Pushing Against Expectations, Loopy Stands Alone

As he begins his first European tour,

Loopy is emerging as a promising voice in the global hip-hop community.

First, there’s the voice. It’s a slow, lazy drawl that sounds as if he’s taking his time to spit out jabs, bars or bravado.

Then, there is the style. His look is almost immediately confrontational: At times his face is completely obscured except for the eyes and a tattoo visible just below the eye. His aesthetic is meant to catch your eye and to make you uncomfortable if your politics lie closer to the conservative style.

Loopy, the khip-hop rapper who blew up in 2015 with the mixtape “King Loopy”, asserts he’s a “problem”, but that’s your problem. “Hip-hop is all about 멋진 [swag],” Loopy said in 2019. “It’s all about being cool.”

Next week Loopy will launch the “DEPARTED” tour in Europe and travel to four different cities. It’s a rare opportunity to see one of the most vibrant and daring forces in hip-hop in person. “DEPARTED” holds multiple meanings for Loopy: It’s the opportunity to show fans the artist he’s become over the past ten years, but it also expresses a desire to move onto a new phase in his career, one where perhaps he’s in a league of his own. 

Loopy live is an enthralling experience: He flexes with free-style raps and engages the audience in his own mode of swagger. His style is consciously influenced by American rappers like Lil Wayne and Kendrick Lamar, but he’s eager to put his own stamp on hip-hop. 

In 2016 he launched MKIT RAIN label, one of the most influential independent hip-hop labels in Korea. Together with rappers Owen, Nafla and Bloo, the men created a label founded on a genre that is about, as Owen described, “freedom of speech.” Hip-hop, Owen said, “frees me from all the other bullshit around me. It’s an outlet.” MKIT RAIN was an audacious label, one that pushed from the outside of Korea, with only Loopy being the Korean-born rapper. Their influences from the West and Black culture come from each rapper spending a large amount of time in Los Angeles.  

But perhaps the city that has influenced Loopy the most is Atlanta, Georgia. He traveled to what W.E.B Du Bois named “the North of the South” in 2021 then aimed his car West to Memphis, another city seeped in Soul music but bound by racial tensions and trauma. Loopy’s experiences in Los Angeles and the South gave him first hand knowledge of what hip-hop is based on. 

Joe Coscarelli described the history of Atlanta in a 2022 profile on Lil Baby, writing, “Building upon this confluence of tension and opportunity is Atlanta’s constantly regenerating rap scene, which has become, over the last 30 years, one of the most consistent and consequential musical ecosystems in the world.”

It’s this convergence of diaspora and geography that formed Loopy’s music. But his global point of view would be highly disturbing to the Korean hip-hop scene. 

“What we want is not [for people to think] ‘They imitated U.S. hip-hop well’,” Loopy said in an interview for Loofla. “We want people [to] not to feel a sense of difference when they listen to my song after listening to U.S. hip-hop That’s what I want. I don’t want to be an artist who impersonates others.”

Perhaps what has been most controversial about Loopy is that he is explicitly critical of khip-hop and what he perceives as an unwillingness of Korean artists to acknowledge that the genre was built by Black artists. Loopy felt the need for change in 2015 when he returned to Korea after living in America. “At our very first concert we recognized there was a problem with underground Korean hip-hop performance culture,” he wrote on an Instagram Story. “Unlike big name artists or idol concerts, which are heavily funded as well as planned, [underground hip-hop concerts] always follow the same concept and stage design.”  MKIT RAIN focused heavily on creating a culture within Korean hip-hop, one that was based on originality and artistry.

Loopy has also been extremely vocal that hip-hop is still led by Black American rappers, and as he told rapper named Simba in a leaked DM exchange, “not only did hip-hop begin in America, but still leads the rap game in every capacity.”

For his part, Loopy is working to push Korean hip-hop towards the innovation and poetry rappers like Kendrick Lamar have been developing in American rap. Loopy sees hip-hop as a culture built on “connectedness, communication and interpretation.” When he first began finding notoriety and success in Korea, his lyrics fixated on material objects. They flexed wealth, power, prestige, and sexual provocation. But he’s learned to mine those tendencies to be blunt into something sharper. His lyrics, in recent work, are raw and often confessional, poetic even. “I couldn’t take care of my people, even myself,” he raps in “BET”. “The feeling at times is still intense/ It’s exhausting to just pretend/ I’m surrounded by toxic and insecure relationships.” 

These days Loopy’s power comes from his desire to not be like anyone else. His flow, his style, his voice are all uniquely his own. He gives credit where he feels it is due – and is willing to engage anyone in a polite debate - but he’s unbothered by what others think of him. His flow, his artistry, doesn’t need anyone’s approval. 

“I don’t need to prove myself,” he declares on the freestyle “WHAT U DO”. “I call the shots.” 

“When I was studying I related a lot to Tablo’s lyrics and I was influenced by them,” he said of Epik High’s leader. “’I’ve heard of people telling me I sound like him when I was young.” But Loopy’s style has developed into something darker and wilder. His unconventionality is what makes him stand out. 

Loopy’s fans find solace in his ability to honestly talk about loneliness, love, or desire. I was touched by a comment I saw form a fan on YouTube who wrote, “Discovered Loopy during a rough time in my life, went through not one but 3 heartbreaks, involving a friendship, and ex boyfriend and the death of a loved one all in 3 months, he is undoubtedly what got me through the void I had created, I will continue to support him until my last days here on earth.” 

Loopy, for his part, is continuing to look ahead. He’s minding his health, continuing to make music, and is excited to start a new era in his career with the “DEPARTED” tour. “Run away,” he tells himself on “BET”. Even if everyone turned his back on him, he would survive. “It’s easier to be alone/ Beautiful view of the Han River outside the window.” 

Forging his own path might be lonely, but the rapper was confident it would pay off.

Onion Production