#how to record rap vocals at home

[yuniniverse]

Hi loves i want to request a yeachan and the reader both are rappers and they get paired up by eden ( kq’s producer) and maddox helps them makes a song and they just have to write lyrics and stuff and they have to work on it like a project yk das all and oh my god i love seeing a notification from u that u updated like i loveeee your writing its too good lovebu lotsss <33

PAIRING !  ━ idol!yechan x reader

GENRE !  ━ slight angst, kissing in the rain, fluff fluff and fluff!

WORD COUNT !  ━ 1.11k

AUTHOR NOTE ! ━ uni has me stressing oml im so sorry for answering so late TvT also omg tysm ydk how happy it makes me to read such sweet compliments :"3

SONG RECCS ! ━ Drawer by 10 cm !

You sighed as you stood infront of the door to the studio, your heart slightly jumping at the thought of the red haired boy sitting inside waiting to work with you. You were one of KQs best song writers and always were praised for your works by hongjoong and Maddox especially since you worked with them alot, even helping them prepare KQ new boy groups debut album. That's how you met Lee Yechan.

You knew Minjae as both him and you were sm trainees at first untill you realised maybe idol life isn't the best for you so you moved to KQ to pursue your songwriting passion. During xikers debut preparation you were met with a red haired boy that held minjaes hand, his eyes roamed everywhere almost as if he was scanning the place. He looked like a cat you thought.

That's how you knew about Minjae, Yechan and Sumin, the rapper line who you would get close to. Since they were at the same age group as you it took no time for you four to get along well, sometimes even pranking the KQ staffs together and having fun in between recording sessions.

You twisted the door knob when you hear a 'come in' a smile forming on your lips as you see yechan sitting next to Maddox, his hair was messy, his headphones were lifted off his left ear to listen to Maddox's instructions as they played the demo. You close the door behind you and leave your bag onto one of the chairs, taking a seat next to yechan.

You were supposed to work with Yechan for one of xikers upcoming songs. At first, it felt like a piece of cake because Yechan was the easiest to work with. Although the boy was loud at times, he was always so soft and sweet with you, making you develop a crush on the now grape haired boy.

Days went by and you got more busy with college too which resulted in you not having time to go to the studio as often. Yechan texted you saying he understood your situation which you felt so grateful for.

However, you got quickly burnt out from college, not to mention how your family were giving you slight troubles too with your parents constantly nagging at how you were always late to come back home when really you were travelling back and forth from your university to the company.

Yechan noticed how serious you've gotten in the past few days, you almost never joked around and only slightly smiled at minjae and sumins horrible dad jokes.

You on the other hand was scared. Scared that the feeling of overwhelming stress might've made you act differently towards the boy which is the last thing you'd want.

But the unfortunate happened.

Yechan entered the vocal room, getting himself to warm up as you looked through his part. He nodded signalling he was ready to record his part of the song. However something was missing, he wasn't himself, his flow of rap would be broken from time to time almost as if he was getting distracted.

You didn't want to loose your cool but you were getting tensed too. You cut him off and scolded him, Your only motive was to get the boy ace his rap like how he used to but it was clear he had something else on his mind. Only if you knew it was you that was on his mind.

He looked down, tears threatening to fall. Maddox tells the two of you to take a break as he notices the atmosphere in the studio tense up. A 15 minute break was what you two were given so when yechan didn't show up 30 minutes later you started to get worried. You looked out the window to see it was pouring, 'he couldn't have gone outside could he?' You excuse yourself and run out to try and find yechan, you get out of breath and panic takes over you as Yechan doesn't pick your call. Maybe you were too harsh. You run through the streets a little further untill you see a familiar boy sheltering himself from the rain.

You sprint up to him and hug him, the impact making him stumble back but he regained his position. You felt a tear roll down your cheek, Yechan was drenched from the rain and shaking from the cold. You felt your whole world crash down and you feel your shoulder get wet from yechans tears as he trembled more into your embrace, uncontrollable sobs left his lips as he holds you tight. You pull away with a slight smile, caressing his cheeks, " I'm sorry" he says looking down. "You're ok Yechan, I should be the one apologizing." Your eyes soften at him, he looked at you with a smile, shaking his head. "None of us were at fault, you had other things on your mind and so did i" he says with a chuckle, wiping away his tears as you nod. "Let's go back? Maddox will get worried if we're out for too long" you say as you hold his arm trying to walk out, the heavy pour now slowed down to a light drizzle. You felt your hand get tugged back and when you turn around you feel a pair of lips on yours. A shy grin spreads across your lips as you return the sweet gesture, yechans hands snakes around your waist, pulling you close as you share a sweet kiss under the rain. He pulls away with the most adorable smile you've ever seen, you peck his cheeks before pulling him with you. You two walked hand in hand back to the company, only to find a very distressed Minjae pacing back and forth, scolding you two as he gives you two each a towel to dry yourself. You couldn't help but giggle at how adorable he looked with messy hair as he crinkled his nose at Minjae who wouldn't stop nagging at how he'd catch a cold at this rate if he continued being this playful.

At the end of the day you bid goodbye to the xikers members, wishing them good luck since their recording sessions were over and now they had to shoot their mv scene and learn the choreography.

As you were about to leave you feel an arm wrap around yours, looking up to see yechan smiling cheekily at you. You smile back, tilting your head in confusion, he looks around and cups your cheek, placing a quick peck on your lips before running away screaming " I love you my y/n !"

[makeitmingi]

Cause Baby You're My Muse [Chapter 28]

Genre: Romance, Idol!AU, Music, Slight angst

Pairing: Mingi x Reader (y/n)

Characters: Producer!Reader, IdolLyricist!Mingi, IdolProducer!Hongjoong, Idol!Seonghwa, Idol!Yunho, Idol!Wooyoung, Idol!San, Idol!Yeosang, Idol!Jongho, cameo(s) by other celebrities

Summary: You always preferred producing underground, having an unknown face and governed by your own rules. But when you start freelancing for idol groups, you say goodbye to your lone wolf lifestyle as you learn to work with idol producers and lyricists.

Word count: 3.2K

When the solo recordings were done, you called for a break. You wanted to overlay the vocals temporarily for the group vocal parts that were coming up. Also, you needed a breather and the boys looked like they needed it too.

"Rest your eyes for a bit, okay? Stretch your legs and get a drink." Hongjoong patted your head. You hummed, smiling tiredly.

"I'm going out to get a coffee." He informed and left. You stood up and stretched your limbs, yawning as you felt the exhaustion sink into your bones.

"Indigo?" Mingi poked his head. His eyes scanned the room before they settled on you being alone. You smiled softly, feeling better already just from seeing him.

"You've worked hard, baby." Mingi teetered over and wrapped him arms around you in a bear hug. He showered you in kisses.

"You too." The two of you laughed.

"Did I look good when I was rapping?" He asked, a cheeky grin on his face. You scoffed, putting your hands on his chest to push him away with a look.

"Come on, I looked good, right? I could tell from the booth, you had that look on your face like you were falling in love with me again. You can fool the others but you can't fool me." Mingi teased. You cleared your throat, looking away as he exposed you. You didn't think you were so obvious.

"I have work to do." You sat back in your seat, turning back to the computer in front of you.

"You're so fun to tease, baby." Mingi leaned over you and planted a kiss on your cheek. He sat down in Hongjoong's seat next to you.

"Stop~" You whined but still buried your face in his chest in an attempt to hide. Mingi chuckled, stroking the back of your head. You reached up to swat his hand away.

"Don't do that, you're going to make me sleep." You mumbled.

"After this, promise me you'll go home and sleep, okay? Have a big meal and sleep." He said.

"Can you stay with me, please?" You asked. Mingi smiled softly at how affectionate you were being and hummed. You leaned down to lay your head on his lap instead.

"My poor, tired baby." Mingi continued to pat your head.

"YOUR WHAT?!" You and Mingi shot out of your seats. Hongjoong stood there, his eyes wide in shock. You felt your heart pounding on your chest, you couldn't breathe. Time seemed to have just stopped as everyone was frozen. No one dared to speak first.

"Indigo, breathe. You're turning blue." Seonghwa stepped out from behind Hongjoong, heading to you. You hadn't even realised how long you were holding your breath.

"Breathe." He spoke softly as he rubbed your back. Mingi turned to you, concern and worry written all over his face.

"Joong, stop staring like that. You're going to make her have a panic attack." Seonghwa said.

"I'm just shocked." Hongjoong blinked.

"This wasn't how I wanted to tell you. I wanted this to all be over before I told the two of you. I'm sorry." You buried your face in your hands. Hongjoong came to hug you.

"What are you sorry about pabo?" He laughed. Mingi visibly relaxed at how calm Hongjoong and Seonghwa were.

"So yes, Indigo and I are together. We have been for a while now." Mingi wrapped an arm around you, pulling you in against his side.

"That's so sweet. Congrats, you two." Seonghwa smiled. Hongjoong folded his arms, staring Mingi up and down with a small frown. He was like an unhappy father/ older brother now. Of course he knew Mingi well, he just liked playing the role of a protective older brother around you.

"How long were you going to keep this from us?" He raised an eyebrow.

"I was going to tell you after recording. But I wanted you and Hwa to be the first ones to know. Even if you don't want to role of parents, you're still like my older brothers." You said shyly.

"So the others don't know?" Seonghwa asked.

"Yunho knows because he reads Mingi like a book. The others don't know." You shook your head.

"But Wooyoung did think that she was dating you, hyung." Mingi rolled his eyes. Seonghwa's eyes bugged out, pointing to himself in disbelief. You nodded in confirmation.

"So, will you give us your blessing?" You chewed on your bottom lip. Mingi felt you grasp the material of his shirt tightly behind his back. Seonghwa and Hongjoong's approval meant a lot more to you than he realised.

"You don't need our blessing as long as you're happy. If you two make each other happy, that's all we want." Seonghwa smiled.

"I do agree with Seonghwa on this. But as the group leader, I would have to ask if you plan to go to the company with this or even the public." Hongjoong looked conflicted.

"I won't put Indigo in the spotlight by going to the company yet, much less going public. We will tell the rest of the group soon." Mingi spoke first.

"Agreed. I think we should tell them at the end of today." You looked up at Mingi.

"Sure." He smiled softly.

Hongjoong and Seonghwa looked at the two of you. The way you two looked at each other with such adoration and it was obvious that you both cared for each other, how could they say no?

"We'll keep your secret but you two have to be careful too, alright? I don't want any of you getting hurt." Seonghwa cautioned. Hongjoong nodded in agreement. Mingi let you get a hug from the both of them. A large weight lifted off your shoulders, you were worried that they would not have approved of the relationship.

"Actually, hyung, you almost suspected us together." Mingi chuckled. Hongjoong blinked in confusion.

"I did? When?"

"When you guys were drunk, you tried to push me away, asking me what I was doing to your 'baby sister'." Mingi scoffed. You and Hongjoong had wide eyes at Mingi's words.

"I was drunk! And also, what were you doing, huh?! Enough to make drunk me stop you." Hongjoong turned the question back to him.

"Geez, I was just helping her. You're over reacting." Mingi rolled his eyes.

"So when did you two get together?" Seonghwa asked you with a kind voice, drawing you away from Hongjoong and Mingi bickering. You giggled.

"We were together the day I sent Haneul back. He came to check up on me when I came home. But he asked me to be his girlfriend the day the producers met for the song review." You recounted.

"That's so nice of you, Mingi ah." Seonghwa praised, making Mingi smile proudly. Hongjoong still shot Mingi a wary look. If anything, he was just overly protective of you. He suddenly pulled you to stand up. You were confused but stood up obediently.

"Sit here." Hongjoong sat you down beside him instead of your original spot between Seonghwa and Mingi.

"Hyung~ Don't be like that. You know me! I won't do anything." Mingi whined.

"Don't worry, Mingi's nice to me. He takes care of me and treats me well like you and Seonghwa." You snickered as you patted the back of Hongjoong's hand.

"We're back." The others came in. Jongho handed you a strawberry milk and a cookie.

"Thank you!" You grinned, poking the straw into the top of the carton to drink. Jongho smiled and returned to his seat.

"I've layered the solo recordings we've done and it's coming together really nicely. But for the chorus and the ending, I want some group vocals. We'll go in groups of 4." You instructed.

"Okay, rock, paper, scissors."

"Before you do that, I'm going to have to stop you. I'm trying to balance out the different pitches so we don't risk drowning each other out with an extreme low note with 1 person who is good at high notes. Hongjoong, Yeosang, Jongho, San in one team and Mingi, Seonghwa, Wooyoung and Yunho in one team." You said.

"You can send out a representative to play and see who goes first." You told them. Of course Jongho represented his team. Seonghwa, on the other hand, was pushed forward.

"Oldest vs youngest!" San clapped, making Seonghwa turn to glare at him.

"Everyone test." You spoke into the mic.

"Ah~~~~" Yunho drowned out on the microphone. He and Wooyoung burst out laughing, resulting in you laughing as well. The 4 of them stood around the main microphone.

"Do a test of the first lines. Acapella. Just for me to check the volumes." You said. Mingi counted them in and they did the test.

"Mingi and Wooyoung's voice travels better so the two of you take half a step back. Seonghwa and Yunho need to come in closer a bit." You waved.

"Like this?" Seonghwa asked.

"Perfect. Let's try it with the music. We'll be doing the chorus." You reminded. They all referred to their lyrics sheet, Yunho giving you the 'ok' to play the track. You listened to them record then overlaid the recording on the raw vocals to see if it was cohesive.

"Okay, we're sounding good. Let's do it one more time before we move on." You put the microphone away to play the music again for them to record it.

"We'll move onto the ending portion." It sounded good with the mingling voices.

"Great job. Group 2 will go in now." You announced, taking a sip of your neglected strawberry milk and a bite of your cookie.

"Alright, group 2. We will be doing the same test as we did with group 1." They all put their headphones on with Hongjoong adjusting the volume and counting them in.

"Jongho, stay where you are. San will stay too. Me and Yeosang will move back slightly." Hongjoong was helpful with positioning the members when you played back the test audio for him.

"Chorus." You spoke and played the chorus for them. They started their recording.

"That was amazing!" You complimented. The balance of their different tones and pitches were so good especially with Yeosang's low pitch and Jongho's high pitch.

"Ahem, we're right here, you know?" Wooyoung rolled his eyes from his spot on the couch behind you. You shrugged, ignoring him as you continued with the second group's recording. When they were done, the other 4 from group 1 went to join them in the booth for the group background vocals.

"Sorry about the squeeze, guys. We'll finish this up quickly." You apologised, seeing all 8 of them in the booth, having the stagger themselves since it wasn't a big space.

"Don't worry about it." Hongjoong assured. Despite the space constraints, the boys were all professional, focusing on the recording.

"Nope, the timing is off. I can hear like two people starting a split second later. Again." You said.

"Yah, if I find who is starting late..." Hongjoong jokingly threatened.

You played the music again and they all recorded their voices. You took that recording blip and placed it at the specific part of the song, overlaying it with the other vocals.

"Playback." You told them, letting them listen to the raw vocals together. Of course, there was still some editing to be done.

"Sounds good!" The boys all cheered from inside the booth.

"Great job, everyone." You said into the mic, a smile on their face as you watched them celebrate through the glass. They all bowed their heads and put the headphones down to exit the booth. All 8 of them barged into the studio.

"Good job, Indigo! You did it!" You were lifted by Wooyoung as the others cheered loudly.

"It wasn't all me. You all worked hard too. I can't wait for this track to be done." You giggled, looking at each of them. Yes, there were still parts to record but at least the main portion was done.

"Thank you for being patient with me doing this for the first time." You bowed deeply to all of them, feeling warmth in your chest.

"What are you saying now?" San hugged you.

"You did great. We all knew you could do it. I'm proud of you." Hongjoong smiled softly. The validation for the team producer, Hongjoong, made you melt.

"Let's celebrate with supper. I'm hungry." Yunho declared and the others agreed.

"Supper? Wait, what time is it now?" You were confused. Only then, you checked the time on your phone and realised that it was close to 11pm. Had you really spent more than 12 hours recording with the boys? Time had flown by without you even noticing. Furthermore, all of you skipped dinner.

"Oh no, I didn't even realise that it was so late. And you guys skipped dinner... You should have said something!" You slapped Hongjoong's arm. He glared at you, rubbing his arm.

"Why are you always hitting me?!" He yelled.

"Don't worry, Indigo. It's not your fault, we were all so focused on the recording, we didn't realise how late it was too." Yeosang patted your shoulder.

"We're basically living the life of Indigo now. Working late, skipping meals." Mingi crossed his arms.

"Don't make fun of me!" You whined.

