[INTERVIEW]: Loopy’s “Departed” Tour Begins a New Chapter.

Loopy, The Django Tape

“How many people you know, like for real know, that actually made it?” A voice asks in the intro to King Loopy, the absolutely killer breakthrough EP for K-hip-hop legend Loopy. “Not many people I know did.” 

But Loopy has. 

Like it or not, since he burst onto the scene in 2014, Loopy has been a confrontational, innovative force within the system. He’s a scholar of hip-hop; a performer who spent time in Los Angeles, North America learning about the culture and history of the music. An unstoppable music machine whose music challenges the framework of what the K-hip-hop community can look like. He’s not afraid to have challenging conversations with other rappers or to argue for why he believes so much in hip-hop. In short, he’s a dynamite; a force to be reckoned with. 

This December Loopy embarked on his first European tour, “Departed”, and he will soon travel to North America for the second leg. “I’m departing from my past, my struggle, and the oppression. This is a new chapter,” he told me this week. “This is a new me.” 

This summer Loopy introduced listeners to a new sound with The Django Tape. His lyrics felt more confessional, a little more vulnerable at times. “I wanted too much/ Honestly, I’m greedy,” he raps on my favorite song “BET”. “Looked back/ Found myself alone/ Couldn’t take care of my people, not even myself.” 

The Loopy you’re being introduced to now has been through some shit. He’s seen the world, and worked hard to grow his craft. He might sound just as hungry as he was seven years ago, but he’s also more reflective. 

“This is the beginning of my new chapter,” he described his new music. “It's my gesture of saying, ‘Hi’ and reconnecting with my fans. Sound-wise, I hope they experience more "bass" sound from this project.” 

Loopy can’t remember the first hip-hop album he bought, but he can viscerally recall the most influential albums for him as a teenager. 

“Lil Wayne’s Carter III taught me about swag and being stylish on the mark,” he told me. “And Epik High’s first album taught me poetic expression.” 

Swag and poetry are the two dualities that exist within Loopy’s music. If you listen to enough hip-hop you learn that it’s poetry; that each song tells a story. But swag is essential to being a great rapper. 

“For me, hip-hop is all about carrying swag and being confident,” he said. “I've incorporated this mindset into my fashion, attitude, relationships, music, and way of thinking.”

Loopy’s style is confrontational. It’s built to shock you, to put you on edge, to make you curious. In videos, Loopy often wears a hat with a hood wrapped around his face that obscures nearly everything but his eyes and a tattoo that drops below his left eye like a tear. “I can't define my style but it is just my natural expression,” he told me simply. “And I appreciate people acknowledging it.”

Loopy’s influences, a Black American rapper and a Korean rapper, reflect the tension he holds as a hip-hop artist: A Korean rapper who’s navigating a culture that was founded by Black Americans. “The reason why I keep asserting the importance of the origins and try to get inspired by the roots is because hip-hop is not ‘ours’ in the first place,” he stated. “Although we sympathize with the culture to a certain extent, we should continue to learn more and be curious about how everything started. We gotta pay respect to the originators and it will eventually reduce the chance of cultural appropriation and misunderstanding, if you know what I mean.”

Loopy’s assertion might be obvious to Westerners who grew up around the culture of hip-hop, but to Koreans, this position is controversial. “I feel like the majority of hip-hop listeners in Korea intake hip-hop as strictly a music genre. I am not bashing any of these fans,” he told me. “They are deeply appreciated and I feel that we have a potential to build a solid foundation.”

 But Loopy wants hip-hop to be appreciated for more than just its sound. “To me hip-hop is a larger concept,” he said. “It is a lifestyle, and it is the cultural code and the lingo that we share. Whether it is music or fashion, I want people to express themselves in their own creative outlet and share common language/understanding to really develop this beautiful culture.”

Loopy said in past interviews that while in America, he learned how to hone his self-confidence. That swagger he saw in other rappers clicked in Los Angeles. He met Nafla, another Korean rapper, in LA’s Koreatown, and together, they began to trade ideas about hip-hop. The years Loopy spent in America allowed the rapper to experience the culture, to dive into the geography of America’s vast diaspora of identities. 

Loopy wants listeners to dig deeper into this history. “For example, if you recognize how dab was born, it started from smoking culture. It acted as a means of communication for a circle of people and the bond between people who understood this lingo became the cornerstone for this unique culture,” he explained. “But a lot of times people neglect this back story and just think of it as a plain dance move. I think there are many cases like this and I feel like we are missing the essence of the culture; where we can get so much more from it. I hope that we can bring some change.” 

Loopy returned to Korea in culture shock. 

When I asked what he hears when he listens to his debut mixtape ICE, the first he released when he returned home,  he became candid. “I hear pain, coldness, and my lack of experience. The project came out in one of the darkest chapters of my life,” he told me. “As odd as it may sound, going back to Korea, my home country, and adjusting to its environment was probably the most difficult challenge I had to face. The winter was brutal and the music was heavily influenced by it. It is an honest depiction of my mindset and the feeling at the time.” 

The tracks are some of the most low-key, and the darkest, of his career. “I have so many problems,” he raps in the opening verse of the defiant “Problem”, a track that sounds like a nightmare lullaby. But he can’t change them. The more money he gets, the more attention he receives, the higher the problems stack. 

But Loopy’s music was hitting a nerve with listeners. People began to recognize him in the streets, and his sound was gaining attention. He knew things were changing, that he was making music he should be proud of, when a fan told him his perspective on life changed after listening to Loopy’s music. “It is a huge, perhaps the biggest compliment I can get,” he reflected. “I don't take that for granted.”

His music grew more experimental with every release. “I don't mean to undermine the quality of the project,” he said, referring to “ICE”, “But I definitely feel that there's room for improvement.” 

The music grew with every release. In 2020, one month into the pandemic, Loopy released a massive project “NO FEAR”, which featured 25 songs. The music was expansive, diverse, and wildly ambitious. Tracks like “PRADA SHOES” dipped deeper into R&B than he had ever gone before. His sound was becoming more audacious. At times, the beats sounded dizzying. Listen enough and you, too, would feel loopy. 

“DJANGO”, the latest release from Loopy, is representative of this change. It challenges us sonically with strings and trap beats; the lyrics feel more truthful than anything he’s released before. And he seems to have found his footing as a rapper creating his own lane. 

“There is so much new music that is ready to come out,” he said, signifying that this chapter has so much to look forward to. “Keep a lookout.” 

But for now, Loopy is ready to elevate. He wants more music, more money, more shows, more opportunities to give back. He’s ready to grab as much out of life and music as he can. And on stage? He’s going to be a beast. 

For fans who attend his shows in 2023, he has a promise. He will tear the stage up like the star player from Korea did at the World Cup. 

“I am like Sonny (Heung Min Son) in this rap shit,” he said with a laugh.