i know i just posted like yesterday, but
CAN I JUST
CAN
I
JUST
In two weeks we are, by some miracle of the kpop gods, getting a full length joint album from G-Dragon and TOP (!!!!!!!!!!!) Just when I was falling out of kpop fandom, they find a way to reel me back in. This is stunning for a few reasons. The first, obviously, is that we are getting new Big Bang-related music before 2012. Completely fucking over my Best of 2010 mix but w/e that's how they roll.
On a larger scale, this is a chance for the best creative pairing in kpop to revisit their first love-- hiphop. This will be a hiphop record, not a kpop record, if the song they performed at the MAMAs is anything to go by. There's something agressively free in the way they performed it, as if the song was punctuating the the culmination of all the private musical screwing around they've been doing since before Big Bang.
I somehow forget, I think, how much of a FORCE GD is. There's this incredible energy to him, like his body can't contain it all so it comes out in bizarre afro-cum-mohawks and stupid necklaces shaped like playboy bunnies. He doesn't really fit in anywhere and that frustrates me a lot of the time but when he comes out HE FUCKING COMES OUT.
And there's TOP and how incredibly private his process is. If GD comes out when he performs, TOP rescinds entirely into his persona. I'm a little frustrated that he's done so little composition on this album because his stuff is some of the best that Big Bang's ever done. I feel like he's sort of content to tool around with stuff by himself and it takes GD's drive to turn his experimenting into actual tracks.
The song they performed, which I'm assuming is "Oh Yeah," keeps restating how they're a ~pair and, to quote weird Engrish, "this isn't bubble bubble" and ugh they're asserting their separation from Big Bang. There's a tone of defiance like FUCK YOU DO YOU STILL WANT US LIKE THIS and they're so in sync, GD matching himself to TOP, checking with him multiple times during the performance. This isn't Big Bang choreography either, like GD simplified it to suit both the music and TOP's comfort levels better. G-Dragon is a diva-- it's part of his nature and what makes him so good at what he does, but here there's no battle for focus like there is in Big Bang performances from time to time. He gravitates around TOP in this performances and takes a back seat easily enough during his verses. UGH I FEEL LUCKY TO WATCH THIS, ISN'T THAT ABSURD?
Ugh and their shared valueing of aesthetics on a level almost equal to music. The monochrome in styling and in the staging of the performance and-- THE REVERSAL OF HAIR COLOURS. This time last year, GD was a blonde and Top was rocking a black pomp. UGH CIRCUITRY IN THIS PAIRING GIVING ME A BONER RN. I'm hoping the concept for the album is consistent with the performance, that odd assassin/playboy thing they've got going on. Gun fetish w/e w/e
On a tinhatty level, GTop is my kpop OTP and this is something I never even dared~ to hope for. THEY FUCKIN OKTY and it's not some idol-standard fanservice thing okay they are bros and they crack each other up and they are real people with real feelings and THIS IS THE LEAST ARTICULATE ATTEMPT AT META EVER. #KANYESHRUG
Is it scary that they've made a record without the rest of Big Bang? Absolutely-- because they're doing it without Taeyang and that feels WEIRD somehow-- the three of them are like this creative powerhouse and they work so well together, the perfect marriage of hip hop and r&b. The move to include him in their debut performance for the new album feels concilliatory in a way. They can have Big Bang with them as long as it isn't the innately pop elements (IE Daesung and Seungri.) Ugh then it ends with this Mexican stand off, GD and TOP vs Taeyang as representative of Big Band and of idol-dom and wow is this meta enough for you yet. SYMBOLISM!!!!
But at the same time if Taeyang were a part of it, I feel like it would be more damaging to the group. Imagine being Daesung and Seungri-- you've already got less creative power than the other three and now they're doing an entire album without you. If it's just GD and TOP, at least it can be dismissed as a ~rapper thing and there's Big Bang's comeback a couple months later.
Basically, this album is incredibly selfish and that is all sorts of messed up and wonderful. I am going to lose my shit on December 15th. Praise YG. We'll do this again when the album's actually out.
ALSO GDTOPBOM MUSICAL OT3 4EVER