"Okay, okay. Let's go already." Seonghwa began to usher everyone out of the studio. The boys waited for you to save your work and pack up your equipment.

"We'll close up here. Go return your stuff to the studio." Jongho waved you off, helping the others coil the wires. You nodded and went to put back the stuff that you took from your own studio to use during the recording.

"Ready to go?" Wooyoung asked as you emerged from the hallway after locking up your studio.

"Let me help you." Mingi helped you carry your bag, moving your bag from your shoulder to his. The others didn't think much of because one of them would have done the same.

"Actually, there's one more thing. Before we go." You blurted out.

"What is it?" San tilted his head. You moved to stand beside Mingi and lacing your fingers with his. You smiled up at him.

"You and Mingi hyung?!" Jongho connected the dots before you could say anything.

"Yes. Indigo and I have been together for a bit. We thought it would be good to let you guys know." Mingi spoke, all the while smiling down at you. You nodded your head in agreement.

"Sorry, we didn't mean to keep it a secret. There was just a lot going on and our relationship is still rather new. Even if we aren't ready to tell the company and the public yet, we did want you guys to know since you're family. You all mean a lot to Mingi and I." You added with an uncertain smile.

"Are we all hearing this for the first time?" Yeosang asked.

"Nope. I knew, even before they officially started dating. Mingi can't hide anything from me." Yunho raised his hand with a proud smile. Mingi rolled his eyes in response to that

"Hongjoong and I found out earlier today." Seonghwa said. San was the first to come up and hug you.

"Congrats, you two!" He hugged you and Mingi.

"Thank you." You giggled, hugging him back. All this while, Wooyoung was quiet. You moved away from San and approached him. He stared you up and down.

"You lied to me." Wooyoung stated, folding his arms.

"Woo... I'm sorry, I was going to tell you but I didn't know how... And there was a lot going on." You reasoned.

"She didn't lie to you. You asked if she was dating Seonghwa hyung and she said no. That's not a lie." Mingi defended. He was still salty that the smaller male thought you were dating the oldest. The others turned to look at Seonghwa.

"What? It's Wooyoung who jumped to conclusions, nothing to do with me." Seonghwa held his hands up defensively. Mingi knew you felt guilty from Wooyoung's words.

"Come on, she was already stressing so much about telling anyone at all. And she wanted to tell the hyungs first before telling the others. Don't make her feel bad." Mingi nudged Wooyoung's shoulder.

"Mings... Don't say that." You scolded.

"No more hiding secrets from me. Or else I won't forgive you so easily." Wooyoung said.

"Deal!" You grinned, throwing your arms around him to hug him tightly. Wooyoung hummed happily, rocking from side to side as he hugged you tightly.

"Okay, that's enough." Mingi separated the hug, tucking you under his arm. Hongjoong frowned, pulling you away from Mingi.

"Congrats, Indigo. I wish you and Mingi hyung the best." Jongho held his hand out to you to shake. But you burst out laughing, reaching out to hug him instead. He was just so awkwardly cute you couldn't help it. He froze from the sudden contact but softened, patting your back with a small smile.

"Sorry to break the moment but can we continue the congratulations over food? I'm starving." Yeosang said. You nodded with a giggle and all of you squeezed into the lift.

"Does any of the managers know yet?" Yunho asked.

"None of them know. The ones who know about us are in this lift, apart from my mother." Mingi replied.

"You've already met Mingi's mother?" Wooyoung's eyes widened. You hummed, briefly recounting to them the dinner you had with Mingi's mother previously.

"Wow. Sounds like she likes you more than Mingi hyung." San teased. Mingi scoffed but didn't deny it, he knew that his mother absolutely adored you and wanted to have you as her own daughter.

"Come." Seonghwa and Wooyoung both took hold of your hands, leading you to their van. You blinked in confusion.

"But..." Mingi watched helplessly as you got dragged away to the other van. He thought telling the others meant he could openly hug and kiss you. But it seemed to be the wrong assumption because the others seemed to work harder at separating the two of you.

"Let's go, princess." Yunho chuckled, patting his best friend's shoulder before climbing into their van. Mingi sighed but followed, sitting in his designated seat.

"I shouldn't have encouraged her to tell the rest." Mingi sulked. Yunho laughed at his misery.

"Her older brothers are going to be even more protective her than ever now. You're the bad guy." Yunho teasingly reminded.

"I'm not a bad guy! I'm not going to do anything bad to her. She's been fine with me for months. If anything, shouldn't Seonghwa hyung and Hongjoong hyung be protective of me?" Mingi groaned.

"Of course not. They may have known you longer but she's their precious." Jongho snickered.

"Oh, shut up." Mingi growled.

"Mingi's sulking." You giggled softly, looking at the sad faces Mingi was texting you. Wooyoung leaned over your shoulder to read the text, laughing loudly.

"I think he regrets telling us now." Seonghwa said. Even if it was all for fun and jokes, you knew that Mingi didn't regret telling them. He wanted to proudly show off your relationship. You didn't regret it too, in fact you were relieved that they knew now. Plus, they were happy for you and wished you both well.

"Geez, he'll see you again at the restaurant." Wooyoung whispered, looking at the grumbling messages. You all spoke quietly, not wanting the manager to catch on to what you were saying.

"Yes but that doesn't mean we'll let them sit together." Hongjoong smirked.

~

Series Masterlist

[musicloverxoxo7]

Sit on me – feat. Namjoon

Non-idol!Namjoon   x   fem!reader

Summary: Namjoon is in a phone call, but you feel needy. How far will he go while talking to a colleague?

Themes/warnings: AU, smut with a teeny bit of plot, unprotected sex, nipple play, blowjob, cock warming, bit of fluff, swear word, established relationship, Namjoon is still a rapper and producer in this AU

Wordcount: ca. 1.2k

Disclaimer: 18+, DO NOT INTERACT IF YOU ARE UNDER 18

I do not own BTS. They merely inspire me. None of this is related to their persons in real life.

Namjoon’s business call has been going on for half an hour already. You’ve been trying not to bother him since you’ve gotten home. But it’s hard when he’s sitting on the sofa in shorts and a tank top that shows off some of his pecks too.

What you want to do isn’t hard to figure out, but you’re still working on a plan.

“Yeah, we should really talk about the backing vocals for my rap again.”

Sounds like this call will go on for at least another fifteen minutes. To an hour.

You walk to the sofa. Namjoon has his arm crossed in front of his chest. You sit down on his lap. He opens his arms. You gladly slide up his thighs and bury your face in his neck. You love his musky, fresh Namjoon smell.

You rub your nose over a spot on his neck that you know is quite sensitive. His hand flexes on your back, but his voice stays unaffected.

“Yes, yes. That would be a good idea. Maybe, if we have the new guy do harmonies and add that on top of what I rap.”

You kiss Namjoon’s jaw once, before burying your face in his neck all innocently again. You can practically feel his eyes on you. You slowly raise your head and look at him with a smile. He purses his lips. You cradle his face between your hands and give him a peck. Your eyes meet after.

It was his eyes that captured you when you first met. Even now they make you lose your senses a little.

Namjoon doesn’t move away, so you go in for another kiss. His lips part. You eagerly lean more into the kiss. You roll your hips into him. His grip on your waist tightens, restricting your movement.

You break away and pout at him.

“Of course. She’s good too. Have her and the new guy do harmonies together. I can do the low ones if you really need me to”, Namjoon says into the phone. He sounds slightly out of breath.

His eyes roam over your body and stay on your boobs for quite a long time. You smile and jut them out a little. Namjoon takes his free hand from your hip and places it on one of your boobs. He squeezes a few times. He strokes over your nipple with his thumb.

Your head drops back as he repeats it, but you’re careful not to make a sound. To the phone Namjoon only hums the occasional confirmation. You can tell his mind isn’t entirely on the conversation anymore.

And you can feel it as he grows hard under you.

Namjoon’s hand moves under your shirt. He inhales deeply. You bring your head forward again. He needs to at least pay some attention to work, and he isn’t currently doing that at all.

You point at his phone. Namjoon rolls his eyes but returns his focus to his colleague and takes his hand out from under your shirt. Or so you thought because moments later he takes your hand and places it on the bulge in his shorts. It’s too tempting. You run your hand over his length.

His hand comes down on yours again, applying more pressure. You laugh silently. He has a tendency to get impatient once he’s crossed a certain point. As soon as he takes his hand away, yours wanders to the waistband of his shorts. You pull on it. Namjoon lifts both you and him enough for you to pull them down.

As soon as your knees touch the sofa again, you wrap your hand around his dick. Namjoon swallows but doesn’t make a sound.

“Ah yes, that one”, Namjoon answers into the phone. His voice sounds slightly strained. “How about we discuss her record tomorrow when she’s in the studio with us?”

He listens for a moment. Well, half listens. At the same time, he bucks up in your grip. You scoot back a bit on his lap, lower yourself and lick the little bead of precum from his tip. Namjoon bites down hard on his lower lip.

“Yes, I know it would safe us some time if we’re already on the same page. Okay, give me the cliff notes version of what you’re thinking of.”

You lick up from the bottom to his tip. A little more precum leaks out. Namjoon’s lips part, but he manages not to make a sound.

He places his fingers on your jaw and nudges you to look upwards. Your eyes meet.

“Sit on me”, he mouths.

You don’t need telling twice. You crawl upwards again, one hand still on his dick. With your other, you push aside your shorts and underwear and align him. Namjoon’s hand returns to your hip.

He looks near desperate as you slide down very slowly. He feels so nice in you, you instantly roll your hips once he bottoms out.

Namjoon’s head drops back.

You don’t feel like making it extra hard for him today, so you do sit still. Well, except that you keep moving your hips back and forth a tiny bit with every breath. Enough to make Namjoon’s hand tighten on your hip every time.

“Got it. Good. That was productive. I’ll tell you more on what I think tomorrow. Yeah, still have some things to contemplate. Alright, see you tomorrow.”

He hangs up and heaves a long sigh.

“Honey, couldn’t you choose a better time?”

“No better time than the now”, you say, rolling your hips in emphasis.

“Fuck. Okay, I can do that.”

He pushes his hips upwards in a sharp thrust, hitting a very good spot. Your eyes roll back. Your hips chase his as he draws out a little again. Only to have him slam into you again.

You move your hand to your clit and start drawing circles as Namjoon keeps drilling into you. Beads of sweat run down his temple, jaw and neck.

“Joon”, you whine.

“You’re such a tease, hun”, Namjoon grunts.

“Part of what keeps it interesting, baby.”

Namjoon barks out a laugh. It’s quickly followed by a moan. His sexy, low voice drives you near insane.

You move your hips a little. Now he’s hitting exactly the right spot. Your legs are shaking like crazy.

“Uhh, baby.”

Your hips buck a few times as you come undone, the waves of your orgasm taking your strength. You slump forward and bury your face in Namjoon’s shoulder.

“Almost there with you, hun”, Namjoon whispers into your ear as you ride out your orgasm, whining at how good it feels.

You sling your arms around his neck and hold tight as his thrusts turn sloppy. Moments later you feel him pulsing in you. He comes to a stuttering halt.

At this point, you’re both sweaty and exhausted.

“Once I feel my legs again, I suggest we have a shower”, you mumble into his shoulder.

“Do you need my help in case your legs give out again?”

“Oh, I hope they give out again. But I do need your help for that.”

“Happy to serve, baby.” You can hear the smile in his words.

© musicloverxoxo7, 2022

Please do not copy, translate, or repost my work. Doing so will make you legally liable for stealing intellectual property.

[intoloopin]

THE PROJECT.

Boy Of The Week (2017 - 2018) was a year long training project organized by New Wave Music and Blockberry Creative with a sole goal: putting 24 boys to the test until they found the 10 member lineup that would make up the brother group of LOONA.

Weirdly private to this day and age, there's very little the public actually knows about how the group came to be, who was involved and what was done: the timeline given by the companies doesn't quite match up, and with no footage and a single broadcasting record, barely any confirmed trainee names to this day and age, the formative year of LOOPiN remains a well kept mistery.

[THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENTS BELONG FULLY TO NEW WAVE MUSIC, FORMERLY BLOCKBERRY CREATIVE AS WELL UNTIL THE END OF THEIR PARTNERSHIP IN 2022, AND ARE PROTECTED UNDER SEVERAL CONFIDENTIALITY AGREEMENTS. ANY SORT OF ILLEGAL DISTRIBUTION WILL BE PUNISHED BY LEGAL LAWSUIT AND LITIGATION.]

THE KNOWN TRAINEES: SOUTH KOREA.

THE KNOWN TRAINEES: WORLDWIDE.

Despite advertising itself to the public and to future advertisers as holding 24 trainees in their roster, in reality, Boy Of The Week was more succinct, with 16 active recruits at its start on early April 2017.

Receiving over 400 audition tapes from around the globe and going on paper to say they had admitted 12 international Week Boys, only 5 ended up actually joining the project and training under it in the companies headquarters in South Korea. New Wave and BBC failed to provide proper documentation in time for anyone out of the USA, most of Europe and Southeast Asia, leaving the majority of the trainees from any other regions to fetch for themselves, a near impossible task for most to achieve in three months.

Beomseok, the oldest identified Week Boy to this day, was 22 going 23 while Sangjin and Haegon, the youngests known, were both 16 years olds -- however, current LOOPiN member Taesong has alluded in the past to, quote, "ironing out an elementary school uniform" while living in the training dorm, raising the suspicion of there being at least one tween in Boy Of The Week at some point in time.

In fact, the remaining anonymous 3 trainees fell in the age range of 11 to 14, all South Korean.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A BOY OF THE WEEK TRAINEE.

Starting off on the accomodations provided entirely by New Wave Music, the designated dorm for the 16 Week Boys to share was a small house, with a maximum capacity of 6. From day one the trainees took turns sharing the five single beds, one couch, as well as the living room and bathroom floors.

Minwoo, the only Seoul based member that still opted to live in the shared dorm, would occasionally house his fellow teammates in his spare room at his family home, making an exception only to the trainees who worked part time (Seungsoo), were very underage (REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED) or fell ill or became injured (Dylan and Haruki).

Their vocal, rap and dancing training fell on the responsibility of rotational teachers, mostly coming from BBC until the still under development New Wave pushed forward a 'possible staff member' -- an inconstant that left most of the basic trainees lost, and kept the advanced ones in any field from breaking trought.

LOSSES, MASS DISMISSALS AND LAST MINUTE ADDITIONS.

By August 2017, 4 months into training, New Wave Music founder and CEO Seo Changyuk began to hold evaluations and dismiss 1 trainee a month in incomprehensible order: the top Week Boys weeks prior were not save from a sudden elimination in the next gathering, creating an anxious and fearful energy that became contagious amongst the trainees.

Unsatisfied with the 10 members left, New Wave and BBC agreed to start emergency street castings and re-open their auditions, putting posters in Seoul and all districts nearby not explicitly tied to Boy Of The Week -- the posters happened to gain some traction on Naver and Twitter at the time, creating speculation if wether or not the future LOONA siblings would ever come to be.

In November, came the first and only public appearance of Boy Of The Week at a local university festival, then a 13 members team. At the event Chen Haitao (2000) and Lee Sangjin (2001) were approached and recruited on the spot by another company, leaving future LOOPiN unexpectedly with 11 trainees, a number that didn't last.

In October, Matsushita Kohei was accused by a fellow trainee of being planning to rob Choi Sangwon, a New Wave Music staff member. Upon checking, Sangwon's personal belongings such as car keys, wallet and watch were found hidden in Kohei's bags in the dorm. While no charges were pressed against him by the casting director's demand, Dallas was immediately dismissed.

In December, 5 new unknown South Korean members were added to Boy Of The Week, but not a single one lasted long enough to count: the massively negative and frustrated response from the older Week Boys drove them away quickly, to the annoyance of the project's superiors.

Easy to say, that marked a sour turn for the relationship between the young men and their responsible staff, who realized too late that they had cultivated a problem.

FIGHT FOR CREATIVE INDEPENDENCE / THE RISE OF THE FACE TRIO / DYLAN FELL ILL.

At that point in time, Boy Of The Week had also produced highly evaluated trainees that fell in the graces of both companies CEOs and were sure to survive all evaluations with Seo Chanhyuk, them being Bang Minwoo, Na Seungsoo and Fukunaga Haruki, fully quoted to get into LOOPiN no matter what -- something later proved as truth.

By the new year, they became known on as the future groups 'Face Trio' -- both an admiring title and a pejorative term, as confirmed by LOOPiN maknae Haegon in 2022.

Minwoo and Seungsoo specially grew overconfident with their status. They felt invensible enough to take over an inactive music recording room in New Wave headquarters and come up with a unimaginable proposition: they were asking for the power to make their own music from their group debut and onwards, something that registered as a joke to staff.

