You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Herway.

Los Angeles producer and beatmaker Jennifer Lee released her first album as Toki Monster in 2010, on Flying Lotus' label, Brain Feeder.

She's collaborated with Cool Keith and Anderson Pack, among others. Her newest album, Loon Rouge, was released in October 2017.

And in this episode, Toki Monster breaks down her song, Bibbimbop.

Hey, I'm Jennifer Lee, and I also go by Toki Monster.

My parents were born in Korea. I was born in the States, but they had been in the US for quite a while before I was born.

I wanted to create a song that pulls from my roots and my cultural heritage.

I was going through and listening to a lot of traditional music.

There's a style of music called Pansodi, which is like some really old-school Korean folk music.

It involves a lot of women doing this crazy orchestrated drumming that was also very performance-based, and it tends to be quite sad sometimes as well.

I was going through and listening to all this Pansodi stuff, and basically heard this woman wailing and singing over these drums.

And in traditional Pansodi, there is this drum, but it's on its side.

And it has this cool stick, so one side of the stick is flat, and the other side of the stick is rounded.

The performer also uses their hand, so they can create all sorts of really cool sounds and rhythms.

I thought it was really cool, but since I don't have that instrument, I took the sounds I heard from that and just started banging on things in my room.

That sounded similar.

I have a few little drums at home, so I just did my best to kind of mimic the rhythm and the sounds, but with what I had available.

And then on top of that, I started singing...

...so kind of mimicking the things that I hear in traditional Pansodi.

You know, I tried my best to tap into my inner, okie Korean person.

My goal for this song was not to sample, but to do what I could to recreate the things that I heard, to reinterpret my culture.

There is a few different layers of vocals on this song.

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