K-Pop Dreaming - Solid

California Love

LAist Studios

Music

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The underground hip-hop scene in Los Angeles was thriving in the late 1980s. And there, soaking in the vibe, was a Korean American college student by the name of Jae Chong. He was also making music on the side, but didn’t think much was going to come of it. That is, until an out-of-the-blue invitation brought him and his friends to Korea when K-pop was taking off. Their group, Solid, would become the Kings of R&B and the first Korean American act to make a splash in the Korean music industry. Vivian reflects on the importance of Solid and sees the group's Korean-Americanness as the cornerstone of their success.
(Originally published March 16, 2023)

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Transcript

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0:43.1	What did it look like on the inside when you first walk in?
0:51.4	It just wasn't fancy at all.
0:53.2	It looked like a pub. You know, had some tables and there's like a little dance floor. You know, everything's kind of sticky and it's kind of grimy. So the hip-hop culture kind of bled in through there. There's a lot of the, you know, the African-American guys that are there, like they're dancing and hanging out with the locals. It was like a little melting pot within Yatuan.
1:13.2	So when I was in Korea, we went there and we saw something so familiar and heard all these
1:18.2	songs, we're like naughty by nature and all these songs that we were playing in the clubs
1:22.4	in L.A.
1:26.4	This is J Jay Chong.
1:27.6	He was in Korea in the early 90s making music with his group, Solid.
1:32.8	Moon Night reminded Jay of his home, Los Angeles, and the underground hip-hop clubs he would
1:37.5	go to every weekend.
1:40.7	When Jay was hanging out at Moon Night, he had no idea he was on the cusp of making it big and becoming a superstar in Korea,
1:48.9	or that the group he was part of, Solid, would go on to make K-pop history as the Korean Kings of R&B.
2:00.6	So in our last episode, we talked about how Black American music and culture entered South Korea through the American military presence.
2:09.2	But there was another way black music was making its way into K-pop in the 90s, Korean Americans.
2:16.7	Which is where Solid comes in.
2:19.5	The first time I heard about Solid was through a music exec named Bernie Cho.
2:24.8	Bernie grew up in the States, but he was living in Korea in the early 90s, and he saw Sotaji and boys rise to fame.
2:32.5	I was in Korea at the time when Sotaji had debuted, but for me, he was part of a bigger
	...

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