It was thought the song 'Love Hell', made by the duo in early January 2018, sold to a third party company who turned it into a popular drama OST, that they finally managed to make an argument for their desire to be a fully self-produced group. Chanhyuk agreed to grand the two, alongside Haruki, the elevated power to skip the monthly auditions and share their two cents on who should make it into LOOPiN -- an empty promise, they soon realized, set to calm them down.

At the same time, international Week Boy and now LOOPiN member Hwang Chihoon, english name Dylan Hwang, came down with anemia and depression and had to me immediately hospitalized. An intense fight broke between his family in the US, New Wave and BBC about who would took over over his medical care and what would be of his future career: the companies, who delay to notify the Hwangs of Dylan's status by weeks, wanted to transfer him home immediately, something unaffordable for his single mother and grandparents to handle.

With the help of their relatives in South Korea, they filled a lawsuit claiming neglect from New Wave and BBC regarding Chihoon, which they lost before he even recovered.

A formal protest over the handle of his case split the remaining Week Boys into two teams: the ones who vouched to keep Dylan's place save so he could join LOOPiN once he recovered (Beomseok, Minwoo, Seungsoo, Haruki, Haegon), and the ones who wanted him gone from the final lineup (Alexandre, Taesong, Dongwook, Woobin).

Minwoo, Seungsoo and Haruki, 'the favored', joined forces to eliminate each guy from the opposition and make them quit: a mission quickly accomplished in a two week run. Taesong, left alone, bended and complied to have Dylan stay.

It left Boy Of The Week with 6 members, non officially 7 counting the recovering Dylan, as the final lineup set to graduate on upcoming April 2018, not 10.

That New Wave and BBC couldn't take.

THE NON-BOY OF THE WEEK LOOPiN MEMBERS.

Set on Seo Chanhyuk's concept vision of a LOOPiN OT10, mere 3 months away from the end of Boy Of The Week, New Wave and their partner company turned sharp and desperate.

Recruited by the end of January, Wu Zhiming, korean name Oh Jimin, was a promising producer even at his high school age, recruited by New Wave Music to serve as a part time sound engener alongside his unofficial cousin Shin Jooheon, produce allias HEEDAMN. After a physical altercation with Minwoo over his targeting of Woobin, Zhiming was unofficially demoted to temporary trainee, then turned full time trainee and a late Week Boy by choice.

Recruited in mid February, Xu Jiahang, stage name J.J, had already partial experience with Idol training, being a teenage YG model and trainee for little over a year before quitting the industry in late 2016. Both J.J and New Wave Music have publicly claimed that he was individually casted only by his popular Weibo and IG ulzzang accounts, and that the involvement and investment of his father's commercial making studio, Xu Forward INC, came after, but that's utterly false -- although impossible to fully disprove now.

Lee Hanjae, an experience B-Boy, was recruited way past the official graduation of Boy Of The Week, in late May. He was a BBC trainee quoted to join OnlyOneOf and snatched to fill the original LOOPiN quota, transferred to cover for former rapper Dongwook, infamously two months before the debut of LOOPiN 2On1 with Haruki.

And with that, LOONA's sibling group finally came to be at it's original lineup with Lee Beomseok, Park Taesong, Bang Minwoo, Na Seungsoo, Fukunaga Haruki, Dylan Hwang (active only after their official group debuted in 2019), Wu 'O.z' Zhiming (later presenting himself as Oh Jimin after the end of his dual chinese-south korean citizenship after turning 19), Lee Hanjae, Xu 'J.J' Jiahang and Kim Haegon.

WHERE ARE THE ALMOST LOOPiN MEMBERS NOW?

Chen Haitao and Lee Sangjin ended up debuting together under HAPPYGRIN Studio in 2020's 13 membered boygroup Serpentary, which are currently active and have found medium success. Both have not gone deep into their experience in Boy Of The Week, only sharing they've met while in there, but they hold a very public as well as private friendship with Taesong and Haegon.

Two years later in early 2020, Matsushita 'Dallas' Kohei joined MBN Entertainment and trained to join IDOLMAKER's 4th generation in 2022, but was replaced last minute by Im Daewon and dimissed from the company as well. Currently, Kohei has given up on being a singer and it's working as a full time professional photographer. He has never gone into details of his time as a Week Boy online.

Kwon Dongwook went on to debut in MBN Entertainment's Night Child, mostly known under the acronym NTCD, in late 2018, a highly successful act that's regarded as the crowned kings of 4th generation. He's also considered to be one of the most successful soloists acting now, with his debut hit Any Song (2021) and his following comeback BITBIT (2022) going internationally viral. While rumors of his animosity with LOOPiN run free given his dodges about his relation to the group, his recent public friendship with J.J has solidified the idea that they're nothing but gossip.

Kim Woobin, current stage name Wonmiles, is a popular K-Hiphop producer and underground rapper that's still making music. He's the only identified former Week Boy who's alluded to his trainee past the most in interviews and songs, although the general public doesn't fully trusts nor cares for his complains and his raised allegations.

Alexandre Minchul Han went on to stablish himself from 2020 onwards as a popular vlog Youtuber and a low stakes model based on South Korea, only once mentioning his Boy Of The Week past in passing. He reportly fleed Seoul and went back to his hometown in France on March 2022. Alex is currently being reported missing by his family, and any trace of him is yet to be found.

[warningsine]

Now that we’ve gotten to the end of Girls5eva season three, there’s just 6 much we’ve seen the girl group sing about: the hotness of boys in space, UTIs, knee surgery. But in the quest to be famous 5eva, one song has to be No. 1. Using a highly scientific process known as “listening to my own taste,” I ranked the output of Girls5eva thus far, focusing both on whether the songs are good as stand-alone songs and whether they are actually funny. For the sake of clarity, I stuck to the music available on the show’s official cast recordings, which does leave off several gems we only hear for a few seconds onscreen. (Why didn’t we get a studio version of Dawn’s song where she uses every possible definition of the word “set”? This is a question I can only yell fruitlessly at the screen and hope for a response.) Until then, we will make do with this list of the excellent Girls5eva material that is available on a music-streaming service near you.

32) “U Ready?” A filler song that is itself a joke about filler songs, you have to admire the number of ways the Girls5eva writers have the group stall for time. The delivery is very funny, and we get all the girls (including Ashley Park) doing their best ready-for-MTV voices to confirm they are, indeed, “in the house” and “ready.” However, the concept is better as an elaborate joke than a song, per se. Best line: “If you’re ready, could you say ‘ready’? Because you could be ‘in the house’ and not ‘ready.’”

31) “Home Alone Doorknob” This is barely a song, but man, it’s a funny metaphor for what happens to your clitoris when you get horny. Best line: “It’s gonna get sexy, so watch out, Joe Pesci!”

30) “The Splingee” Another exercise in specific girl-group humor, Girls5eva describes how to do a “dope” dance move that is supposedly taking the world by storm. It involves whipping your hair, doing figure eights with your waist, blinking with two eyes, and getting all shy like you want to cry. The instructions end with the note that “the only thing left to do is repeat it two more times to make one complete splingee.” Honestly, it sounds like a home workout I should try. Best line: “Grind up on a ghost, then shake it out.”

29) “Who U Know” A solo performance by Jeremiah Craft’s Lil Stinker (who later gets canceled and rebrands as a country act), this is a send-up of name-dropping rap singles, with Stinker just listing everyone he knows, from his mom to his friend’s mom to Alfre Woodard. Best line: “From Zendaya to Zen-die-a!”

28) “No Strings” Gloria spends season three trying to hook up with every type of woman, but realizes that she’s a romantic after all. Here, she’s trying to embrace a no-strings-attached dynamic through a nonsensical folk tune that’s about a couple chasing the moon in an airplane powered by love. Best line: “A morning that never came until the coroner said to the wizard ‘time of death,’ the same.”

27) “Line Up” ”This is the song that launches Girls5eva’s comeback, since Lil Stinker samples “Famous 5eva” on it. We’ll get to their original hit later on, but the Stinker side of it is pretty generic as a placeholder for the kind of song that might sample something from the early 2000s. Best line: “I know you wanna light up, forever 5eva enough.”

26) “Thinking About Myself” One of Dawn’s stabs at songwriting early in season two, this is a fairly direct ballad about self-involvement. It does have some great zealous grandstanding vocals from Renée Elise Goldsberry, though. Best line: “Crying harder than anyone at a funeral for a great-uncle I barely knew.”

25) “Space Boys” In the chronicles of Girls5eva’s adventures in dating, here we have them going on an interstellar boy-kissing mission. Sadly they don’t have a TARS to keep them company, but after checking every planet they can (including “the stars”) they find some space boys (“more exotic than a waiter from France!”). On the show, the song accompanies some flashbacks to a young Gloria trying to avoid making out with actual boys, but solely as music, it’s just a low-key sci-fi jam. Best line: “We found a planet full of girls, but we left!”

24) “Later” An empowerment song in the genre of “Brave,” sung of course by Sara Bareilles, but about procrastination. The drum and piano orchestrations are so inspiring it’s easy to ignore that the message is that you really don’t need to do anything right now. Best line: “Now’s the not the right time, let’s aim for next year when we’ll have no fear, maybe by then the problems got solved by themselves all on their own.”

23) “Boyz Next Door (Puber-Dude)” To match the queasy sexualization of the Girls5eva, this number offers up the chance to objectify the just-recently pubescent members of Boyz Next Door, who have become the “hottest boys in the cul-de-sac” with a “Backstreet’s Back”–style anthem of their own. Who could resist their thin little mustaches, awkward growth spurts, and bland conversation? Best line: “Floppy hair, greasy brow, Adam’s apple going pow-pow-pow.”

22) “Sweet’N Low Daddy” Another vault track: In season three, the adult members of Girls5eva are pretty embarrassed by the message of their old hit about the benefits of dating an older man, but man, it’s pretty catchy, so you can understand why Cat Cohen’s character took it as gospel. Their ideal daddy has parents you never need to meet because they died during Nixon, and, of course, the song ends with the crucial question: “Real talk, when are you going to die?” Best line: “Don’t need to graduate, because we’re elder bait!”

21) “Can’t Wait 2 Wait” Back in the day, Busy Phillips’s Summer and Andrew Rannells’s Kev collabed on this break-out Christian-pop single about the joys of not having sex yet. Its fun hook and a peppy atmosphere bely the sheer grossness of the overall message. Best line: “Premarital urges aren’t itches to be scratched, so look up medical oddities until those feelings pass.”

20) “Daughter Hero” Renée Elise Goldsberry gets to do a groovy ’90s ballad with Wickie in celebration of her own generosity to her mother, never mind the fact that she comes from a solidly upper-middle-class family. She buys her mom a house, a house that’s significantly less nice than the one she already has! Best line: “Daughter hero, like if Jesus had a sister!”

19) “New York City Moms” An obvious sequel to “New York Lonely Boy” (more on that below), this song brings on Ingrid Michaelson(!) to perform an ode to the women of the city who have chosen to wait to have kids. A celebration of the moms who have “bumps poking out of Eileen Fisher” and are “judged by their husband’s out-of-town sister,” the Girls5eva writers can riff endlessly on very niche New York micro-communities, and bless them for that. Best line: “Spent their 20s in a disco, still younger than moms in San Francisco.”

18) “Summer Brings the Fall” Kev’s best attempt at a torch song involves an increasingly convoluted series of attempts at wordplay that I can’t help but respect. It starts out with “thought you were for ev, thought you were for Kev, you were like whatev, now I pray to heav … for strength” and just gets more forced from there. Best line: “Thought I was your male, cause you’re my holy grail.”

17) “Is There a Me?” Season three brought Busy Philipps a short but sweet bit of soul-searching in which Summer questions if she has any identity of her own, or if her personality has just been a series of attempts to please guys. Points for Philipps showing off some vocal training, deductions for the amount of Netflix cross-marketing involved. Best line: “Do I even like The Witcher, or is it just to please a mister? And what is The Witcher? I watched 40 minutes and I’m still not sure!”

16) “Inside My Sweater” Girls5eva’s music industry gets awfully specific with its parody of a Harry Styles–type sensitive boy hounded by mobs of fans named Gray Holland, played by Gossip Girl alum Thomas Doherty (he also played a similar role on the late, lamented High Fidelity Hulu reboot). As far as sound-alikes go, this Harry–slash–Shawn Mendes low-key bob is eerily accurate but also somehow a successful earworm, especially in the way Doherty refuses to ever pronounce the “r” in “sweater.” Best line: “Come dance and cook and make sweet love with me, inside my sweater!”

15) “Welcome to Now” Doherty’s soft-boy star Gray Holland returns, against his own will, in a pop hit constructed by his label “because Clause 46B, Paragraph Q of the artist’s contract grants the company use of postmortem generative voice cloning.” It’s the funnier of the two Gray Holland songs, and the beat’s so sensual you may miss that it quickly becomes an ad for the deals available at Best Buy. Best line: “Best Buy, Best Buy, Gray Holland loves Best Buy. Tablets, projectors, and more. You’re the best, bye!”

14) “Larry’s Song” The girls get their Taylor’s Version moment with this kiss off to their former manager that references many of the show’s recurring jokes about the indignities of early aughts fame, including him promising a steak knife to whoever seduces Carson Daly. The twist by the end is that they’ve finally gotten some financial and personal control, and thus, “everything we do belongs to us.” Best line: “Only let us eat crab, cause you can’t get fat from food that’s so damn hard to get at.”

13) “At the Beep” No, you’re tearing up thinking about a fictional character who died in an infinity-pool accident. In this episode, Gloria finally gives up on her conspiracy theories about Ashley’s death and accepts that she might really be gone. (I do wonder if Ashley Park would’ve been available for a longer run in season two if Emily in Paris hadn’t gotten so big.) This results in a somber number where girls say good-bye to Ashley through her still-active (because Gloria has been paying) answering-machine service. Best line: “It should have been me.” “I did a lot of cocaine, so much cocaine.”

12) “Get It Off Your Chest” In a moment of confession and healing in season three, the women of Girls5eva share their darker secrets with each other and their audience. The result is a series of tightly written jokes from the show’s writing staff: Wickie only likes people who “like me,” “but be careful, if you like me too much, it has the opposite effect and I find you desperate,” Gloria doesn’t trust stand-up comics who are too in shape, Summer hasn’t listened to a voice-mail since 2015, and finally, Dawn delivers my favorite … Best line: “Every year when my son’s school sends out the class list with parents’ names, the first thing I do is Google them to see what they paid for their apartments.”

11) “Momentum” Starting off season two, the girls have got momentum, yeah, um, it’s their moment (bless you, Jeff Richmond) with a song that’s relatively straightforward within the Girls5eva canon but is also a solid earworm. I have to respect that groovy baseline, too. Best line: “Unstoppable, this unst-unst ain’t toppable.”

10) “Tap Into Your (Fort) Worth” A canny marketing move: The girls of 5Eva plot a way to secure a captive audience by writing a song about an American city nobody else has written a song about. The result is a clever ode to Dallas’s overlooked sister, declaring that “cow town is a wild town with a walkable downtown” and trumpeting the fact that the Trinity River is, in some places, now actually swimmable. It’s enough to make you want to consider booking a flight to DFW, maybe just as a connection, but still. Best line: “Some say Omaha Zoo is second-best, but that’s a lie because their red panda is always inside. It’s never out on the tree, yeah!”

9) “I’m Afraid (Dawn’s Song of Fears)” Sometimes you just have to let Sara Bareilles loose with a piano and sing like she’s performing “Gravity.” Here, Dawn’s attempt to write a song on her own ends with her just listing things she’s afraid of, from the fact that she might thrive under Scientology to her fear that she’ll text a pic of her vagina to her dad. There’s something very funny to me about the way Bareilles says “my hummus is fungus” and I have to own that. Best line: “I’m afraid that the second I leave town I’ll get a UTI. Why can’t they sell those pills over the counter? I don’t need a doctor, I know exactly what it is.”

8) “Yesternights” Finally, a full taste of Wickie’s solo album, a work absolutely choked by melisma and sung impeccably by Renée Elise Goldsberry. It’s, as she sings, “gorgeous and sensual” and also “life fancy,” and also “dancing, yearning.” You could probably slip it on a sex playlist and nobody would notice, and frankly, we need an eight-minute version. Best line: “But tonight, there is no night or tomorrow night / Or any future night / ’Cause you’re only in my yesternight of nights.”

7) “The Medium Time” Sara Bareilles wrote the Girls5eva’s season-three finale hit song, which is about being inspired not to aim for immense fame, but a reasonable, medium level of attention. Bareilles is so good at selling the earnest, heartfelt feeling behind the song that you may forget that the wise man who told her this advice, in the universe of the show, was actually Richard Kind. Best line: “The middle is the riddle of it all, and the medium time is just fine for now.”

