Big Bang – Shout Out To The World! (English Translation) [2009] Shout out to the World: TOP “I came here because of that string of hope. Where do I stand now? I ask myself this but even I don’t have a specific answer yet. During the process where I search for my other self, all my worries will fade away because I must find the person who will lend his shoulders to me.” ~TOP Name: Choi Seung-hyun Date of Birth: November 4, 1987 Skills: Rap, Writing lyrics, Beatbox *Starred in the KBS Drama, ‘I am Sam’ The power to awaken a soul, sometimes it takes pain to be re-born. [~ Pt.One~] -I once wanted to be a lyric poet that composed and recited verses.- I became mesmerized with ‘Hip-Hop’ music when I was in Grade 5. I went crazy for this type of music because I listened to it all day and carefully noted all the rap lyrics. If we have to talk about Hip-Hop music, I have to briefly talk about the roots of American Hip-Hop. When I first started listening to Hip-Hop, it was divided up into East Coast and West Coast in America. Wu Tang Clan and Notorius B.I.G. represented the East Coast (New York) scene and they focused largely on the rap and the lyrics, while representing the West Coast (LA) was 2Pac who focused more on the melody. Although at that time in Korea and from my memory, more people listened to West Coast hip hop but I was more into the East Coast style. When I listened to their raps, I would always exclaim to myself, “Ah this kind of music should be attempted by a man at least once in his life”. I wanted to be like them; where I could express my own philosophy and messages for people. Their rap lyrics usually talk about the life of these young boys. If I have to briefly describe the feeling, it would be: “my family is poor, I live in a world of crime but now I’m successful, if my parents are thirsty they no longer have to drink water but they can drink champagne”. Sometimes the lyrics were violent and very dark but this type of greed would happen at least once in a man’s lifetime. This kind of feeling started to eventually grow in me. After entering high school, I seemed to be in the spotlight a lot…perhaps because I was taller than children the same age and I was wearing a lot of hip hop style clothes. I was into fashion when I was young so I used to wear hip hop brands that my friends didn’t wear. I would save up my money to buy the clothes I wanted even if my parents didn’t give me allowance. I had absolutely no interest in school and started to hang around “the problem teens”, as the adults would say. They are my most precious friends now but in our society, people would refer to them as bad influences. When I was growing up, I saw a lot of things I shouldn’t have seen and experienced a lot that I shouldn’t have. It was also during this time where emotions were running high and a lot of things weren’t going as planned. It was the first time that I experienced what the feeling of “being hurt” and “scared” was. Even though I was doing things the adults didn’t want me to do, my friends doing meaningless things were also a problem. Compared to those who were trying to positively affect these children again, I hated the adults who punished without reason. Rather than teaching children what was right, they used punishment to make these children fall deeper into the hole..and because of this constant hurt and outburts, they turned for the worse. The adults labeled these children who had just entered high school as “problem teens”, while the parents cried because they “raised a juvenile delinquent”. Even for those who, in the beginning weren’t doing much harm, but after being kicked out of school, transferred to a new one and having the label as a “problem child” made them fall deeper into their delinquent activities. I slowly started to fall into a dark hole myself after watching my friends change around me. Discovering dreams within a vague shadow [~ Pt.Two~] What happened in Grade 9/10 made me determined that I could no longer dwell in this “painful world”. A close friend of mine left this world after a motorcycle accident and soon after that, another friend of mine passed away from a car accident after driving without a license. People were cold and distant about my friends’ deaths…they were not even slightly concerned about them. My other friends started to drop out of school after being constantly reminded they were “problem teens”. Up until this moment, I have no friends that are still in school. I felt that my life was non- existent after watching my friends leave one by one, but I still slowly tried to sort it out. However, reality was harsh and even after changing schools, the rumors and gossip kept surrounding me. Some kids at school picked fights with me and teachers were vigilant around me. Not one of them would actively stand up for me nor give me advice. Besides being an invisible person, there was nothing else I could do and I started to hate going to school. If there is anyone out there now who feels the same way as me when I was still a student, I want to say one thing, “what you’re doing now is inadequate and shameful.” Even though I think the current me is much better, but to ruin your own reality by showing people what you think and want is very stupid. During that time in Grade 9/10, I started to officially write lyrics. I started talking less and my thought process started to change too. Perhaps it was because I thought of one thing after another and it started to get deeper and darker. When I was in too deep, I couldn’t deal with the frustrations. My goal was still in front of me though and since it was always something that I wanted to do, I didn’t allow myself to be wary of anything. I had 2 wishes when it came to doing things related to Hip-hop. One was to become a rapper and the second one was to sell a lot of brand name items together. It was hard to find Hip-hop items back then because almost all were imported so I thought about finding all the rare items and and sell it at a ‘Hip- hop Multishop’ to make things easier for Hip-hop buyers. Now that I think about it, although it was a dream that was far-fetched but it became more real as I attempted it. Adults have their way, children have theirs [~ Pt.Three~] I started working at a clothing store in Itaewon. I was happy that I could simply listen to Hip-hop music all day long and look at clothes I liked. I even had a thought that, “since I now have experience with direct sales and I know what the customers want, I can use that to my advantage for my Hip-hop Multishop”. After a few months however, my conclusion changed to “it’s not as easy as I thought.” Even though I was still a child and didn’t have to do most of the work, but mentally there were a lot of restraints and it was physically hard on me too. To get sales, I had to go out and find people to go into the store. The owner wanted me to sell as much as I could using whatever method I could. When the shop closed at around 7pm or 8pm, I had to go to the night market to bring the clothes back. Around 3-4am, I had to place the clothes nicely before the shop opened. If I couldn’t finish the tasks on time, the owner would yell at me and half playfully, half seriously hit my hands. My wage per day was fairly high at that time compared to other kids…around 40,000won/day but the owner would say things like “you’re still young…why do you need so much money?” and take away some of mine. Even though I wasn’t earning money because my family needed it, but I thought like a kid. I was still young, I wanted to buy what I wanted and I wanted to see the world like how it was. Unfortunately it wasn’t easy and I quit working there after being miserable for some time. From that day onwards, I started rapping. “If my hip hop multishop didn’t work out, then I’ll be a rapper”…I had that kind of opinion. Perhaps because I was still young and I wasn’t scared at all…if one thing didn’t work out then I could always try my best at another thing. At first I wanted to perform on stages but since I didn’t know the right people it was hard for me to do so. The DJs in the clubs were very popular at that time. They were the ones who knew most about Hip-hop. Through my hyung DJ D-maker, I was able to know many rappers and eventually became either their guest rapper or helped them with their performances.