After their show on July 19th, the artists from the Korean label Grandline dedicate a few hours of their busy schedule for their first interview with a French media. Geeks is a Korean duo made of Louie and Lil Boi, they became real names of the hip-hop scene after the release of their first studio album Backpack which the title song Wash Away features the singer Ailee. As for Crucial Star, he joins Grandline recently and is currently working on his first album after releasing several successful mixtapes and singles.
– Hello, can you introduce yourself to our readers?
Louie (L) : Hello, my name is Louie, I’m a rapper and producer.
Lil Boi (LB) : I’m Lil Boi, rapper and producer just as Louie.
– What kind of music influence you and which album do you keep on repeat these days?
L : I love Drake for his rapping skills but also Kendrick Lamar, Chase The Rapper, J-Cole, Big Sean and Jay-Z. I sometimes listen to k-pop but I prefer old songs and singers, like Chuck Berry.
LB : I listen to some French music, the band Hocus Pocus and C2C.
– How did you found each other and start working together? Were you high school classmates or friend?
L : We didn’t know each other before high school, we meet up after. We were both sharing our music on a website and that’s how we know about us, we congratulate each other on our own music so we naturally decided to start working together. When Lil Boi had release his first mixtape, we were already working as a duo.
– Most of your songs are self-produced, but if you had to choose someone to work with, who will it be?
L : My dream producer is Dr Dre and the fact of working with a Korean artist will drag all the public interest. On a musical aspect I will choose J.Dilla as a musician to work with.
LB : I would love to work with Kanye West, such a huge inspiration for me.
– Talking about Kanye West, what did you think of his latest album Yeezus, it has been firmly criticize, how do you feel about that?
LB : Kanye West’s albums were and will always bring violent reactions from both specialist and the public, they never stop asking themselves if it’s an hip-hop album or not. Me, I like Yeezus.
(Crucial Star just arrive)
Crucial Star © : I will choose a Drake producer. (The album he’s listening to) Sam Smith new album, J-Cole and Take Care from Drake.
– Nowadays, music as a visual art is really important, do you think that it’s now essential for a musician to add a visual aspect to his work and that the audience need this visual to listen to music?
L : We can still appreciate music by itself, but today the music video is important, we always work together, producers, all the sound team, but also designers, model maker, marketing etc…it’s a complete collaboration within all these people that are making our music as a final product. People knows us through music videos, that’s why it makes them essential. They saw us on YouTube and then come to our concerts.
I got no pressure concerning MV, I’m still a musician focus on my music. For the video side, the label ask us for what’s next, if we would like a video for this or this song. But I’m not getting into it that much, music is my priority.
– South Korea is one of the most “visual” country in the world, and music is seen in a complete different way from what we’re used in Europe (Where I live, I compare to things I know), how can you explain that?
L : In Korea, everything is extremely visual and the market is phenomenal so it’s quite impossible to not have visual when you’re promoting your music.
Compared to Europe, sure it’s different. Concerning Korea I think that the Idol market is making the whole one more visual. This is where the obsession comes from even for other music genres, such as hip-hop.
– Geeks mostly stay focus on its own slow melodies and specific sounds, far from the traditional hip-hop. Maybe an exception for Siren featuring Swings, which is much more as hard rap. Would you like to stay on that way or try new things?
L : We won’t keep the same thing forever, being stuck to hip-hop or rap music is reductive. We will always push boundaries. Just like we were at university and have to work on our major, I learn discovering music. I’m exploring.
– Korean hip-hop is organized by label (Grandline, Vis Major, Hi-Lite etc…), just a few are independent. Collaborations are also made within the label and same for concerts, which are label concerts (Grandline and Illionaire, for example). Do artists can freely work with who they want or is the label a bit narrowing them?
L : We’ve got label but that doesn’t impede collaborations. When they are “off-label”, a “I respect you, you respect me” system is set-up. When the controversy happened last summer (the diss-track battle between Korean rappers, pointing different label and artists) it wasn’t to hurt or destroy the person on the other side, but to improve each other’s rap quality.
– Can you tell us about your future projects?
C : Just before the interview I was working on my first album all night long, that’s why I was late today. One of the new track is called Paris because it’s one of my favorite places in the world. I love its atmosphere. This title will be released before the actual album. It will be a full album, 15 tracks, I would love to go back to Paris to shoot the music video.
L : I also went to Paris and I fell in love for food !
– Crucial Star, you were a part of Soul Company before joining Granline. The label, as we know, had stopped its activities and it became hard for some of the artists. Your album A Better Man is reliable to this episode of your life?
C : I didn’t got too much difficulties after Soul Company, I was more feeling a bit lost, my future as an artist was unclear. Not a long time after I got a call from Grandline to join them. I accept because it wasn’t a huge label back in that time but it was still safe for me. A Better Man cannot be link to this story, it’s based my own personal experience within Grandline.
– What the name Crucial Star come from?
C : It’s kind of embarrassing….I was about to create my Facebook account but I didn’t got no idea about the name I can give myself. I decided to make a search on Naver (a popular web browser) I took several letter in the alphabet and search for words in English ; nothing available for A and B and for C they suggest Crucial. I didn’t truly know what that means but the word sounds cool so I keep it. I wanted to add something behind, I thought of Star. I ended up calling myself Crucial Star.
– And for Geeks, are you planning on a new album or a solo one for Lil Boi (as Louis release his a few month ago)?
L : A first solo album is a really special thing, it’s our own color. It has been several month that I planned to release it. Following that I need to do solo promotions. Duo activities really missed us and we want to be concentrate on Geeks music.
– For the Inspiration release (Louie solo album), what were the hardest time, things that you had never experienced before, with Geeks?
L : During Geeks’s album record, I had prepared lots of sounds who were finally unused. I decided to recycle them but adding more personal vibrations and feelings so that they can fit myself perfectly. I consider the results more like an EP than an album, if I had to make an official album, I would start from the beginning with all original sounds.
– During promotions, many messages in various languages were sent from your Twitter account, Chinese, Japanese, English and French plus Korean. Are you able to speak all those languages?
L : My friends help me traducing all these messages in order to post them on Twitter. For French, my friend Stella (Stella Jung, is a French Korean singer, she is featured on the track Parce Que C’est Moi on Louie’s album) help me.
– Do you know some French artists?
L : Besides Hocus Pocus and C2C, I like Passi and Stomae. It’s Stella who makes me discover them.
– Thank you for your time
L, LB, C : Thank you too.
Thank you to : Granline Entertainement
Interpreter Korean to English : Park Jinwoo
Text & photos : Nabi