6) “Dream Girlfriends” The satire of Girls5eva cuts deepest here, in this song from their original run about all the ways they’d be willing to debase themselves to appeal to men. The list includes the fact that their dads are dead, that their moms are overtired so there’ll be no pushback, that they want to watch you play darts and love watching stand-up (but not by women). “Dream Girlfriends” cuts both ways, managing to make the men it’s supposed to appeal to sound pathetic as well. The girls are short so they don’t know you’re bald! Best line: “Tell me again why Tarantino’s a genius.”

5) “Bend Not Break” Near the end of season two, the women of Girls5eva realize their best song is actually about Gloria’s knee surgery. Metaphorically, it’s really about how they have to learn to compromise and acknowledge each other’s weaknesses to support their success, but there is also literally a joke about how she uses a cane. Anyway, it’s got a groove that’s hard to shake and does really make you want to dance (carefully, in a way that doesn’t risk further knee injury). Best line: “We got our secret weapon already, and it’s got eight legs, four smiles, and a cane.”

4) “Famous 5eva” Perhaps the best theme song in the vast universe of television today, here Girls5eva embraces the joys of counting by promising they’ll be famous 5eva — ’cuz 4eva’s too short. Those synths have an addictive crunch, and there’s something about the way they describe the series of cars they’re driving in (first a Lexus, then a Mercedes and then a Maserati) that’s gleefully ridiculous. The show has to make you believe the girls really are talented, and that there’s something joyful about watching them perform. This does both. Best line: “We’re Girls5eva, could we get a high SIX?”

3) “B.P.E.” Put your hands together for a “We Are the Champions”–style celebration of big pussy energy. Girl5eva’s absurdist answer to “WAP” celebrates their “Vitamin P” with some gospel-choir-esque harmonies. And the remix, which outdoes the original, adds in some church bells to heighten the energy. It will make you tap into whatever B.P.E. you have of your own. Best line: “Square feet, I’m going for miles, upgrade, taking up the aisles, open up those classified files from the Department of Treasury.”

2) “New York Lonely Boy” The best of the Girls5eva songs in terms of straight joke-writing, “New York Lonely Boy” applies a Simon and Garfunkel sensibility to the tales of hyperarticulate soft boys who know too much about mixing plaids and the dangers of restaurants on the corner (they just try too hard). Its comedy is sort of tangential from Girls5eva’s overall focus on the music industry, but it’s so perfectly realized that it doesn’t matter. Any show that can deliver such a specific encapsulation of a type — to the extent that I now think of various former St. Anne’s students who’ve became indie celebrities (okay, just Lucas Hedges) as New York Lonely Boys — deserves to run forever. Best line: “His playground is the lobby, has a palate for wasabi.”

1) “Four Stars” If “Famous 5eva” had to establish Girls5eva as it was, then “Four Stars” has to do the work of making you believe the second iteration of the group has come into its own. It does this delightfully well, with an anthem about embracing your imperfections that includes plenty of tossed-off jokes from each of the band members. (I’m particularly fond of “women are an ocean of secrets!”) Plus there’s something great about the harmonies of everyone singing “four stars” together. I have put this on exercise playlists, and it works! Best line: “The best things in life are free, that’s why rich people never carry wallets.”

[burrowbabe]

Give and Take - Chapter 3

"Hey, so we were just talking ... since Joe and Ja'Marr are just looking to spend the off season in LA, I offered they just stay here." AJ shrugs looking to you as if asking permission.

You were speechless for a moment, thinking about being in such close proximity. Not even because you just met them - your house had basically become a hotel for your brother and best friend's late night hookups - but for the simple fact that you think you have a crush.

How weird could it get? You think, nodding to your brother and Joe.

"Y-Yeah that's fine." You quickly say.

"Word." AJ smiles and resumes eating his breakfast.

"Thank you guys, seriously. You really don't have to do this for us." Joe says, looking between you and your brother.

"N-No, its our pleasure. We're all friends." You say, giving him a close-mouthed smile. You and Joe hold eye contact for a moment, almost as if trying to read one another's expressions.

"Welp, I'm gonna go shower." You state, once again trying to escape an awkward situation.

“We have some recording to do today.” You direct towards your brother. Quickly getting up from you chair you think, what is wrong with you? Shaking your head as you ascend the stairs. He must think you're so weird.

The self deprecation continued all throughout your morning routine, and as time passed, you realized that not only was that nagging feeling in your body exhausting, but you truly were tired from not sleeping the night before.

You had a deadline coming up for the release of your new album. The label had been checking in non-stop to make sure you were being productive - which you were - but not at the pace they would've liked.

After combing through your wet hair, you hear AJ call up to you from the bottom of the stairs.

"Ann! I brought all our shit down here because of the good acoustics, remember?"

"Yeah, OK. I'll be right down." You reply.

Even though you had spent thousands of dollars on a state-of-the-art home recording studio, you found that recording your vocals in the kitchen sounded much better. Of course, the studio was still put to use, but you both found yourselves set up on the kitchen island more often than not.

When you descended the stairs, you could see everyone sitting around the island waiting for your arrival. An audience was nothing new to you, but when you were performing the song finished, not during the creative process.

Having your friends Tana and Nick listen in was one thing, but now Joe and Ja'Marr sat patiently as well, which churned your stomach with anxiety.

"Jeez, we got a full house." You jokingly say, laughing awkwardly.

"They wanna see how the sausage is made." AJ jokes, garnering laughter to erupt from the table. You laughed along to play it cool, but you knew this was going to be difficult. Your songs were personal to you and it was important to you to have a safe space where you could criticize yourself, cry, goof off and argue with your brother over the sound engineering without people judging.

"All we know is football. I wanna see how y'all make my favorite songs." Ja'Marr says, smiling encouragingly.

Deep down, you knew everything would be fine, but you totally felt put on the spot.

"Of course, of course." You smile, swallowing your nerves.

For the rest of the afternoon, you recorded a handful of songs, some rap, some R&B and pop that showed off your range. The process became easier as time went by, with the guys offering words of support and cringeworthy synchronized dance moves to the beat of the songs.

Everyone spent the time laughing and having fun, accompanied by your famous obscene lyrics that you became popular for. You didn't know if this impressed Joe or not. Would he think you were sexy for being empowered and aggressive? Or would it be a turnoff that you were so vocal about your sexuality? Nonetheless, a smile never left his face, which you took as a good sign.

After spending some time in the living room watching a raunchy, late-night comedy, Tana suggests you go for a swim.

"Now?" You whine, but everyone else was eager to change and jump in the pool.

Digging through a drawer of bikinis in your bedroom, you debated which one you wanted to wear. Should you be modest or sexy? That was the question. Deciding on sexy, you put on a bright blue, micro bikini. Your brother wouldn't be pleased, but you wanted to show off your body a little bit.

You were the last to emerge from the house, closing the sliding glass door to the patio behind you and seeing everyone splashing in the pool having a chicken fight.

You certainly needed some liquid courage to stop your racing mind from feeling self conscious. So, you grabbed the bottle of vodka from the night before to drink straight up.

Throwing your towel down on one of the sun chairs, Tana turns her attention to you from atop AJ's shoulders.

"Holy shit! You look hot!" She exclaims, causing everyone else to look in your direction. You try not to catch Joe's eye and thankfully the darkness of the night hid the blush that crept up on your cheeks.

You murmur a 'thank you' before taking a swig from the bottle of vodka.

"I just kicked Ja'Marr's ass! Ann come play chicken. You can be Joe's partner!" Tana suggests excitedly.

You set the bottle down and turn to see Ja'Marr fall off Joe's shoulders and swim towards the edge of the pool to pull himself out.

Anxiety struck you once again, but you obliged and eased into the pool.

Great, now my literal vagina is going to be up against this guy's neck.

By the time you reach Joe, and before you can even blink, he's hoisting you up atop his shoulders with such ease that you feel your core clench with arousal.

You just met this guy yesterday, calm down. You remind yourself, hoping to God he did not just feel the reaction he gave you.

"Push her! Push her!" AJ screams as you and Tana interlock fingers trying to throw each other into the pool.

With Joe's tight grip on your shins and a hard shove that you mustered up, you sent Tana flying backwards into the water.

"Yes!" You scream. Joe takes you off his shoulders with a huge smile plastered across his face. You high five and celebrate as Tana spits out water and attempts to clear her eyes of chlorine after going under.

It was only after the commotion died down, and people started venturing into the hot tub, that you noticed the muscles on Joe's shirtless body. This was something you could not find on the internet the previous night ... and you had tried.

Before you could get too ahead of yourself, Joe's voice broke you out of your trance. You realize it was only you and him left in the pool and he's asking you about your plans for the next day.

"Oh, I'm not doing anything I don't think." You say.

"Good, I was hoping to take you all out to dinner to say thank you for letting us stay here." He replies.

Hope deflated slightly in you, thinking that maybe he was going to ask you out on a date. But, again, you remind yourself that you and him barely know each other, and he has not shown any interest in you.

"That sounds great." You say with a small smile.

"Do you want to get in the hot tub?" He asks.

Feeling slightly rejected, you shake your head. "No, I think I'm gonna head up to bed. I didn't get much sleep last night."

His brow slightly furrows and for a second, you think he looks disappointed.

"Joeyyyyyyyyyy!" Tana calls from afar. "Come sit next to me!"

Looking at each other once more, he nods quickly. "Yeah, yeah, of course. Sleep well."

With that, you hoist yourself out of the pool and gather your things. Watching Joe get into the hot tub next to Tana caused a wave of jealousy to come over you, but you needed to stop yourself from getting into something that could hurt you again.

[umbane]

𝐈 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐈'𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐃 𝐆𝐔𝐘 / 𝐈 𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓 𝐆𝐎𝐓𝐓𝐀 𝐀𝐒𝐊 𝐖𝐇𝐘

Kayn has always known that he was destined for more than the world handed him. He wasn't born into money, or to people who would support him, but he was born with an unflinching confidence that refused to shatter, no matter what was thrown at him.

He doesn't speak much of his youth, and few reminders of it remain — just some old scars, nightmares, and some stick & poke tattoos from misspent teenage years. When he started on his path to fame, Kayn would do anything to get away from home, including acting like someone he's not.

The industry wanted a manufactured group — unoffensive, child-friendly, and wholesome. Kayn cut his hair, dyed it back to black, and let them cover up the few tattoos he already had. He sang the notes, he gave the performances, and he hated every minute of it. He's always been too big for the cages of expectation, always craved too much to be told what to do, so he lashed out. All his frustration and his pain, all the nightmares that followed him were directed at his bandmates, at the production crew, at everyone around him. He quit the band, certain he'd amassed enough fans now that he could carve his own bath. He remade himself. Again.

His first band was wholesome, his second was anything but. Kayn screamed into the mic about his demons, the voices in his head, about everything that had ever held him back. He hates the industry, he hates the labels, he hates everyone who ever stood in his way. He does backup vocals and rap, and for the first time he starts to feel happy with what he's created.

But he pushes himself too hard. He pushes his bandmates too hard. He goes into rages when things don't go right. He lashes out, he screams in their faces in the recording studio.

He gets kicked out.

He gets kicked out?

He's stunned at first, and then he screams at them until his voice is raw — he's not toxic, he just doesn't want to fail. He's not selfish, it's just business. He throws things. And when he finally leaves, the world seems so fucking quiet.

Kayn falls out of the industry for a few years. He doesn't like to talk about those times. He hated his old band. He hated himself. He hated, and hated, and hated. He was angry, because it was easier than the way failure gnawed at his gut when he was still enough to remember it. He seethed because what was underneath it was worse. Sometimes, he didn't know if it was worth it. He kept making his own music, but he was a pariah in the industry after detonating two bands. It had always been an uphill battle for Kayn, but now he had people pushing him back down. If he's honest with himself, it almost destroyed him.

And then he got a call.

Someone wanted him.

They like his music, they like how he calls out the industry. They don't care what he did before — they want his art now. They told him the list of members and Kayn's heart lurched. He told them he'd think about it. He made them wait three days.

Then, he joined, and the rest is history.

trivia & hcs here

[ferie-anon]

💋Kiss of life 💋 Big 5 dissection

• 💄 Mini analysis on the kiss of life members 💄 •

Julie : March 29th 2000

🍒 Aries sun • aquarius moon • pisces mercury • pisces venus • taurus mars 🍒

Her charm lies in her boldness and unique rapping skills and voice tone, which pisces mercury people often have an interesting or unique voice texture when speaking. With her fire sun and air moon, she is sociable and energetic with her members, her water placements (pisces mercury and venus) makes her creative and idealistic at times which balances out her chart. Her taurus mars ethics and motivation stems from perseverance and hard work, especially since she's been a trainee for 6 years which shows her diligence and perseverance towards her dreams as an idol. She seems like someone who is innovative, creative, (evident with her self written raps) and outgoing/cheerful while being hopeful and idealistic at times.

Natty : May 30th 2002

🐈‍⬛ Gemini sun • capricorn moon • gemini mercury • cancer venus • cancer mars 🐈‍⬛

With her gemini sun and capricorn moon, she tends to be versatile, quick-witted, yet practical and dependable which is shown with her years of experience with idol survival shows and being an idol, since she was a soloist before kiss of life. With her gemini mercury, she is witty and with their curious nature they can easily intake new information and then keep the conversation going. With her cancer venus and mars, she is comforting, supporting, and reassuring with her close ones and teammates. Additionally, with her cancer mars she can be a home body and kind of down to earth emotionally. Overall her personality/mindset shows resilience, quick-learning at picking things up, and hard work/diligence in pursuing new opportunities. She's mature, yet playful and also emotionally understanding and can relate to others since she's been through a lot of things herself.

Belle : March 20th 2004

🎶📣 Pisces sun • aries moon • aries mercury • taurus venus • taurus mars 📣🎶

With her vibrant and charming voice, she belts out notes and vibrates the same positive and high-tension energy in person. With her aries moon and aries mercury, she is outspoken, adventurous, and independent. She marches to the beat of her own drum and music, quite literally. Her pisces sun makes her endearing, dreamy/idealistic, and creative, fitting her mbti as an enfp with the fire and water combo. With her taurus venus and mars, this balances out her energy with a look/focus on beauty with how she stylizes her aesthetic and instagram. This also grounds her in how she goes about with whatever she does with a determination/perseverance and not backing down from doing what she loves, evident in her journey songwriting for various artists and how in the studio she aims to perfect her recording for her solo song. She is the happy virus of the time, with an outspoken and optimistic personality while being unique and doing things her own way, and they always work out one way or another because belle is belle.

Haneul : May 25th 2005

⭐️ Gemini sun • sagittarius moon • taurus mercury • gemini venus • pisces mars ⭐️

Haneul is the maknae, yet she carries within herself a sense of maturity in learning new skills and adapting fairly quickly. With her gemini sun and sag moon, she is also someone who is like a hidden gem and versatile in skills. She tends to be a standout in her stability in live singing and facial expressions on stage, keeping up with the members of kiss of life. Additionally her vocals seem to be an avid focus within the group, and her musicality as most taurus placements (specially in mercury) tend to be musically-inclined, evident with how Haneul can play the guitar and does song covers with it. Her gemini venus looks for fun and new experiences in life and to share that excitement with friends, loved ones, etc. She tends to be open to new fun activities in the contents that kiss of lfie does, and lastly with her pisces mars, this adds to her musicality and rhythm in dancing and overall performing since I notice pisces mars in idols tend to be good and expressive dancers. Although Haneul is the youngest, her potential and growth of skills are constantly being improved or expanded, which shows her charms in the group.

[for-yoongi0309]

Suga live in New York: a show-stopping statement of artistic intent at the BTS rapper’s debut solo tour

Suga’s first solo tour starts with a bang – quite literally. After rainy graphics pour down on the screen at the back of the stage, accompanied by the sound of continuous showers, a loud crash and an explosion of pyro jolts the UBS Arena into action. The attention-grabbing opening is a nod to the motorcycle accident the BTS rapper experienced during his trainee days. It’s depicted vividly in a video that plays before he takes the stage, featuring the star lying in a rain-soaked street, visions of the past and future cutting over shots of his prone body. Dramatic stage-setting complete, the time comes for Suga – or Agust D, the name his solo work has been released under so far – to enter the spotlight for real. But instead of the usual route of bounding up onto his platform, he’s instead carried on by dancers, who lay him on his back on the stage, recreating the pose we’ve just seen on screen. Mystery abounds as lightning flashes across the screen, and the sound of traditional instruments reverberates in the background until the first notes of ‘Haegeum’ resound around the arena and he leaps up, accelerating the energy in an instant.

