, which is by Phil Freeman (user 誤訳侮辱), comments are turning positive. "Makes Peaches and Le Tigre sound like Taylor Swift... This girl... is some kind of insane genius."
https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?action=showall&boardid=41&threadid=93225
A good typical comment: "I thought people were exaggerating upthread but this is realllllly weird."
About a month later, Phil reviewed it for a science fiction site; afaik, he was the first person* outside the message boards to review it positively. "Phrases are of irregular length, and conform to no pattern. It’s a breathtakingly anti-pop performance. And the music is every bit as weird as the vocals, balancing synth washes and a one-finger melody with a bass line like a ghostly dub throb. It’s one of the most distanced, yet savagely emotional pieces of music I’ve ever heard; it’s like watching someone have a breakdown through a foot-thick sheet of Plexiglas."
And then, nine days after that, our friend @davemoore reviewed it for The Atlantic (also favorable, not surprisingly).
https://web.archive.org/web/20120914204635/https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/09/the-scary-misunderstood-power-of-a-teen-mom-stars-album/262237
"Like Eraserhead, we only get flashes of realism to ground us in a recognizable world before descending into the stuff of nightmares. Abraham's description of the new pregnancy is distinctively Lynchian: 'This bump doesn't go away. Neither does the fear on my face.'"
"It seems obvious that Abraham's music is operating outside of lots of pop conventions, but very little reception of the music so far has grappled with what's really there, the lovely, maddening mess of it all. What is it?"
*Hard to tell whether to characterize this review back on Aug 7 by Maura Johnston as favorable or not, but she does give the song itself a 5/5.
https://www.villagevoice.com/farrah-abraham-the-salem-of-teen-mom
If you read the Phil Freeman piece at Gizmodo, here's an important piece of information that I don't think I ever knew, Phil saying:
"the sarcasm hedge was inserted by io9's editor, who was afraid of commenter backlash"
That editor is appallingly fucked-up. I'm upset and it's thirteen years ago (and appallingly fucked-up times a thousand is happening every three paragraphs in the news these days, so I'll just take a few minutes to calm down; and then get upset by the next thing).
Funny how she mentioned Kanye back in the day because nothing from that time sounds nearly so much like Kanye now
(3) But returning to that Dreamwidth/LJ post (https://koganbot.dreamwidth.org/373664.html) where I say "too much trap bullshit," what you should really read it for is the comment thread: the tremendous commentary by Jessica (belecrivain) and Sonya (sub_divided) on the Seungri/Burning Sun scandal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Sun_scandal) that you referenced in your post; belecrivain: "I provide this infodump to explain how I got the impression that mistreatment of women and general corruption are so deeply embedded in the K-pop industry as to render any and all demonstrations of 'personality' suspect in the absence of better evidence, at least on the male side. It's like Mark Granovetter's 'threshold approach' to riots (https://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~cslui/CMSC5734/Granovetter-threshold_models.pdf): presumably it's much easier to share molka, use/solicit prostitutes, etc., if everyone around you is doing the same. And... a huge chunk of my enjoyment of the industry has been rooted in enjoying the personalities..." "Part of my reaction to the Burning Molka scandal at this point is a reaction to the reaction: which is to say, I was expecting a lot more people to have their K-pop enjoyment interrupted than has seemed to be the case. An example: this Seoulbeats roundtable (https://seoulbeats.com/2019/03/roundtable-it-all-started-with-seungri) in which participants (who care enough about the industry to write about it for free) say things like, 'I'm disgusted, but not surprised' one after the other, and I'm like--wait, you're *not surprised* that there were multiple chatrooms devoted to unconscious women and sexual assault? You were somewhat expecting this and you're *still* publicly writing about this industry for free?"
