And I remember just thinking to myself, ‘I’m pretty sure Corona is still going to be around’. It was snowing, everything was really cold. When I was making this it was freezing cold in Korea. What is the concept behind ‘IITE COOL’?ĭPR Live: “For this one I had summer, specifically in mind. Credit: Dream Perfect Regime The concept for your previous album ‘Is Anyone Out There?’ was “space”. Then I got to Korea, I fell in love with, I fell in love with Beenzino … I fell in love with just a lot of musicians that were about quality.ĭPR Live. I loved Fall Out Boy, Sum 41 and Paramore. But I used to love punk rock, but it was more of the punk rock that was mainstream. I also looked up to Logic, so when I first started music, those two hip-hop artists really moulded me. I would replay his album all the time and watch all his interviews. And I guess when I was young, that was very heroic for me.” Who are your musical inspirations?ĭPR Live: “I really enjoyed Big Sean‘s music. He has a positive attitude, no matter how tough a situation gets, or how sad his situation gets, he always has a smile. And that’s something he really ingrained in me when I was young. “My father really showed me when I was young that when you fall, all you have to do is get back up. And I always thought it was so cool, because he was so tough for his size. He used to do judo, used to be this fighting machine. It really shaped who I am today.” Who were your role models growing up?ĭPR Live: “When I was a kid, my role model was just my father. So, it was hell but other than that, Guam was quite an experience. There weren’t too many Asian people in our school and we were kind of the ethnicities to be picked on. Let’s just say that I got to be a kid in the neighbourhood, but when it came to school, it was pretty tough. Just in front of my house, there was the beach. But as soon as I adapted to the American culture and learned English I liked it. There was obviously a variety of skin colours, a variety of cultures within the school. NME spoke to DPR Live, with a special guest appearance from DPR REM, over Zoom in their studio in Seoul to talk about his upbringing on the American territory of Guam, collaborations with MAMAMOO’s Hwasa and why being “transparent” in music is so important to him.ĭPR Live: I went there when I was in kindergarten going up to first grade. It’s especially poignant in the midst of a pandemic, where the audience just needs to feel good. Last month, DPR Live released his latest EP, ‘IITE COOL’, a feel-good project that bares the emotional intelligence of a rapper who knows how to balance telling his story and allowing the fans to escape from the growing pains of life. Forming bonds when they were just teenagers, discovering each other through IAN’s B-boying YouTube tutorials and meeting REM at a rooftop party in Seoul, these creative visionaries now oversee their own business, music and visual art under their own independent label and are paving a way for a new generation of artists in South Korea. DPR Live, IAN, Cream and REM have made a name for themselves for going outside of the traditional music structure in the South Korean entertainment industry. While he is likely to be the first person you think of from the Dream Perfect Regime crew, you would be foolish to underestimate the men around him. READ MORE: DPR IAN – ‘Moodswings In This Order (MITO)’ EP review: a soul-baring and cathartic debut.But one thing that is consistent about him is his desire to influence people in a positive way. From being a back-up dancer to almost going down the path of being a psychology lecturer, and now being one of the most prominent faces in K-hip-hop, DPR Live – real name Hong Da-bin – is on a spectrum that is as far reaching as his eclectic taste in music.
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