“I dare say it’ll be a totally different tour from previous BTS tours, and a tour beyond what everyone can imagine,” Suga told NME recently and, on the second date of the run (April 27), it soon becomes clear that was no exaggeration. It differs from the group’s concerts in its pacing and structure – two main segments that blaze and simmer and an encore, rather than multiple shorter sections – but it’s the latter half of his comment that really hits home.

The rapper’s stage is unlike anything NME has seen before. It is divided into nine panels that, one by one and at different points throughout the show, lift up to the ceiling. Every removal diminishes the space he has to jump about on, but each reveals a new hidden prop or allows a new element of showmanship to be added. When the first four elevate skywards during ‘Give It To Me’, spurts of fire shoot up in the gaps. By the end of the set, no panels remain, returning the star to floor level for an encore that, based on the preceding VCR, strips away the alter egos of Suga and Agust D, leaving just the person Min Yunki to close things out

This might be Suga’s first solo tour, and though he’s used to being flanked by his six bandmates and sharing the spotlight – not to mention entertainment responsibilities – he looks instantly at home and unflappably confident. He jokes with fans that they “slay” and looks amusedly perplexed when the arena unites in barking at him. There’s not a moment on stage where he looks nervous or uncomfortable. While those gathered would likely be satisfied with just seeing Suga rap – and it would be much easier for him to stay in that lane – he uses the concert as a chance to show off his musicality. First, he remakes ‘Trivia: Seesaw’, his solo track from BTS’ 2018 album ‘Love Yourself: Answer’, on an acoustic guitar signed by the other six members.

Later, he sits down at a piano, revealed when another panel moves up to the roof, to perform ‘D-DAY’’s ‘Life Goes On’ and ‘Snooze’. The latter is preceded by a clip from his Road To D-DAY documentary with late composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, who features on the recorded version of the song. After the video of the musical legend plays, a message shows on the screens: “I wish you peace on your long journey. RIP Sakamoto Ryuichi.”

There are also chances for Suga to display his underrated vocal skills, adeptly nailing the hook of ‘Life Goes On’ and, in a surprise move, taking over collaborator MAX’s lines in a fiery, fierce version of ‘Burn It’. No matter how flawless these performances are, rap is still his forte and his bar-spitting abilities are second to none tonight. The quick-fire delivery of ‘Agust D’’s second verse – with barely a pause for air – is jaw-droppingly impressive, while a ferocious medley of ‘Cypher pt.3: Killer’, ‘Cypher pt.4’, ‘UGH!’, the deep cut and fan favourite ‘Ddaeng’, and ‘HUH?!’ goes so hard it feels like the entire venue could combust at any second.

A bruising version of ‘Amygdala’, in which Suga sings in increasingly raw and urgent tones, brings the main show to a close, flames licking at the feet of the final panel that forms the remainder of the stage. After a brief intermission, he returns, bathed in orange light that gives the impression he is rising like his own phoenix from the ashes. Where ‘Amygdala’ centres on pain and trauma, his encore opener ‘D-DAY’ brings a positive outlook: “D-Day is coming, it’s a fucking good day,” he raps at one point, while the chorus adds: “Future’s gonna be OK.” It’s an (almost) optimistic closing note to a show that brims with artistic intent and pulls off an ambitious production with ease. “I promise, I guarantee you, I will come back,” Suga tells the audience before the powerful final one-two of ‘Intro: Never Mind’ and ‘The Last’. Let the countdown begin.

[goldenmusicmoments]

The GRAMMYs Award Show:

So last night were The 66th Grammy Awards. It was quite the eventful night and on most part the winners were worthy of taking home the trophies they did end up taking. I guess my predictions weren’t correct in the end.

During the Pre-Grammy award ceremony there was as a hiccup in which Nicki Minaj’s track ‘Barbie World’ was announced as the winner in one of the rap categories prematurely on X and on the website. However on the live show it was awarded to a different artist. This caused quite the chaos on social media as the Barbz in particular were furious as they believed that it was taken away from Nicki last minute to make a mockery out of her. Then you had others that were saying this was karma for how Nicki Minaj had treated Megan Thee Stallion. In actuality it was neither as an error like that had occurred once before.

During the main show Miley Cyrus who won her first ever Grammy award for Best Pop Vocal Performance gave quite the performance of the winning song ‘Flowers’. She really had fun with it and it ended up drawing a lot of positive attention for being a standout moment. The song went on to win Record Of The Year as well. So a huge congratulations to her on winning two awards.

Taylor Swift surprisingly announced that she will be releasing a completely new album titled ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ this year during her acceptance speech for her album ‘Midnights’ winning Best Pop Vocal Album. Many expected that she was going to announce ‘Reputation (Taylor’s Version)’ and instead she threw everyone off with that announcement.

There was a lot of speculation around who was going to present Album Of The Year, as the academy had hinted at a big name who wanted to keep it a surprise till the very end was going to be presenting the award. People at first thought it was Beyoncé, however she was seen at the award show and had to be there since Jay-Z was being honoured with an honorary award. During his speech he called out the Recording Academy for not awarding his wife the award for Album Of The Year, seeing as she’s the most awarded artist. He even said that there were nominees that didn’t even belong in that category.

Some people had caught a picture of Celine Dion backstage and then it was her who everyone now suspected. Celine Dion was the surprise star and she presented Taylor Swift with the Album Of The Year award. Taylor who now holds the record for the most wins in that category was overjoyed and dragged Lana Del Rey with her to the stage. Lana seemed hesitant, however Taylor was insistent on her being up there with her. When Taylor got on stage she was very much all over the place and a little lost in the excitement of the moment. That she forgot to acknowledge Celine Dion and grabbed the trophy, going straight to then making her acceptance speech. People on social media went wild with that. Stating that she was mean for doing so, especially since Celine has been so poorly health wise and yet she made the effort to come present the award.

However there wasn’t anything malicious in it. Taylor was very joyous when Celine was presenting and the two took a cosy photo backstage. Taylor’s win in the category also generated a lot of criticism. As many believed that SZA’s album ‘SOS’ should have taken the award home. Which is true, ‘Midnights’ though a solid album didn’t actually deserve to win over the likes of ‘SOS’ or ‘The Record’. Which at this point shouldn’t be surprising as the committee always seem to sometimes make a decision that is questionable.

Overall it was an eventful night and there was a lot to celebrate. Let’s see what this year brings in terms of music releases and then what the next Grammy nominations will look like.

[minsungjinho]

Terms of Endearment - Han Jisung X Reader

word count - 4.8K genre: smut, some fluff, kinda enemies to lovers, work related relationship warnings below the cut

warnings: sexual content, unprotected intercourse (birthcontrol), crmpie, soft dom!han, oral both f&m, one slight mention of blood, rough sex, teasing, begging, aftercare

A large amounts of buttons, and switches are fixated in front of you, your eyes zoned out on one in particular of which is flashing repeatedly. It's your typical work day, plastered to a cushioned desk chair in front of the control panel outside of the recording room. It's sound proof walls unfortunately can't block out ignorance and idiocy.

You've been waiting for the artist to come in and record a track for over twenty minutes, checking your phone every few minutes to see if he's canceled yet. A part of you wished he would cancel, and hopefully reschedule for a day you weren't working.

His voice wasn't the issue, in-fact his vocals and style were something you sought after for years while doing your apprenticeship work. His range was awfully special, from singing ballad type songs to rapping better than Kanye or Drake. The issue was his attitude and god-complex.

You lean back into your chair, watching the clock tick above the doorway to the halls. You sigh feeling exhausted and stand up to stretch your legs, wondering if he will ever show up. He's not typically late but when he is, it's always over thirty minutes. You walk circles around the room, stopping in front of the door and staring up at the clock.

The door swings open fast, knocking you back with a slow reaction. Before falling to the ground completely, a hand reaches for you and holds you up by your arm. You look up, and see none other than the man you've been waiting for.

"It's about time." You mumble, standing up straight and patting your clothes free of wrinkles.

"What are you doing standing right in front of a door? You do know what doors are used for right? They don't work that well when someones blocking the way." He scoffs and walks over to the lounging area of the room, throwing a couple of random belongings onto the couch. He takes off the bucket hat he often wears, tossing that onto the couch as well while rubbing his hair around to get rid of any lines or indents the hat created.

"Ready?" He asks with a sigh, his arms at his side as he stands in front of you and his hair a mess.

"Mmm" You hum, resuming your spot at your seat and getting the track loaded up.

This particular song was more mellow, soft and sad tones flowing all throughout. As he puts on his headphones and gets the microphone adjusted to his height you watch as he simply exists. You've always been quite the people watcher, but this time it was more out of curiosity for how his brain works.

"Do you need to warm up?" You ask him, communicating through the speaker system.

He shakes his head, "Did it on the way here." he says while pulling out a crumpled up piece of paper from his pocket.

"Alright, do a couple sample lines so I can adjust the settings real quick."

He doesn't respond, but simply starts singing. Sometimes you thought that your time with Han was easier than other artists because of his professionalism. No small talk, no dilly-dallying or messing around, just work.

His lyrics were sad just as you suspected, and his voice rarely faltered making this track easy to record. You finished up in good time, not having to record many lines or re-listen often.

Despite your feelings about him, you always make a point to compliment his work that day or say something moderately nice once the work is done. This time however, he was the one to compliment you.

"Good work today." He says quietly, regathering his belongings.

"..You too." You replied after a moment, making sure you heard him right.

He was the last recording of the day, and you were very glad because it meant you could go home and relax for the rest of your evening with no interruptions. You stretched your arms and back, letting out a small squeak before getting out of your chair for the last time that day.

With no further words exchanged, Han reaches for the door and steps through to leave for the night. You reach underneath the desk, grabbing your bag and coat. You power down all of the technology, and start towards the door to shut the lights off.

Yet again, it swings open and almost knocks you over. Luckily you weren't standing directly in front of it.

"Again with the door." He scoffs, leaning against the doorway with his foot keeping it ajar.

"Forget something?" You ask while speaking through your teeth, your lack of patience showing.

He shakes his head and keeps looking at you before speaking, "I was gunna go get dinner and wanted to see if you'd join me." Your lack of response made him continue after a long silence. "You know.. as a thank you for how well you record for me." He finally looks away, fumbling with his hat.

"Hmm." You were a bit surprised at the mood change, wondering where this sudden change of heart came from. "What are we eating? I'll only go if it's something good." You respond, seeing him visibly relax a bit.

"Anything you want." He retorts with a grin, no longer fumbling his fingers.

"Noodles. Black bean noodles, to be exact." He nods at your request. "With meat." You add, causing him to chuckle softly.

"Let's go then," and with that statement both of you left the recording studio.

~

The restaurant was a small, quaint mom and pop' shop, only a few other customers at tables across the room. It was nothing fancy, but you honestly preferred it that way. Both of you had been slurping your noodles and gnawing at the grilled beef for quite some time now, with very few words exchanged since you left the studio.

"Good enough for you?" He asks after a few moments, sitting back against the wooden chair looking stuffed from the meal.

You answer with a smile and nod, using your chopsticks to reach for the last piece of steak. Ripping it apart with your teeth, you notice him watching you contently, but you try not to pay much attention to it.

He kept watching as you finished your meal, practically licking the bowl clean from how well seasoned everything was. You grabbed your glass of water and rested against the back of the chair, taking a deep breath before sipping some down.

"I'm full, really really full." You confess, deeply breathing once more to try and relieve some of the pressure in your stomach.

"Wanna go grab some drinks?" He asks abruptly, not wasting a breath.

"Wow, straight to the point I see." You giggle softly before responding. "You've treated me to this meal already, thank you by the way. But treating me to a night at the bar is far too much of a 'thank you' for just doing my job." You shake your hands in front of your chest in protest, smiling politely at the offer.

He nods for a moment, looking down at his hands once more before speaking. "At least let me take you home, it's getting late and all." He doesn't make eye contact with you as he sits up from his chair, walking over to the cashier and paying for the meal. You stand and start for the door, grabbing your bag and jacket in the process.

Before raising a hand to push the restaurant doors open, Han reaches over you from behind, opening it for you. He nods at the jacket in your hands.

"Put that on, it's getting colder at night." He looked straight ahead while walking, no smug look or grin on his face, just contentment.

He was right, it was starting to feel a bit chilly as you walked in the direction of your apartment. You put it on, leaving it unzipped so you wouldn't feel too warm. A sigh from his direction catches your attention.

"I was really craving a drink tonight." He says casually, not really hinting at anything but simply stating what was on his mind.

You didn't say anything for a bit, contemplating what you would even say in response.

"I've got some beers at my place.." You replied in a hushed tone, almost hoping he wouldn't hear you.

"Perfect." He said before walking faster than he had before, as if the mention of alcohol put a pep in his step.

~ You opened the practically empty fridge and grabbed two beers, placing them on the counter and grabbing a couple of glasses to accompany them. Han sat on your couch that faced the window, watching the nightlife before him. He was leaned over with his elbows propped against his knees, simply observing.

You watched him for a bit, his messy hair in front of his eyes, his fingers interlocked with each other, his... Why were you thinking this? You shook the thoughts (literally) from your head and walked over to the couch sitting beside him. You placed the glasses onto the table and open a tall can of beer to pour. He picked up one of the cups and held it for you as you poured.

You exchanged small talk for a while, until eventually you starting to hit deeper subjects as the alcohol worked its way through your bodies.

"Can I tell you a secret?" He asked nonchalantly.

"A secret secret?" You retorted, making a joke based on one of his song titles.

"Yeah one of those." He chuckled. "Don't take this the wrong way, but when I reserve a spot in the studio to record I always make sure it's you that's going to be working that day."

"Me?" You questioned. "How come."

"I don't know.. I guess I just like recording with you. We work well together." he takes a sip from his glass.

"I get that, most of the time I look forward to working with you because it's painless. You know what you're doing and don't fuck around." You smiled while finishing your sentence, feeling grateful for that aspect of work.

"Most of the time, huh?" He leans into the couch before continuing. "I understand, I'm a lot sometimes."

You nod gently, not wanted to start anything or make the situation awkward; More awkward than having a customer over for drinks.

"It's a front." He lets out with a deep breath. "I'm not usually a douchebag, but it's easier to make it seem that way."

You looked over at him, watching as the city lights reflect in his eyes.

"Easier?"

"Yeah, if I'm the nice guy then I tend to get taken advantage of, or played around with. I'd like to hope people can take me more serious than they would if I were a nice guy."

"I would" You chimed in.

He turns his head to you and smiles lightly.

"I'm actually a pretty anxious guy." He nods and fumbles with his fingers. "Being an ass and putting up an act conceals that a bit."

"Well if it helps you don't have to be that way with me." You feel your cheeks blushing a bit at the statement, the conversation getting deeper with every word.

"Oh yeah?" Han questions in a teasing type of way. "I'll take you up on that."

You can see some of his actual personality shining through, it makes you feel warm inside knowing he's able to trust you enough for that. Or maybe it's just the booze.

"There's something I've been curious about, and I can kind of guess since I came over to your place but I'll ask anyways." You look over at him as he speaks, waiting for the question. "Are you dating anyone?"

You laugh loudly at his thought, wondering where the hell he could of come up with it.

"No, I don't have the time to see anyone. Honestly I probably see you the most out of any of the customers that come into the studio. Kinda sad to think about I guess." You take a long sip of your beer, finishing whats left in your cup and reaching down to pour another.

"I don't think it's sad, it mean's you're dedicated to your job. I enjoy seeing you." He starts to trail off, and when you set the empty can of beer down - you pause before it hits the table, looking over at him.

He's got a faint blush on his honey colored skin, and eyelashes that any woman would kill for. You set your glass down on the table next to the empty can and push yourself closer to him.

"You actually enjoy seeing me?" You asked him while squashing whatever little bit of personal space was between you.

He sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and nods, looking at you. Really looking at you, from the way your hair is draped over your face and slightly to the strap of your bra starting to fall off of your shoulder. Once he met your eyes the liquid courage had finally taken it's control over you, and before you even knew it you had leaned your body forward and kissed him.

You kissed him quickly, no tongue, but not just a peck either, a long and hard kiss that made you hold your breath until you pulled away. His eyes fluttered open, and while he looked surprised, he didn't look upset or awkward about it.

"Well, I'm glad one of us made the first move." He combed his fingers through his hair and chuckled.

"Why?" You asked while simultaneously tilting your head, like a dog hearing the word 'treat'.

"Cause now I can do this."

He pushed his body into yours, causing your back to fall against he couch cushions and watching as he propped himself over you. Your cheeks were a deep shade of red, the mix of alcohol and smutty intentions fueling the fire. His knuckles caressed your cheeks softly, gently pulling any small hairs from your face.

