 Platinum selling artist Neil has praised South Korea for producing the best boy bands in the entire world but his compliments turn into a fiery discussion about the appropriation of black culture and how come black people don't get enough credit for influencing K-pop so much. Guys, this is a spicy one. From Silly to Serious, I'm gonna go ahead and put this in the Silly category but sometimes the discussions, they wade into serious territories. Let's run the clip. What happened to the boy band? I mean, because, you know, will there ever be another new kids and boys to man and in-sync and... Let us keep in mind that the boy band is not dead. It's not? It's not dead, it's just Korean. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Shout out to BTS, shout out to the whole K-pop movement. Like, they still going strong with the boy band movement. It's just, it's... I don't know. You know what? I gotta give a lot of credit to K-pop and just... I've been over there and saw just the machine that it is over there. Like, they're literally going from, like, from a kid, from a child and training these kids in music, guitar, with piano, real live music, teaching them how to really sing, really dance and then deciding if they're gonna get in a group or if you're gonna be a solo artist. And it's like, and it's producing, it's producing a pretty quality product. Right. I do say so myself. So, shout out to K-pop and just everything that's happening in that movement, man. It's dope. Long story short, man. Andrew, let me tell you this real quick. This is kind of an aside. I do not think Shannon Sharp knows what the hell Neo's talking about. Now, skip, skip. Yo, he's from the old school. He's from a time where they don't understand that there's global music markets and you know what I mean? Like, skip. I am very familiar with BTF, the behind the scenes. Yeah. But Neo was like, no, no, no, skip. Pop music still does exist. Boys to men still does exist, but it's Korean. Yeah, I guess so. This discussion, obviously, there's not a new discussion about how much credit, like, black culture or black people or at least black musicians should get for the influences of K-pop. But it seems like it's getting re-sparked again. Why? Because what K-pop has now reached this ultimate max level where it's being exported back to the West, right? Well, anytime something reaches like a huge critical mass, there's like discussions that were there, but they weren't really top of mind. Now, Neo actually in the interview with Shannon does not talk about that. I'm not saying he may or may not have thoughts about it and it sounded like he kind of wanted to go into the pros and cons of almost the hardcore militarization of the K-pop industry from youth developing youth idols, but he definitely kept a PC and was like, at the end of the day, they're killing it, man. Shout out to them. Like, he didn't want to get into the pros and the cons of it all. Yeah, definitely. So we're going to go in the comment section. A lot of different people have different perspectives. Please hit that like button. Check out other episodes of the Hot Pop Boys. I mean, I guess a couple of questions I would have for people, you know, watching this video is like, how do, how would K-pop artists show more respect and give more credit to, like, black artists, right? Like, that's a question. How is it done? I think a lot of people can agree that maybe they could shout them out more. I would agree, but I guess, like, what does it look like? Yeah, I don't know. Is it more collaborations? Obviously, you're starting to see it now with Jun Cook and Lotto and J-Hope and J Cole. Right, right. But also, another question is, where does the appropriation or the borrowing of culture, whichever word you want to use, start? You know, where does it, like, how far do you go back? It's very, very, very difficult and murky, but, you know, the comment section went into it. You know, guys, we're just here to break it down and give our analysis. We're going to get into the comment section. Our own takeaways. Make sure you like, subscribe, turn on your notifications, Andrew. We are not subject matter experts on K-pop. But it doesn't mean that we can't lend our brains to analyzing it. Somebody said, Nio was talking about the hyper commodification of the person into a product to be consumed by the masses. How K-pop companies refined the formula and made it even more profitable and exploitative. It's worthy of praise from a business entertainment industrial complex perspective, but we should note that there is real humans wreckage that comes out of this system. Mmm. That was a deep call. He said a lot. Well, this guy is good at writing. Bro, you could tell when Nio was saying, yo, they got this machine and the machine is like, and then you don't want to go because anytime someone says the machine, it's usually not a positive thing, but it is like positive and negative. Guys, we know the K-pop system has pros and cons, all right, let's be honest. Of course, Andrew, some people defended Korean entertainment same. I feel like if you look at the Jackson 5 story new edition all the way to InSync and Backstreet Boys, there's exploitations in each of the stories. I do not think K-pop is any different. It's just my personal opinion. It was already a formula. It was already exploitation on a pop level. Now it's just Korean, just my opinion, and that goes for everybody dissing the K-pop development system. Yo, do you think the Koreans were like, hey, you know, like Americans, they don't want to like do the boy band thing anymore, but we're going to do it. We're going to do it. We can take it on. We are going to mix it with boarding school and the military and Olympic system from like Russia or China and then all put it together. I don't know. You guys know a lot more about this. I know there's so many documentaries. I think, Andrew, do you think with the recent, I don't know, maybe whatever suicides or whatever that people is more questioning? We got this dope system that's producing amazing musical products. Everybody loves our entertainers that emerge from this