[Frank here w/ some context. These comments by Jessica etc. are to a *general* post I'd written about the first several months of 2019 in music, so the context isn't exclusively about *Korean* music much less how – specifically – *Jvcki Wai* stands apart from a lot of Korean music and its sexism and exploitation, though that's what you and I are thinking about *now* (don't know if Jessica or Sonya had even heard Jvcki); also, I think of K-pop and Korean hip-hop being fairly different universes from each other, and I would categorize Jvcki Wai in the latter (though once again, even more than usual, I don't know what I'm talking about). Anyway, don't know how many other Jvcki Wai types there are in Korean music. I'm guessing a smaller percentage than in American. Singular or not, good for Jvcki Wai being Jvcki Wai.]
It never occurred to me to remember lockdowns, but an independent artist with a still-growing profile is exactly the sort of performer to have had their whole career put on hold during that period.
(2) I returned again, several months later (https://koganbot.dreamwidth.org/373664.html), with the same enthusiasm that's not free of condescension: "She's socially and politically on a good side, calling for anarchy and calling out capitalism and religion, trying to be smart while not miring herself in worthiness; a lot of it seems like acting out, which maybe helps it not feel like worthiness, and acting out is what you want artists to do, it's their job, some of 'em, some of the time. 'Dding' lyrics are comparatively disappointing, too much trap bullshit, ice on the neck and all that though played for a double metaphor (not just diamonds but keeping her head cool while she makes everyone else crazy)." Note how my criticism of the words to "Dding" reads more like an endorsement.
Most sociologically acute thing I ever said about Jvcki Wai was this in an email or thread comment to Dave Moore (but only useful to a reader who already knows in advance what I'm like): "Behind this year 'cause pulled-in by Tom's polls. Lil Pump always good on guest spots, not always enough to rescue the tracks. Bali Baby too tough his year, Jovi an off year, Sanelly great on everything but her own stuff. 6ix9ine ?????. Jvcki Wai I'd want to be friends with." (Compare to my alienation back in 2012 when I saw Big Bang on Lee Hyori's variety show. https://koganbot.livejournal.com/289604.html. I actually bring this alienation up in the Dreamwidth comment thread I linked earlier.)
That's gold. The SoundCloud rap undertow is the thing, or maybe the Thing. "Pull me under with your rattle, smash my soul and let me dream" is how I put it in my song INVOCATION (the New Existentialists)
(1) George, believe it or not, yours is the first full-scale analysis of Jvcki Wai I've read (have run across some Korean news stories about her over the years); and thanks for the link to Irosa's review, which I hadn't seen. What you say here is on the nose:
"that voice, with its autotune compression, whip-like phrasing and microglitch edits."
Hope you don't mind my using your comment section for notes, explorations, rough drafts.
See, looking back to what *I* have written about Jvcki Wai over the years, there's not a lot – and what there is makes me disappointed with myself. I mean, it's favorable and enthusiastic but I don't even attempt to explore her voice, the phrasing, the great use of auto-tune. And I barely dive into the lyrics.
Honestly, I feel like a beginner.
I nominated "Spika" for one of Tom Ewings's People's Pop Polls (World Cup Of Opening Tracks, back in 2021) but uncharacteristically I had nothing to say. (She scored a middling 41 votes, third place in her qualifier, which wasn't good enough to advance.)
I'd discovered her from my online friend Mat; he'd recommended "Work Out," I'm not sure where. And then he showed up on one of my comment threads (as askbask) recommending her again: "I guess one thing I like about Jvcki Wai is her ability to move so smoothly between flows, to hooks, to jamming freely and dreamily. Anarchy is a good example of that. She's working double time." https://koganbot.livejournal.com/373506.html?view=5215490#t5215490
And on that thread I say, "Jvcki's like a sixteen-year-old who's just discovering anarchy and anticlericism – which is pretty appealing, even in a twenty-two year old"; which on reflection sounds fairly condescending on my part, especially given that Mat linked me a lyric video for "To. Lordfxxker" with a translation of the Korean verses, where she says she was molested by an uncle who called himself a pastor, and she was put in a closet in church and beaten up, her fanatic parents being too intimidated and helpless to offer any protection. So, hardly "just discovering."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl3gp6oCVQg