"I've thought about this a lot," He starts, speaking quietly. "kissing these pretty lips of yours." And he does just that, his arrogant persona starting to slip through as his lips ever so lightly brush against yours.

"Tell me more," You manage to whisper past his lips. He took that statement as permission to continue leaving little smooches all around your lips and face.

"Kind of embarrassing to say," As he uses his thumb to press against your jaw, pushing your face toward the window away from him. "I've actually dreamt of bending you over that couch in the studio." His confident words send a shiver down your spine with his face nuzzled into your neck leaving more trails of kisses.

"So you dream about me, hmm?" You tease lightly, your lips shuddering at his teeth graze across your collarbone.

"All the time, Y/N." This causes an insatiable need to raise your hips into his, feeling his bulge shove against your core.

You wanted to indulge him in the fact that you've also dreamt of him, but didn't want that to inflate his ego too much. His kisses against your skin started to get heavier, obviously getting impatient with the need for more physical touch.

You take the opportunity to touch him, raising a hand to his hair and threading your fingers through, the other lowering to his waist and gripping it firmly. He releases a small, barely audible moan; the strength at which you held his hair between your fingers was pleasing to him but also a tease.

His body raises over yours once more, his lips crashing down onto yours hungrily. His lips where kissed out, swollen and red from the constant pressure against them. You pulled his plump lip in-between your teeth sucking gently before nibbling on it, instigating another moan from his chest.

"Baby, you keep that up and we're going to be doing a whole lot more than just making out tonight."

"I wouldn't mind that," You challenge, lifting your hips into his once more.

"Mmhm," He groans into your lips. "The only question is where." "Where?" You ask, curious on his thoughts.

"Where you want me to fuck you senseless." His face is only inches from yours, the city lights pouring in through the window and illuminating your faces.

"Dealers choice?" You say shyly, looking away embarrassed at his dauntless question.

With no hesitation he climbs off of you, picking you up bridal style from the couch effortlessly. You gasp at the feeling of your body being lifted into the air, wrapping your arms around his shoulders.

"You asked for it." He practically growled, carrying you towards the only closed door in the apartment to which he could only assume was your bedroom.

You assisted him in opening the door, turning the knob before he pushes it ajar forcefully with his leg. He sits you down on the edge of the bed, lifting your shirt off of your torso before doing the same to himself.

By the time you had been laid down on the bed making out again, you were both only in your underwear. You noticed his boxers were tight against his body, his dick fighting to be released from its hold.

You manage to sneak a hand between the two of your bodies, your lips still entangled as you grip at his dick lazily. He raises his face from yours, backing his body away and sitting against the headboard next to you. He pulls down his underwear, letting his cock spring out and leave a satisfying slap against his stomach.

You looked at his length, and then to his face, looking down once more before wrapping your hand around it and slowly starting to pump.

"Use your mouth." He demands, his voice lower and sexier than you had ever heard before.

You crawl between his legs, looking at his abs curve with the shape of his body as it's leaned against the headboard. "I'll be gentle," You hear his whisper, an audible grin on his lips. Your lips wrap around his leaking tip, using your tongue to lick up any precum that was daring to drip. This action brings a moan from deep within his chest, his hands immediately tangled in your hair making a messy ponytail.

He lets you set the pace at first, carefully bringing yourself further onto his length to avoid gagging. He notices your hesitation, bucking his hips before you can pull away from him. You attempt to gasp at the sudden surprise, failing miserably with his dick forced to the back of your throat.

He sighs and his body relaxes beneath yours, visibly enjoying himself as he uses your throat for his pleasure. Tears form in your eyes from the forceful shoves into your throat, though you find yourself wondering why the hell this turned you on so much. You hum a quiet moan, the vibrations causing him to shudder and inhale a breath through his teeth.

He pulls your head up forcefully by your hair, releasing it once his cock is out of your mouth, which is dripping with spit.

"So pretty," He grins while lowering his body flat against the bed. "Come sit." He cooly requests. You sit for just a moment before he notices your nervousness. "Don't worry Princess, let me taste you." He motions for you to come to him, which you slowly do; feeling embarrassed having never done this before.

After crawling over to the height of the bed you roll your panties down your legs before carefully straddling his face. You melt into him as his tongue just barely separates your folds, tasting the sweet yet bitter wetness from your core.

He pushes against your clit ever so lightly, yet causing your body to jump in shock. He holds your legs down with his hands gripping at your thighs, overstimulating you with the flicks of his tongue. Han moans at the taste of you, raising his hips in response to his throbbing length. You lean forward, taking his dick in your hands before sucking at his tip lazily, your mind too focused on his mouth on your cunt.

You open you mouth wide as he forces his tongue inside of you, digging his nails into your legs. He uses to opportunity to buck his hips and flood your throat with his length, causing you to gag. You hear a stifled moan from beneath you and feel the vibrations on your core as you drag your tongue up to his tip, separating his slit.

He continuously pleasures you with his mouth while forcing his cock down your throat. You feel a heat build inside of you as he sucks and nips at your clit, you try raising your body from his face, struggling as he forcefully hold you in place. The need to close your legs is impossible to fulfill, his mouth quite literally eating you with his face smothered in your nectar. You moan loudly as he flicks against your clit repeatedly, his dick still sloppily fucking your throat.

Once you finally can't bare it anymore you back is arched high, sitting up straight on his face as you ride out your high on his tongue. Your nails are dug into his chest, gasps of air rushing into your chest as you feel your body relax from its climax.

You gently roll off of him, your chest heaving while trying to collect your breath. He sits up and leans into you, forcing his tongue between your lips.

"You taste so fucking good, baby." He licks his lips and pulls away as you taste yourself ever so slightly within your mouth. You pull a hand to your face, self-conscious and exhausted at the longest climax you've ever endured.

"I'm not done with you yet." He declares while pushing your legs apart.

He pulls your bra down exposing your full chest, reaching underneath you to unclasp the hooks holding the cloth together. "Now," He whispers into your ear while throwing your bra across the bed. "Do I get to feel all of you, or would you prefer protection?" He props himself on his elbow just a few inches from your face, looking down at how fucked out you already are.

He nibbles at your ear while you mumble: "Don't bother, I'm on the pill.", feeling his smile on your skin once he hears you.

He removes your hand from your face, placing it around his neck as he smiles down at you. "Tell me if it's too much," He says before leaving a small kiss on your nose.

Your lips part as you breathe, feeling only his tip at your entrance. As wet and aroused as you were you realized you would be feeling sore tomorrow with the size of his dick about to open you up.

And he does just that, gripping at the blanket right next to your head as he slowly pushes himself into you. He paces himself as he starts to pump, groaning and growling curse words under his breath. You spread your legs wide and lift them slightly, giving him more room to push himself deeper until reaching your hilt.

The slight pain on him pushing past your walls and stretching them wide shortly turns to pleasure, every vein and curvature of his dick stimulating you in different ways. Your nails dig into the small of his back, your head digging into the bed beneath you. The arch of your back brings his tip right up to your sweet spot, earning a moan escaping from your lips.

Han realizes this and pick up the pace, using his unpropped arm to hold your body up against his. Your breasts start to bounce more as he pumps into you faster, his breaths mixed with moans of bliss. Your toes curl as he repeatedly hits your g-spot, hands roaming all around his back and neck before finding their place in his hair.

His thrusts become forceful, pleasurably painful as he rams himself into your cervix. You find yourself breathlessly mumbling his name over and over, your body heating up in preparation for another massive climax. He must feel the warmth radiating from you and your walls starting to clench, bringing his movements to a painfully slow pace.

"Han.. please." You plead, whining at the lack of friction.

He shakes his head, his messy hair in front of his eyes as he gulps down a breath. "Not yet," his thrusts turn into grinds, feeling every inch of you. "I need to savor this incase I never get the chance again." He barely gets the words out, his face scrunching in different ways as he pushes and drags against your beaten walls.

You try pulling him into you faster, a hand digging into his waist. His strength outmatches yours, unwavering from the slow grind he seems to be enjoying.

"Why wouldn't you get this chance again?" You say impatient, willing for him to speed back up. Instead he stops, looking you in the eyes with a confused expression. "We could do this every fucking day." You said openly, staring into his honey brown eyes.

"You really think you can keep up with me?" He asks honestly, anxious for your answer.

You hum in response, nodding with a devilish grin on your lips.

"From this moment on I'm claiming you as my own," He says rapidly before ramming himself into you again.

A load groan escapes from you both, and the thrusts begin to quicken. He holds himself on his elbows at both sides of your head, bringing his hands to your cheeks and kissing you deeply. You pull away, brining his bottom lip between your teeth and biting down hard enough to draw a small drop of blood.

He moans the loudest he had that night, making you feel even more wet than you had been. He lowers a hand down to your core, separating your folds and finding your clit in an instant. He rubs and presses down against it at the perfect pressure.

You raise your hips and push into him with every thrust into you, his cock opening you up even more. Small whines and winces leave his lips, his pumps becoming sloppy. The heat in your core had returned simultaneously, your breath quickening to an alarmingly fast rate.

You wrapped your legs around his waist, keeping his body as close to yours as possible. "Fuck baby," he mutters, his face scrunched up even more than before. His raspy words push you over the edge, feeling the burst of pressure in your abdomen. His name leaves your lips over and over, muttering it, moaning it, screaming it as he fucks you through your orgasm.

"Fuck, Y/N" He pleads before feeling his own orgasm arise.

You feel the twitch of his dick inside of you, and not too long after- his abundant seed is dispensed into you, fucked deep into you as he thrusts hard and deeply into you. This orgasm had lasted longer than two minutes, leaving you completely motionless and limp as he slowly rides out his high.

A rush of white light covers your sight, your fingers tingling and every molecule of sweat on your body feeling known due to the sensitivity of your skin. Your body had officially called it quits, the oxygen to your brain not being quite enough to function properly.

You feel Han gently lower his body weight onto you, then wrapping his arms around your lifeless body and pulling you onto your side with him. You barely feel his fingers caress your body in a comforting manner, your focus on getting your breathing back to normal. The tips of his fingers push away stray hairs from your eyes, leaving room to leave a gentle kiss on your forehead.

Once you feel an ounce of energy return to your muscles you wrap and arm around him, nuzzling your face into your chest. His length is still rested in you, both of your juices leaking and dripping onto the sheets. You stayed like this for what felt like hours, until he gently rested your head onto the bed, getting up and walking out of the room.

He quickly returned before you started thinking useless, worrisome thoughts. You opened your eyes just wide enough to see him in nothing but his boxers, a wet steamy towel in hand.

"Let's clean you up, baby." His terms of endearment to you made you feel comforted and even slightly loved.

After cleaning you up, he helped you dress into comfy clothes for the night, climbing into bed with you and rubbing the ashiness from your muscles. He hummed the tune to the song you had recorded for him earlier in the day, looking down at your sleepy, fucked out body.

Without looking at him you knew he had a slight grin to his lips, hearing it as he hummed your favorite part of this song.

~

[ausetkmt]

Published Sept. 29, 2022Updated Sept. 30, 2022

It started in 1995 in a home in Los Angeles’ Hollywood Hills, where two roommates — a music producer and a D.J. — used to compete over who could find the best sample from their record collections.

One day, Paul Stewart, the D.J., conceded that his roommate, the producer Doug Rasheed, had bested him when Rasheed put on a vinyl copy of Stevie Wonder’s 1976 album “Songs in the Key of Life.”

The track that Rasheed played, “Pastime Paradise,” opened with a mournful synth loop that replicated the sound of a string section. The song that it inspired, “Gangsta’s Paradise,” would change both of their lives and catapult an up-and-coming West Coast rapper named Coolio to global stardom.

Coolio, born Artis Leon Ivey Jr., died on Wednesday in Los Angeles at age 59; the cause has not been disclosed. The rapper had a handful of hits before and after “Gangsta’s Paradise,” but nothing in his career would top the popularity and cultural influence of that track, which was featured in the 1995 movie “Dangerous Minds” and went on both to win a Grammy and inspire a Weird Al Yankovic parody.

In recent years, Coolio had commented on the legacy of the song and its long shadow over the rest of his career, calling it, in one interview, both a blessing and curse (“More of a blessing than a curse,” he noted).

“That record: It took him over the top,” Rasheed, the song’s composer and producer, said in an interview on Thursday. “It made him a household name worldwide.”

Coolio’s opening words, which are based on Psalm 23, became one of the most widely remembered verses in ’90s rap: “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I take a look at my life and realize there’s nothin’ left.”

The singer L.V. (born Larry Sanders), who features on the song, had already started collaborating with Rasheed on the track, he said in an interview, when Coolio wrote those lyrics. Listening to the Wonder song in that Hollywood Hills home, it had been L.V.’s idea to turn “Pastime Paradise” into “Gangsta’s Paradise.”

L.V. recorded multiple vocal tracks that Rasheed combined to sound like a large choir singing a haunting refrain, as well as the chorus: “Been spending most their lives living in a gangsta’s paradise.”

Sign up for the Louder Newsletter  Stay on top of the latest in pop and jazz with reviews, interviews, podcasts and more from The New York Times music critics.

The tale of how Coolio first heard the track differs depending on who is telling it. In L.V.’s version, L.V. brought the song, with his recorded vocals, to Coolio on a cassette tape, hoping to persuade him to collaborate on it after another rapper had turned him down. In Coolio’s account, according to a Rolling Stone oral history of the song from 2015, the rapper was visiting the Hollywood Hills home to pick up a check from Stewart, who was his manager, when he heard the track.

“I walked into the studio, and asked Doug, ‘Wow, whose track is that?’” Coolio told Rolling Stone. “Doug said, ‘Oh, it’s something I’m working on.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s mine!’”

Coolio recalled writing his verses in one session, rapping about chasing his dreams and the uncertainty of whether he would live to 24 years old. (He was in his early 30s at the time, but 24 rhymed better, he said in a 2015 radio interview.)

The reinterpreted song still needed to get a green light from Wonder’s camp. But, Rasheed recalled, Wonder was turned off by the profanity and violence expressed in the lyrics. The producer asked Coolio for a rewrite, and the rapper agreed. The other catch: Wonder’s music publishing company would receive three-quarters of the publishing proceeds.

“The terms were a little harsh, but without them approving it there’s no hit,” Stewart, who managed both Coolio and L.V. at the time, said in an interview on Thursday.

Stewart shopped the song around and found a very interested party in MCA Records, which was producing the soundtrack for “Dangerous Minds,” starring Michelle Pfeiffer as a former Marine who becomes a teacher at an underfunded Bay Area high school. (The movie received mixed reviews, with The Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan calling it “stereotypical, predictable and simplified to the point of meaninglessness.”)

The music video, directed by Antoine Fuqua and featuring a severe-looking Pfeiffer staring down Coolio, initially received a pass from MTV, Stewart recalled, until MCA arranged to advertise the video on the channel, generating interest from viewers.

MTV picked it up, and “it was the most phenomenal takeoff of a record that I’ve ever seen,” Stewart said. “Gangsta’s Paradise” spent three weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 100 and was named the chart’s No. 1 song at the end of the year. It won the Grammy for best rap solo performance in 1996.

Then came Weird Al.

The musical parody artist and his team approached Coolio to get his blessing to make their own version of the song — “Amish Paradise” — Rasheed said, but the rapper refused. Knowing that legally speaking, Weird Al didn’t need their green light, Rasheed gave them his approval, despite Coolio’s skepticism.

“I think he just didn’t want to be made light of,” Rasheed said. To Coolio, his collaborators explained, “Gangsta’s Paradise” spoke to the real hardships and fears around street life in a way that seemed to resonate with people from different walks of life.

“A lot of people say it saved them from whatever demons they were dealing with, that they listened to the song and it helped them carry on,” Coolio said in the Rolling Stone oral history.

The “Amish Paradise” music video from 1996 opened with Yankovic in a broad-brimmed hat and a thick beard rapping, “As I walk through the valley where I harvest my grain.” In place of Coolio’s references to being “raised by the state” and finding protection in “the hood team,” Yankovic rapped about “milkin’ cows” and partying “like it’s 1699.”

Rasheed said that over time, he saw Coolio soften to the parody, viewing it as more homage than mockery. And in later interviews, the rapper said that he had changed his perspective on Yankovic’s song.

“I let that go so long ago,” Coolio told Vice in 2014. “Let me say this: I apologized to Weird Al a long time ago and I was wrong.” He added, “I listened to it a couple years after that and it’s actually funny,” adding an expletive.

In an interview with Newsweek a few months later, Yankovic said he was relieved. “I’m not the kind of guy that has beef with people, because I go out of my way to make sure that people are fine with what I do,” he said. “That was the one little moment in my whole history where there was a problem,” he noted, saying it was “very sweet” of Coolio to have told Vice he had made amends.