system, but at what cost? No, no, no. I don't think that they're going to stop with the machine. I think they are going to tweak how the machine works and also like the mental health kind of support that they give a lot of these young K-pop trainees, of course. And I think they should because there needs to be a little bit more support for them. But I don't think they're going to stop the machine, bro. This machine is cranking out amazing products. Let's be real. Somebody said it's just the same way parents train their kids to become a pro sports superstar from a very young age. You're probably not going to make it pro nowadays. If you're not training at the five, six years old, how is it any different? Yeah, yeah. I think it's interesting, especially, you know, in America, we don't have this kind of machine exploitative thing as much. I guess you would say quote unquote. That's what did for music, but we have it for sports kind of for sports. But even in Europe, they have people go pro at like the age 14 and 15. Yeah. It's even younger out there where you can be playing pro and getting paid as a full time employee. The US system is very interesting because we still produce some of the best entertainers and athletes, but you're right. It's actually less systemized than almost everywhere else in the world. Yeah. Everywhere else is trying to like optimize to produce the best product. Somebody says this R&B ish game in Korea is crazy. A F deal will crush your soul. All them M Fers insane. Yeah. I mean, this is just yeah. What a comment. Somebody said 90s K-pop boy bands were ahead of their time incorporating hip hop into the music. There's not enough recognition for that. Yeah. I mean, I would say I think for any group that is doing hip hop. I mean, especially back then, I think I think you could tell that they were praising them, but there wasn't at least like specific shout outs, I guess in their songs and interviews. And I guess because it's so much done like overseas and a whole different world, I can see why they didn't get the proper shout out, but they probably should and especially back then with the suit high G or even to HOT. Those are things that more existed within the Korean world only. They had and reached the rings out of the orbit, you know, to the outside of their world. Somebody said yes. And by the way, this person's Korean shout out to the black American community for sharing and creating their music and styles because that's where a lot of K-pop stems from or gets the inspiration from originally. And somebody said inspired by by the way, I call it stealing. I don't know about the stealing word, man. I think it's tough. Stealing is like when I take something from you and you don't have it anymore, right? Right. That is technically, I'm just saying that's the technical term stealing. And somebody else wrote like this really huge comment with like, I'll just pop it up right now because I don't even know what they're talking about. I'm sure there's so many documentaries about how hip hop, you know, got in there and it was boys to men considered hip hop and when did, you know, all the influence come in and which artists broke it open and which which artists need to show more appreciation because they're their inspirations more hip hop or more R&B than others. Right, right, right. I think it's just a, I think just like one thing and this is maybe like a really funny, like I'm like a like a funny solution. But I think like, I think part of the reason is is because some black people feel like Asians and maybe I'm just going to focus on Koreans for a second that they are like a little bit racist, right? And like, you know, I'm just saying this is not, that's not a crazy thing for me to say. A lot of people, we talk about this all the time, right? Like there's tension between blacks and Asians and Asians on black. Like both sides are feeling like the other side doesn't like them for a number of different reasons. Right, LA riots or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Whatever it could be, right? So I'm saying like, I guess that's also part of the discussion that a lot of people aren't mentioning is that there's somewhat of a tense history. There is a undertone that is almost too intense to bring up in a K-pop discussion. Yeah, yeah. What I'm saying like, I don't think really like anything really bad has happened since the riots and you know, for decades, but it has to go back to LA and the flow of culture between LA's Korean scene and Korea, but there is also a lot of tension in LA racially. Maybe the key is just to be nicer to each other. I don't know. I don't know if that's enough credit. But then somebody said, you know, B.S.B., an in-sync. They totally copied a lot of black culture too if you look at like Justin Timberlake or some of the other guys. That's true. Especially some particular guys in them. Especially Justin Timberlake. You know, Justin Timberlake is a... But I'll say this, Justin Timberlake does give a lot of credit. He does give a lot of credit to the black party. Somebody said B.S.B. walked so BTS could run. And then somebody said New Kids on the Block crawled so B.S.B. could walk. And somebody said Jackson 5 would like to have a work with you. And somebody said, what about the Beatles? Did they inspire Jackson 5? And somebody said the four tops have entered this stage and that was the original black boy band that some people say it was. But I'm going to do it one better, Andrew. I'm going to go ahead and say the first hip-hop artists were the Jubilers. Woo! AKA known as Lil Baby's grandfather. They came on the Ark in 2x2. No, this is the meme that people say that this is a little baby back then. The Jubilers were four black guys. Essentially, to me, sounding like they were rapping in 1935. That's crazy. Yeah. So, yeah. Anything, like I said, if I was going to give credit to somebody, I think my whole thing is like everything absolutely is tracing back to black Americans and that whole experience, American descendants of slaves and this whole oppression that had a lot of pain but a lot of beautiful things creatively emerged