SHINHWA: Plagiarism and (a lack of) Cultural Acknowledgement

I have a feeling that this particular article is going to ruffle a few feathers out there.

And honestly, I do not care. It truly needs to be said. The more people that fear speaking out, the more it gets ignored. So, here it goes.

The K-Pop industry needs to take accountability more in terms of the influence that Black American culture has had on its music.

Now, here’s my disclaimer. I am not American. I am British. I have American relatives (in fact, not including those in my family who remained in the West Indies, the majority of my family on both sides either resides in or was born and raised in the States) but that is as far as my link to the Americas goes. But in the U.K. we were influenced a lot by American media so while I wouldn’t profess myself to be some sort of expert on Black American culture, I have been immersed in it somewhat.

Disclaimer over.

What I will say is that there are a lot of companies out there who are willing to be “influenced” by certain aspects of Black American culture but are not willing to acknowledge said influence, especially if it fails to hit in the right way. Sometimes many are just willing to just flat out plagiarize and use concepts from Black media and try to act like nothing happened when called out about it.

There are so many instances that are related to this that I simply do not have the time, capacity, or even the internet bandwidth on this site to cover them all but the one issue I wanted to cast light on was the rap lyrics from old songs of the K-Pop group SHINHWA.

For those who are unfamiliar, SHINWHA are a six member male K-Pop group who have been active since 1998. They were SM Entertainment’s second male group (after H.O.T) and third group overall (with the inclusion of the girl group S.E.S) and were created to have a more mature sound after the more bubblegum pop-esque sounds of their predecessors. They left SM in 2004 to join Good Entertainment as they wanted all members to stay together in the group and, after completing their mandatory military service, founded the SHINWHA Company in 2012 to fight to retain their rights of songs and even their group name from SM. They were definitely one of the foundations of K-Pop, with a lot of 2nd and 3rd Gen groups citing them as inspirations in terms of their artistry and overall dedication to their brand. As of now, they are the longest running active group in K-Pop.

That’s great for them… but now to the issue.

A recent post that appeared on Korean forum TheQoo revealed that a lot of the rap lyrics that were performed by member Eric from early SHINHWA songs were actually plagiarized from Black American rappers… to the point where a lot of the raps kept the N-word slur in the lyrics. The user did a comparison to several songs and noted that lyrics were in some cases copied word for word from Hip Hop artists such as Foxy Brown, Da Brat, and AZ from whom his song “Everything’s Everything” has lyrics poached to be the main rap for arguably SHINHWA’s most iconic song, “Perfect Man”.

The post that showcased this became viral with over 100,000 views in 24 hours. But it has been over a month since that post, and there has been no comment from Eric (as the named “lyricist” of these raps) or from the SHINHWA Company. As expected, it is probably going to be a case of letting it die down until people forget it ever happened. I guess it’s already working. Plus, people have argued that all of this happened in the 90s when English in Korean songs was a novelty and not the standard plus the internet was not around for international fans (particularly English speaking fans) to hear and call out both the plagiarism and the racial slurs from a non-Black artist.

But should they apologise? In my opinion… absolutely. Creative plagiarism is a massive issue in the music industry, and cases have been fought for less. The idea that someone could straight up CTRL + C, CTRL + V the lyrics for an entire rap verse and cross their fingers and toes that no one would notice is malicious to me. The fact that it is from Black artists adds another layer of insidiousness as it feels like another case of taking from the culture because you like what you see but using it for your own personal gain without reflecting on why it was created in the first place. I am 100% certain that Eric, who had spent his formative years living in Los Angeles, grew up as a teen listening to hip hop and rap, thought it was cool, and when he went to debut in SHINWHA  realising that the people around him had no idea about the artists or songs he would listen to, then used those songs to be part of his raps. And then gave himself a part on the back.

It’s never too late to apologise, really. SHINWHA could come out and say, “hey look it was the 1990s, Koreans didn’t know much about American Hip Hop, we didn’t think anyone would notice, we’re sorry…” and I think people, whilst still side-eyeing them, would be like okay, bet. It is what it is. But the silence is deafening. And that is the most dangerous. I mean, what if all of this comes out to Foxy Brown and she decides to protect her intellectual property (which she is well within her right to do so) and sue? What will the group and the company do then?

There are groups and companies that acknowledge the influence of Black culture on K-Pop though. Bang Shi Hyuk, HYBE’s CEO famously said whilst explaining the inspiration of BTS’s musical stylings: “In terms of music, Black music is the base. Even when doing many genres like house, urban, [...]; there’s no change to the fact that it is Black music.” This was an important statement to make, especially during a time when Black fans were being attacked by others for claiming that the foundation of K-Pop is Black music. But make no mistake: Seo Taiji & The Boys, the group cited as the first ever K-Pop group and the start of K-Pop as a whole, were a K-Hip Hop group. And Hip Hop is a Black music genre.

So there’s that.

Let’s see if anything comes about from all of this. My guess is SHINHWA will keep schtum about it all and wait until it blows over so they can continue like nothing happened.

… But I like surprises.