While “Amish Paradise” gave Coolio’s song a boost, the track was a smash on its own. L.V. remembered Coolio and his crew touring the world — Japan, France, Australia — and feeling like they were drawing “Michael Jackson-level” crowds that recited the lyrics along with them. Earlier this year, Coolio celebrated the song reaching a billion streams on YouTube.

“He put some magic on that track,” Rasheed said. “His voice, his delivery his cadence — it was something really special.”

[sonsband]

I'm bored, how would you rate each ateez album (ep etc) out of 10

Jenjamin I don't think you realize how much fuckin music they put out and that they're all called the same thing

(going chronological)

Treasure One (All to Zero): 5/10, solid debut album, "Pirate King" is a great debut track, "Treasure" slaps, but they were babies finding their feet so I have to rank it lower

Treasure Two (Zero to One): 7/10, which is a surprise even to me. "Hala Hala" to "Say My Name" to "Desire"? hit after hit after hit. "Say My Name" is still my favorite title track of theirs. and I need a "Desire" with San doing the ad libs with his 2022 vocals, please please please.

Treasure Three (One to All): 5/10, I love "Utopia" and it started the Seonghwa Main Vocal When movement. he just DOES that. but I didn't love the title tracks, so a few points off that.

Treasure Fin: 7/10, this was my first comeback (I started listening with "Say My Name" but watched from a distance) and "Wonderland" smacked me across the face. and dearest belovedest Wooyoung on "Mist"... he didn't have to break our hearts like that.

Treasure Epilogue: 7/10, remember when I told you I liked this comeback and you said you'd listen because "they have some good singers" and then you made fun of me knowing Seonghwa's name? because I do. anyway "Horizon" is amazing and that one performance, you know the one, is still one of my favorites of theirs. also one of my favorite songs to play on violin cause it changes between bouncy and expansive.

Fever One: 9/10, maybe it's cause it came out when I was doing a lot of walking and so I could just put it on repeat. anyway "Inception" is my third most listened to song ever on Spotify if that tells you anything. Yunho Baby on "Fever" like oh that's my boy.

Fever Two: 12/10 fuck EVERYONE who was shitty to me right before it dropped, this album was for ME! dad had just gotten sick, my hours were cut, the creep at the hotel was apparently starting to say icky things about me, I was miserable, and then "I'm the One (Remix)" saved the day. sounds like the first day after Seroquel where nothing is real but GOD are you awake to feel it. Pink Gumby leapt with both feet into Hot Bitch Territory and began his ascent to one of my favorite vocalists of 4th gen and the pink was litcherally for me idk what to tell you he said sorry these people are so cruel. also "Take Me Home" is a queen I take no comments.

Into the A to Z: 7/10, I'm gonna be real, D and I were both completely thrown off that "Still Here" wasn't a Vertical Horizons cover. liked the Korean version better (you all know why) but this is the one on my liked songs playlist. anyway, the tracklist is mostly my faves so yeah nothing really to say.

Fever Three: 8/10, catiny's first comeback! and they DELIVERED for us! the "Deja Vu" outfits were amazing, especially the little Lake Geneva ones. I'm gonna see Seonghwa in a corset in my yellow wallpaper. and that night that we all went apeshit for Pinkhwa Ponytail will live on as a true heritage moment.

Fever Epilogue: 6/10, honestly I just go to the Kingdom recordings. The Real was a killer comeback that I wasn't expecting right at the end of the year there. the "Wave" Overture is so much better when they don't have to fight the choreographers, even if San doesn't get that scrape in the official recording. also if I play Mingi's rap in "Wonderland" on repeat then that's between me and God. (although we lived through the "Turbulence" performances to get to San's modulations. was it worth it? idk but I just want to squish my bestie's cheeks and tell him he's doing so amazing in his battle against augmented fourths)

The World Movement: 5/10, I was so excited when the intro to "Sector 1" was the spoiler from "Answer" but I think I hyped it up too much. I would have liked Guerilla a whole lot more if they weren't so liberal with the pitch correction. how are you gonna have the whole "break the wall!" screams and pitch correct the vocals here of all places. madness and insanity (but D and me calling the Metropolis references a year in advance? our brains are sooooo big). should have all been Mingi channeling RKL, but it's his world and we're just living in it. also the big chest voices in "The Ring" deserve more, please give us more of that.

[but +5 additional points for San being an anarchist slut, there is no type better. he said "Hi Lesbians" and then came back to say "Especially The Cool Ones" with his doofy little anarchist stomach graffiti]

[caltropspress]

RAPS + CRAFTS #13: Algernon Cornelius

1. Introduce yourself. Past projects? Current projects?

I’m Algernon Cornelius, producer/rapper based in Manchester (UK). A lot of my early work consists of instrumental beat-tapes (which can be found on my bandcamp), along with collaborative works like Mortal Deck, as well as some side-projects like Philip K. Dickhead. I wrote my first rap in 1993 (co-written with my Dad tbf), but didn’t start writing properly until 2003. Around the same time I started producing by making pause tapes in a little cassette recorder and then by the same process but with cheap CD turntables into an Archos Gmini 402 mp4 player. I started using Cubase in 2005 and then moved on to Ableton in 2014. 

Somewhere along this path I briefly let go of rapping to focus more on beat-making, that is until about 2016 when I made the song “Zero Hour Contract” (the vocals were recorded on a dictaphone). That return to writing was most likely sparked by hearing ELUCID’s Valley Of Grace record. I followed that up with another single: “Witchita”.

There are multiple stories you can choose to follow when you explore my discography. Perhaps the easiest route is through the rap time-line, which is as follows…

Neither Gloaming Nor Argent: Both Before And After The Dark (2020)

The Miraculous Weapons of Clarkus_Dark (2021)

Me No Sen You No Come (2022)

SEGUNDO (2023) NGNA is a compilation of singles I recorded before, during and after the making of MWxxCD (think 13 Songs by Fugazi or The Sagas Of… by Klashnekoff). MWxxCD is my debut album. MNSYNC is an EP, and SEGUNDO is my 2nd album.

2. Where do you write? Do you have a routine time you write? Do you discipline yourself, or just let the words come when they will? Do you typically write on a daily basis?

I wish I did write on a daily basis, but most of the time I just ponder about living my life being busy or procrastinating, until something hits me. Usually it’s one line that sounds interesting or funny to me. There have been times when I’ve tried to be more disciplined and write something every day. These bursts typically happen in the new year and then eventually fade away, in that respect being undisciplined is my discipline. But when it comes to it I can be anywhere. For this album specifically I went back home to the house I grew up in while my parents were away and just wrote for 10 days straight (probably helped that I got covid and couldn’t leave). I set everything up in the dining room and had the mic in one hand to record demos as I wrote with the other. I’ve never really written in that way before, but it was definitely good for me. Being alone, and having a mission, and knowing exactly how my voice would sound as I was writing. I can’t do that in my current living situation because I live with other people and I’m very self-conscious. I think being in a space I knew well and felt comfortable in really helped too.

I don’t write everyday, but ideas are usually always kicking around. I like to leave room for experiences to write about.

3. What’s your medium—pen and paper, laptop, on your phone? Or do you compose a verse in your head and keep it there until it’s time to record?

It used to be a pen and sheets of A4 white paper. Then it became lined notebooks. Then it was my laptop. In the past five years or so it has been in the notes app on my phone, and then typed up in a Google doc where it can be edited and refined. I can’t keep new lyrics in my head for long because they tend to metamorphosise into something else very quickly, so they have to be preserved outside the brain. I’ll then rehearse over and over until I know it off-top and it becomes muscle memory, because I would rather not be reading off something in the booth (that isn’t always possible with last minute rewrites). The best way is if I can play it live a few times because then I really get a feel for it and know what the energy is like and I have more confidence behind the flow, I know what the pockets should feel like.

4. Do you write in bars, or is it more disorganized than that?

Oh it’s very disorganised. But then again that can depend on the beat. Some songs encourage more free-form structure.

5. How long into writing a verse or a song do you know it’s not working out the way you had in mind? Do you trash the material forever, or do you keep the discarded material to be reworked later?

I think when I feel uncomfortable or cringe is when I know it’s not working. I know you have to kill the part of you that cringes but that’s 100 gecs' job. You really have to feel genuine with what you’re saying, and that’s an integrity that keeps you grounded in who you are as an artist. That gets a lot easier as you get older and you don’t have to put on a voice or adopt certain language.

My line of thinking is that it begins with a jump-off, so the first line is the provocateur. The attention grabber. Often this may not have anything to do with the rest of the verse, but it’s integral to getting to the rest of it. The big bang. In this way my verses probably tend to make more sense towards the end.

I try to keep everything, and this is why I would like to move back to writing on paper. I kept everything on paper. In a Google Doc it’s very easy to erase history. With SEGUNDO I tried to not be scared of the rewrite. I can be very precious about my work, but I had to give the mic to the voice that says “you can do better”.

6. Have you engaged with any other type of writing, whether presently or in the past? Fiction? Poetry? Playwriting? If so, how has that mode influenced your songwriting?

I have loved writing since forever. I was always writing stories as a kid and got a lot of encouragement from my English teachers at school. I still somewhat regret not taking English Literature at 6th Form (age 16-18 in the UK). I’ve been writing a lot more poetry recently and have sketched out some ideas for short sci-fi stories, and at some point want to go into script writing and learn to make films. I used to write about music a lot, for a few blogs and some larger platforms that shall remain nameless. I don’t know if that’s influenced my songwriting because rap is what got me into playing with language, so that informs everything else.

7. How much editing do you do after initially writing a verse/song? Do you labor over verses, working on them over a long period of time, or do you start and finish a piece in a quick burst?

I am trying to edit more. That was a key thing in the making of these last two records. I take ages to start things but once I get going it’s very quick, so it’s more like a stream of consciousness ting. You can end up trying to cram in too many ideas that way, and with SEGUNDO specifically I wanted to introduce more space in my rhymes, so I would cut some things to make that happen. Songs like “...AND THE LIVING” happened very quickly, but with “WHERE WE ARE” and “PLAGUES” there were several different versions I made until it sounded right. When something happens quickly I often have no memory of how it happened, it feels like it comes from another place (manic brain memory loss).

8. Do you write to a beat, or do you adjust and tweak lyrics to fit a beat?

I go through different waves. When I’m not writing for a project I just stream a load of bars out and have them all in a document. Most of the time these can’t fit to any of the music that I write, but I can nick certain lines that fit. “I Am Not The Moon” from Miraculous Weapons used a lot of lyrics from a couple of verses I wrote over a loop of The Wanton Song by Led Zeppelin when I was 18. I carry several verses around in my head that can’t really squish into a typical song format. I keep them there in case there was ever a situation where I got into a cypher and needed to prove something. As yet this has never happened, and may never will, perhaps this only happens in movies. I will just keep reciting them in the shower until that day comes. But when it’s for a project the beats always come first, so I’m gonna sit down and go through in sequential order and write like that. Doing it that way you’re carving out a route so the listener can follow your path (that is of course if they listen to albums front to back in one sitting and not on shuffle).

9. What dictates the direction of your lyrics? Are you led by an idea or topic you have in mind beforehand? Is it stream-of-consciousness? Is what you come up with determined by the constraint of the rhymes?

The music, first and foremost. That’s always the mood setter. That’s why the stuff I write without music tends to be more random and glitchy. In fact I have a load of stuff like this which I’m planning to release as a poetry book later this year called The Glitch and the Goof. But when I’m working on a record I make all the beats first and then sequence the album because it has to make sense musically, the instrumentals dictate the journey you’re gonna go on. Also whatever I name the instrumental when I export it, that usually informs the direction. I should probably be more careful with that. Although “Stress” was originally called “Night Goat” (after the Melvins song) and there was no mention of goats in that. There aren’t many of my songs that stick to one subject (Kool Moe Dee definitely would’ve scored me low for sticking to themes). On “DUNKEL” I do and that’s because of the sample, which is literally saying “dark” so that was the direction I gave Val and myself. “DECEMBER 25” is obviously one of the most focused theme-wise because I’m trying to tell a very specific story and it’s perhaps the most clear and personal I’ve been on a track. Funnily enough that song came about because I was working a temp job at a University and my fellow temp comrade (the only other black guy who worked there, it’s actually incredible they allowed 2 of us to work on the front desk at the same time now that I think about it), anyway we were chatting about white English reactions to diaspora foods, like having rice with your Sunday roast and how kids in school thought that was weird, but it was normal for us. We laughed about it and then I thought about it for a minute and wrote down “rice in my roast, what the whites will never know”. That’s the jump-off line right there. And as I already had the loop I wanted to sample for it in my head on rotation (it had been stuck in my head for almost 2 years), by the time I was on the bus home I just continued writing on my phone. The mood was already set and I just started thinking about this story I wanted to tell. I got home and immediately looped that shit up and then worked more lyrics around it, following the bassline. 

In terms of being constrained by the rhymes, I think yes this can happen, but then it’s all about vocab and finding ways back home if you go too far out. The patterns you weave doing that can be beautiful. That’s like looking at a brain-scan create an Etch-a-Sketch. Having that constraint can pull out some wild juxtapositions and create a really interesting image.

10. Do you like to experiment with different forms and rhyme schemes, or do you keep your bars free and flexible?

Absolutely. I always think about Method Man, especially on his earlier records, where he basically switches up the flow almost every line. That’s the stuff that got me so excited as a kid. As a rapper you are just an instrument, so as you would with drums or a bassline or a keyboard, you can switch it up to take the song somewhere. It’s always about what’s best for the song for me. I don’t like to get too self-indulgent as an emcee. I am no better than the beat really, I’m part of an ensemble cast, and we’re all working for the song. I don’t tend to think about my rhyme schemes as methodically as I used to, perhaps because it comes more naturally to me now, but I remember for a while I was experimenting with reverse compound structures where the 2nd line would be close enough to a  phonetic reverse of the previous line. I have a crude example from an unreleased song where I say: “High-hitting hats when I relapse into narcosis / Whenever I’m focused you can tell where I have been at with my hidden eye” Maybe I will go back to getting more scientific with ideas like this.

11. What’s a verse you’re particularly proud of, one where you met the vision for what you desire to do with your lyrics?

On SEGUNDO I think “DECEMBER 25” obviously because it took a lot for me to get there. I mean really that’s one of the reasons why it’s the last track on the album. I don’t think there’s been a time where I’ve listened back to that song and I haven’t cried, so it did what it was supposed to do. That was a similar case with “Adieu” from NGNA. “CLOY ROYSTER” because that’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to a true freestyle (I can’t freestyle for shit). The 2nd verse of “Tentative”, which originally I left open for a guest but then I ended up surpassing my own expectations (I originally gave the beat to R.A.P. Ferreira but then ended up using it on my album, then he came back with “No Word For Wack” which ended up on the Ruby Yacht album). ”Lightning Bolt” as well, that was a real one. I wrote the lyrics, made the beat, recorded it  and then posted it on bandcamp maybe all within 2 hours. Extremely raw shit. (It’s called "Lightning Bolt" because that’s who I was going to see play a gig that night). That’s actually an example of where I wrote it all out on a piece of paper first and then made it fit to the beat, and I mean it helps that the beat doesn’t have any drums, it’s just six pads of noise. “Notes On A Native Sound” was written from a dream I had the same night I made the beat and I feel that’s maybe one of the most synergetic songs in terms of the music and lyrics. It all came out of two sides of the same trip.

12. Can you pick a favorite bar of yours and describe the genesis of it?

“Flexi disc under the x-ray / Mexican death day / Haters wanna flex I slip their disc and press play (…AND THE LIVING)

Like I don’t care if anyone rates that or not, for me it always makes me feel like this and that’s all I ever wanna do for myself. I had that line in my head for time, just a silly little boast innit? But with some very niche deep Wikipedia level references. Also me and my peers have very serious concerns about back pain. “Become a man before the onus is on the shoulders of the taurus / And the horns begin to grow again, blow through them / The tone of brass bones does not atone for intonation" (The Flood)

Men go a bit weird in their late 20’s, you ever notice that? This was sort of a way of saying check yourself before you wreck yourself. I used 3 zodiac signs for Miraculous Weapons; the Bull (Taurus), Snake and Crab (Cancer), and they all work as points of reference across the album. A lot of it is to do with ideas of fate, determinism and essentialism and trying to escape that (which actually I've just realised that’s at the core of most of my work). The titular Clarkus_Dark is basically the bad character (as Lord Quas might say). My dad used to have this Shofar in the house which I used to play with (he was a religious studies teacher) so that’s probably where I got that imagery. I also used to play trombone so there’s your brass bones, and you can hear some trombone at the end of “How Good’s The Funeral?”. It’s all tied together. Now that I think of it this was also one where I wrote the lyrics before the music and then made it fit afterwards too. Cat, who is the first person you hear whisper “SEGUNDO” at the start of the album, I wrote that in her living room in the middle of a crisis.