from it. But how do you show love to it? Yeah. How do you show credit? I don't know. Like, is it, you know, like reparations type thing? Or is it just shouting them out and just showing love or inviting them? Maybe inviting the old heads and the OGs back to Korea and just showing them a good time. I don't know. At least they can post about it, you know? Somebody said Neo is also part Chinese fun fact and somebody said this is actually really interesting. Andrew, Neo is actually a quarter Chinese himself. That's crazy. On his dad's side. Yeah, very interesting. But I guess they didn't really know his dad growing up, Andrew, but I don't know. Why do you think Neo is so big in the Asian community because his music kind of sounds Asian because Neo apparently has been in China like 10 times and has even performed at the White House where Xi Jinping was in the audience. Yeah, I think Neo's music, I don't want to say it sounds Asian, but I think it sounds like something that Asians really like. And I think it's easy to sing along with, right? It's, it's very like... So sick of love song. Sexy love. And it's like Asian, I don't know. Dude, if you go to a karaoke, if you go to KTV or Noribar, I'm pretty sure Asians are singing Neo's like top 10. He kind of has an Asian tone to his voice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyways, I think people also like his lyrics. He's a good writer. David, I guess this kind of goes back to like culture being shared, culture being borrowed. I don't know if I would say stealing, but I think appropriation. I don't know if you want to use that word too. And appropriation even has different connotations, right? Yeah, I mean listen man, it's so hard to draw the lines like listen, like this person who's a K-pop, let's say a black American from LA and they were brought over to Seoul for decades now as a choreographer or they were brought over as a music producer or they're brought over to do reference tracks or they were brought over there as a consultants for the K-pop game. They're going to be like, oh man, I had a great time. They brought me out for like an X amount of months and gave me a big contract. Like you know what I'm saying? But then other people that are just like maybe black Americans that are listening to the music that wasn't a part of the backend or not able to benefit from it, they might be eating this product being like, what, you took my culture, Koreanized it and sold it back to me. And I like it, but I don't know how I feel about it because I don't know if I feel appreciated at K-Con or whatever. Right, right, right. I think of like, I think about food sometimes because I know like, you know, Asian food is very popular but let's say and there's a lot of great white chefs or black chefs that cook Asian food, right? They travel back to that land and they learn all the recipes and they come back and they open up a bunch of Thai restaurants and they get recognized for it. I got Poc Poc with Andy Richter or something. What is their obligation? Do they have to only hire Asians? No. Should they obviously acknowledge where it comes from? Yeah, of course. Should they welcome Asians into the restaurant? Yeah, but that's it. Like, they don't fully owe everything. They don't owe their like profit to Asian people. Yeah, I've never been a huge fan of people roasting white chefs that were cooking Asian food. I never thought that we should gatekeep it. I thought that it was fair to criticize them too though. And just like in the same way, I do think it's fair to bring up like, you know what I mean? Like if in the K-pop industry there needs to be a bigger movement to acknowledge. I don't know if it's happening right now. Obviously, Jay Hope with Jay Cole and you know, there's more collaborations now with American artists as K-pop sort of breaks the U.S. market for me. Yeah, I do think like Jay Park tried to address it a little bit and like when he was like freestyling on Sway, I think, you know, but anyways, like I think like basically, I think everybody knows and I guess the point is like how much recognition is enough recognition and maybe they haven't done enough or maybe they feel like they have. I don't know. Definitely, they never made the songs like Eminem. You know how like Eminem made like so many songs about like what in America like? I will say this. Maybe it's showing respect by doing it well. You know what I mean? Like taking it seriously, taking the craft seriously. To be honest, and I know a lot of people are going to be like, quit playing the metal fumbers. I don't know what the answer is. It's very, very difficult to say and it can vary. But you like rap. You're wearing a J Cole shirt right now. Am I guilty of appropriate shit? No, did that shirt appropriated to say? I don't know. But I'm just appreciating. Yeah, you're in a J Cole. Yeah, J Cole has a new song out with boss passport bros. It's really good. I'm a fan of all the Dreamville artists. I'm a song. Anyways, guys, let me know in the comments down below. Again, you know, shout out to all the great kpop artists that dedicate their lives to making the music and shout out to all the artists that came before from America to everywhere that, you know, kind of have set the groundwork and kind of inspired everybody because there's a lot. Yeah, but I think more appreciation is never wrong. Yeah, I think that's my final take away or appreciation to the black American experience because to be honest, I do think that one thing that a lot of Asians get wrong and I'm saying this for real is there's a lot of pain that went into that creation of that creativity and all those amazing cultural products that came out of that too. Yeah, like it was a package deal. So we got to acknowledge that we can't just be like looking at the great cultural output and be like, oh, that's the part I want and then you're not acknowledging that people had to go through a lot of bad stuff too. Yeah, well, let us know in the comments down below how you think it should look. How valid is this conversation? And thank you for watching the hot pot boys. And until next time, we out peace.