Meet the underground rapper behind “It G Ma” reinventing the sound of South Korea from the inside

Text Taylor Glasby

In an East London basement, a barrage of phones are recording the tiny stage as two South Korean rappers – Okasian and B Free – bounce through the clanging trap beats of this year’s unexpected viral supernova “It G Ma”. They're not alone for long, as the support acts and front rows clamber on stage to pogo dementedly to the music. Korean trap star Keith Ape might be “It G Ma”’s headline name (and the one who stormed the VFiles runway at New York fashion week) but he was joined by two members of The Cohort crew he belongs to – JayAllDay and Okasian, the latter a prolific artist himself who discovered Keith Ape as a teenager. The track has meant that Okasian (pronounced “occasion”) has caught the comet trail of its 16 million YouTube views, which has propelled his name far outside Korea's borders. The explosion of “It G Ma” has brought ubiquity and hype, but unlike Korea's other viral track “Gangnam Style”, which was misguidedly presented as K-Pop, “It G Ma” is far more indicative of Korean hip hop – its journey, its potential future, and its long-standing and sometimes uncomfortable relationship with its American counterpart.

While the history of American hip hop is rich and iconic, Khiphop (as it's known) has suffered an identity crisis since the early 90s – rappers lifting US culture then placing it over their own, like a square on a round hole. Although it's widely acknowledged that acts like Drunken Tiger, Verbal Jint and CB Mass brought their distinctive Korean stamp to the medium in the late 90s, while in the 00s, artists such as Epik High, The Quiett and Supreme Team began finding mainstream success, giving Khiphop a ledge to step out onto, away from the perceived American mimicry of the early years. Perhaps it's ironic, then, that being sat with Okasian is because of “It G Ma” (Korean for “never forget”), which used Atlanta's OG Maco “U Guessed It" as its base, leading to accusations of appropriating black American culture. While the air has been cleared with Maco, who called them out on Twitter ("I didn't have grills or extra jackets and lean cups and shit in the "U Guessed It" video, so why did they? Black stereotypes. Lame as fuck"), the complexities of influence remain. It's something Okasian, puffing on a cigarette, mulls over in silence. When Okasian performs, his delivery fluctuates between a low drawl and a fearsomely fluid machine-gun flow. Off stage, the 28-year-old is laconic, holding your gaze with huge eyes, his voice gravelly with a smoker's laugh. Born in the States, he was taken to Korea as a baby before returning to America at 16 for high school, where he got into hip hop “through my friends but I think I would have found it on my own. My first Korean album was by CB Mass, and my first American album was by Nas.”

Photography by Elliott Morgan

In college, he studied biology before returning to Korea with the idea that “if music worked out, great, or maybe I'd get a job.” The music was to be a continuation of what Okasian says began as a “random hobby, like playing a video game or basketball. It naturally became an everyday thing. I didn't even have a mic or a recording system – I was writing lyrics and rapping to friends and that was it. I'd tried recording a couple of times in America,” he laughs, “but I didn't know what I was doing.” After two mixtapes with the Cohort – Preseason #1 (2010) and Preseason #2 (2011) – Okasian signed to Hi-Lite, a record label shared with some of the best in Korean's hip hop underground. Early tracks show his flow not as fully developed as it is now, yet the ideas were in place; a gleaming beat here, a hook there to be revisited. By his debut album, Boarding Procedures (2012) and the Cohort mixtape Orca Tape (2013), the sampling was refined, Okasian's delivery pared back to a storytelling style, as seen brilliantly on his effortless hit “Spread The Word”. “That evolution...sometimes it's natural but sometimes I need to do new things,” Okasian explains, citing a previous influence as A$AP Rocky, and DIY New Yorker Ricky Hil as a present one. “Most of the time you naturally switch your style and it fits, but when I try too hard it doesn't sound good. I don't want to box myself in, so I'm going to keep trying different things and if they sound shitty, well, you won't be able to listen to it.”