13. Do you feel strongly one way or another about punch-ins? Will you whittle a bar down in order to account for breath control, or are you comfortable punching-in so you don’t have to sacrifice any words?

Punching-in I have no qualms about. Like I said before it’s about what’s best for the song. There are cases when a punch-in can fuck up the flow, there are cases where cutting out a breath can make it sound too clinical. Just depends on what you want out of the recording. I’m getting better at editing stuff down in the writing so it’s about clarity and rhythm. I’ll preface this with the fact that I’m old enough where I’m going to use Big Daddy Kane as an example…but you know when you’re starting out you just wanna show off and fit as many syllables in a line as possible (yeah, like Big Daddy Kane)? Well when you play live you come to the compromise, because I have so much energy I need to get off I can’t be running about and do all that, especially as I get older. No matter how much I push I have to understand my body has limits, so then it becomes a choice of what you’re trying to give. Is it lyrical-miracle virtuosity? Or clarity? What is going to connect with your audience? Because at the end of the day that’s what you’re trying to do, you have to make a connection otherwise there’s no point.

14. What non-hiphop material do you turn to for inspiration? What non-music has influenced your work recently?

Definitely films. For SEGUNDO there were things about Spike Lee joints that informed the feeling in songs like “PLAGUES” and “CURRY MILE”, in particular his use of the double dolly technique. I wanted to do that with music. When I was writing I rinsed seasons 3 and 4 of Top Boy, the Andy Warhol documentary on Netflix, The Power of the Dog, Call My Agent! and Fast & the Furious 9. Obviously I’m not sure how that last one had any effect on me, but the hook in SEGUNDO was inspired by Basquiat in the Warhol doc. 

I’d never really dipped that heavily into the work of David Lynch before, and I had wondered if it was just too late for me. Like is all the weirdo shit I already like just jacked from Uncle DL? But I saw Mulholland Drive for the first time and it shook me pretty deep, like really got right inside me in a very particular way that I don’t know how to put into words, and there’s not that many films that have done that. That kind of made me think differently about the structure of SEGUNDO and what it meant, because to be honest the meaning was missing for me for a long time and it felt like the process of making this album was almost in search of that, and then towards the end it started to make sense, but as if the answer had always been there. The lyrics to “SLOW WOUND” are mostly inspired by Mulholland Drive if you look closely enough. 

I’m always inspired by food, I’m always thinking about that. It’s so tied to memory. Sometimes I can’t remember the details of a certain trip somewhere but I can tell you exactly what I ate and what it tasted like and how it made me feel.

A lot of SEGUNDO was inspired by nature. Again it’s about space but in many forms. The pandemic is what set that off, everything became still and empty, internally and externally. I was locked down in Manchester so I ended up taking huge walks out to anything that remotely resembled a bit of countryside, a park or a bit of woodland surrounded by a highway. I grew up right in the middle of the North Yorkshire Dales and Moors, there was so much expansive space there, your mind could just wander off into the distance. Can’t see shit for terrace houses here in Old Trafford, it’s like being trapped on the set of Coronation Street (I wrote this and then afterwards took a walk to the shop for some caraway seeds and the sun was beaming and the red bricks look so gorgeous in the light, so it’s not always so gloomy to be fair)

When some of the lockdown restrictions were lifted, me and my girlfriend’s first trip was to a remote converted farmhouse on the side of a mountain in North Wales. Some days you’d be trapped indoors because a huge rain cloud had engulfed everything, but on sunny days you could see as far as the Lake District and the Isle of Man. You’d set off on a walk and you’d maybe meet 1 or 2 people all day, unless you walked 5 miles to the nearest village pub. There were more wild ponies and sheep than people. That was a really important time for me where I could have the space to think while the music of SEGUNDO circled in my head.

Another trip like that was when we went up to the Scottish highlands (to stay with my girlfriend’s friend (Sarah Bernstein who is also a writer), again very remote. You’d wake up one morning and see a pod of dolphins making their way across the bay. It was in September so all the purple heather was in bloom. I was getting high just looking at all that purple, it looked like them Richard Mosse photographs of The Congo. That’s what inspired the autotuned part in CURRY MILE. It may have been born in south Manchester, and then settled in Snowdonia, but it grew wings in the highlands. I think there’s more of a nature sound on this record, it’s like halfway between the concrete streets and nature. Like there’s earth, air, ice, water, moss and a small fire trying to stay alight under it all.

15. Writers are often saddled with self-doubt. Do you struggle to like your own shit, or does it all sound dope to you?

I constantly have self-doubt. I’d argue that’s what keeps me in check, but if there’s too much of it it becomes a real hindrance. I love my own shit but I have had to work for it. I always think of myself as someone to whom rapping does not come naturally. First off I’m from this cursed island of britain, and not even the happening part. There was no culture where I grew up, you had to get it all from television and radio, or movies and magazines. I was the only person I knew who wrote raps or was even into Hip-Hop (apart from Joanne from school who also liked Dizzee Rascal). If I ever came across another rapper it’d be the white kids who were into spitting over Makina and New Monkey type beats. So what I'm saying is I’ve taken many years to find my voice, and being quite isolated from any sort of rap scene has been both a good thing and a bad thing. Maybe my sword would be sharper if I was dueling on the daily. Maybe it’s ok to be a quirked-up country boy curry goated with the sauce busting it down Supreme Clientele style (we’ll get to that later). Either way I've put myself out there on the line and learnt a lot. 

When I was 15 I sent my first demo to DJ Excalibah who was doing the late night slot for underground and UK rap on BBC radio 1Xtra (he’s now an acclaimed theatre director), he gave me very honest constructive feedback. Something to the effect of the recording quality was bad (which it was) and I needed to work on my flow and my voice (tell me about it), but that my writing was up there with the best of them. That last part was enough for me to keep going. Meeting people like Moor Mother who was one of the first people to tell me she liked my voice really gave me encouragement to not doubt myself. I try to remember moments like this and do the same for others when they’re out here. 

It’s also having good honest mates around you, like Claudia (featured on the final reprise of MAKE THE SUN tagged on the end of CLOY ROYSTER), she suffers from a rare disease where she cannot lie to people, so that’s helpful in knowing what’s good. When James from the band Yard Act started demoing stuff with me for Miraculous Weapons he made a few suggestions to change a couple of lyrics because they were too on the nose, and usually I’m really stubborn and defensive about stuff like that but I trusted his opinion and he was right to be fair. Trust the people that know you.

16. Who’s a rapper you listen to with such a distinguishable style that you need to resist the urge to imitate them?

Ghostface is my anchor. My all time favourite rapper. He gave me the blueprint for my style of free-association. I even did an art project in school based on his verse on "Daytona 500." Him and DOOM (and probably Pos from De La Soul) basically show up in my life when I’m 14/15 and show me how beautiful and fun language can be. So while I may not imitate them per se, they gave me a key to unlock something in myself to put my own spin on how I see the world. Another key rapper I would say is Danny Brown, and that’s mainly because he’s such an anglophile. He bridges the gap between Grime and American rap. He could do a whole album spitting over 140 bpm beats (I mean he does this so effortlessly over Benga’s "26 Basslines"). You can hear that influence on “WHERE WE ARE” for sure. I love Mos Def so much and that’s probably why I gravitated towards Mach-Hommy, it’s the tone and melody they bring. I’m one of those rappers who secretly wishes they were a singer. I’ve always been really big on Dancehall emcees with really gruff voices too. I started doing this growl which I mostly do live, which is partly inspired by more doomy sludgey bands, but you listen to BackRoad Gee and he’s doing something really interesting with it. I played with Sons of Kemet one time and while I was backstage I could hear Shabaka practicing his horn coming through the vent in the next room, and he was listening to drill music and playing along to it. That’s what it is, the voice is an instrument and he shows you that through his music, he’s playing certain lines and I’m immediately thrown back to my living room after school watching emcees on Channel U, he makes very specific references to certain grime flows.

I’d like to think that I have so many influences that they all get mangled together to form something different, or that my bad impressions become a new voice altogether, at least I hope.

17. Do you have an agenda as an artist? Are there overarching concerns you want to communicate to the listener?

At the most basic level I just need something to rap over. I feel something and I wanna say something, so I make something, and then I try to make you feel what I felt. Now with that comes connection, but also unintended misinterpretation. And really the latter is what keeps this whole ting spinning. Evolution is just endless mistakes. Failure upon failure until it works for the moment and then until it doesn’t again. Hip-Hop is all about the flip, not just in terms of flipping samples but shifting perspective, I hope I can do that in my own way to some degree. I also want to just show people how connected they are, bring people together that wouldn’t be able to otherwise. It’s mad when I think of all the people I know and how most of them don’t know each other. You just gotta be a node and keep vibrating higher innit.

RAPS + CRAFTS is a series of questions posed to rappers about their craft and process. It is designed to give respect and credit to their engagement with the art of songwriting. The format is inspired, in part, by Rob McLennan’s 12 or 20 interview series.

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How Shakira Turned A Messy Breakup Into Her Biggest Hit In Years

She's long been typecast as a sexy hip-shaker, but her hijacking of the celebrity gossip algorithm is another reminder of her range.

Alessa Dominguez Senior Culture Writer

Evrim Aydin / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

Shakira, left, and Gerard Pique in 2014.

“No resentment here, baby,”Shakira sings to an annoying ex in her latest hit song, “BZRP Music Session 53.” “A she-wolf like me is too much for a guy like you.” (The entire song is in Spanish, save for the line “sorry, baby,” so we’ve translated.) 

The Colombian pop star’s vocals perfectly channel above-it-all disdain, and it’s not just a lyrical stance. Last year, cheating rumors trickled out about her partner, Spanish soccer star Gerard Pique, and in the summer, she announced their breakup after an 11-year relationship. 

Even before the announcement, her songs had seemed to hint at behind-the-scenes trouble. In the electro-nostalgic “Don’t Wait Up,” she pined for a couple’s early spark. On the Rauw Alejandro collaboration, “Te Felicito,” she spurned a fake ex, and followed up by belting about relationship inertia alongside Ozuna on the bachata ballad “Monotonía.” 

Since then, the separation has fed tabloid gossip about custody battles, the shameless “other woman,” and allegations that Shakira put a witch mannequin on her balcony facing the home of a supposedly mean mother-in-law. 

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“BZRP Music Session 53,” a collaboration with Argentinian rap producer Bizarrap, is her most explicit kiss-off anthem yet: a step into her post-breakup reclamation era, à la Ariana Grande’s “thank u, next.” 

After it dropped last week, the song immediately shot to No. 1 on YouTube and broke records for a solo Latin artist. Then it reached the pinnacle of global Spotify with nearly 15 million streams and became the platform’s largest Spanish-language debut in history. “I never thought that I would reach number one in the world at 45 years old and in Spanish,” Shakira wrote in the caption of acelebratory Instagram post. The song has sparked endless memes and TikTok jokes and made a mark everywhere from Croatiato China. 

If the numbers hold, it’ll become her first top 10 US pop hit since her early aughts crossover era. Despite having been one-dimensionally typecast as the globe’s favorite wholesome hip-shaker, her 2023 hijacking of the celebrity gossip algorithm shows that she’s always had the range.

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Shakira performs onstage during the Pepsi Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show on Feb. 2, 2020, in Miami. 

Before Americans had a Top 40 breakup queen in Taylor Swift, Latin Americans had Shakira. The onetime teen pop star became a global sensation in the late ’90s with her intimate songwriting about love and relationships in her breakthrough hits “Donde Estás Corazón” and “Estoy Aqui.” 

Her most iconic US and global songs are early aughts bops like “Hips Don’t Lie” and “Whenever, Wherever”; the endlessly played videos emphasized the dance moves that became the cornerstone of her celebrity.

But she was always more complicated than that in her Spanish-language work. The 18-year-old sold bourgeois rebellion against quinceañeros and social conventions on Pies Descalzos, her breakout hit album. The song “Octavo Día” — from her follow-up, Donde Están los Ladrones? — critiqued how the public become chess pieces for the powerful. She repurposed the song as an anti-war statement during the Iraq invasion, pitting blimp dolls of Bush and Saddam Husseinagainst each other during her 2003 concert tour.

Even in that early pop-rock era, the most commercially impactful songs captured the mundanities of love from a woman’s perspective. From the mariachi-inflected “Ciega Sordomuda” (with its ableist titular sentiments of being rendered “Blind, Deafmute”) to the quasi-metal thrashing of “Inevitable,” the song Pepsi chose in a 1999 ad selling her as a pan-Latina icon, she found endless ways to describe feeling angrily helpless about men’s appeal (and confessed to not showering on Sundays).

Even the big crossover hit “Whenever, Wherever” was inspired by her relationship with Antonio de la Rúa, son of Argentinian president Fernando de la Rúa, who also starred in the video for follow-up “Underneath Your Clothes,” her only ballad to hit the top 10 in the US.

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Still, by then, these were rare musical allusions to her private life. These days, Shakira isn’t usually a celebrity who’s gossiped about. Aside from de la Rúa suing her soon after their 2011 breakup, her stardom hasn’t historically hinged on scandals because, like Beyoncé (whom she collaborated with on “Beautiful Liar”), she keeps her private life close to the vest. 

And the bigger Shakira’s stardom has grown, the less messy her celebrity has been. She always avoids controversy; in a deeply conservative country, she’s avoided talking about abortion or LGBTQ rights, for instance. (Her early song “Se Quiere, Se Mata,” is strikingly conservative, a cry against the social hypocrisy that leads young girls to seek abortion.) Her public-facing politics are unobjectionable, a favored cause being children’s education.

Since her two kids were born in the 2010s, she’s leaned into family-friendly opportunities: She played the Gazelle in Disney’s Zootopia, and appeared as a smiling judge on The Voiceand the dance challenge show Dancing with Myself. And that’s why her latest sonic salvo is such a notable departure. 

Trae Patton / NBCU Photo Bank / NBCUniversal via Getty Images

Shakira, right, and Adam Levine during an episode of The Voice in 2013.

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Shakira is always dropping one-off singles, like 2020’s “Me Gusta” with Anuel AA or “Girl Like Me," a collaboration with the Black Eyed Peas that dominated airwaves last summer. So it’s easy to forget that her last English-language album, the self-titled Shakira, was released in 2014. Her last Spanish-language album, El Dorado, came out in 2017, after which she almost lost her voice.

That album was partly inspired by the relationship with Pique, whom she’d met during the 2010 World Cup, when she wrote and sang the theme song, “Waka Waka.” Its biggest hit was the reggaeton-flavored “Me Enamore,” where she sings about an age difference between lovers (Pique is ten years younger): “I thought to myself, ‘This is a kid, but what am I to do?’” she laments. “It’s what I’d been searching for.”

Over the past two years, though, there were cheating rumors. When Shakira launched her comeback English-language single “Don’t Wait Up” last summer, the chatter was about whether she’d come out because of the colors of the announcement matching the lesbian flag. (Far from being some kind of coded revelation, it turned out to be just a clueless coincidence.)

But then she started playing into the speculation about her relationship. In “Te Felicito,” a brilliant club-ready EDM banger, she sarcastically congratulates an ex for being the perfect pretender. The robotic vocals — and robo dance moves — were an arresting choice for a passionate breakup anthem, and it became her sixteenth Latin pop charts No. 1.

In “Monotonía,” she dropped hints about a partner’s narcissism, and described a breakup that was less about fault and more about “monotony” setting in. 

But with this Bizarrap collaboration, she seems more flamboyantly petty than ever. That might be because it’s not an official single, but rather the result of a laidback collaboration at the producer’s Barcelona studio, and Shakira revels in the freedom. 

She addresses a former flame who she’s outgrown and who has found a new woman “like him,” snarkily suggesting he’s replaced a Ferrari for a Twingo, and a Rolex for a Casio. 

The song has sparked meticulous lyric-explainer threads and feminist debates over the respectability of speaking out after cheating. (Pique himself responded last week by wearing a Casio watch and arriving at work in a Twingo.) 

While artists like Adele still trade in the pop tradition of the long-awaited breakup album, there’s been a move toward a real-time reclamation of the post-split gossip cycle, from Grande’s “thank u, next” moment to Olivia Rodrigo’s “Driver’s License” breakthrough. Now, Shakira has joined the ranks.

Many Latinx and Spanish-speaking millennials — especially women —  grew up with Shakira as their soundtrack. The world has been cheering her on, and the usually silent star even shared a Colombian op-ed on her Instagram defending her right to claim her story. “It’s not my fault that they’re hating on you,” she sings. “I just make music and I’m sorry if it splashes you.” In other words: Sorry, not sorry. ●

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