Sound check is over and the stage of Vancouver’s historical Vogue Theatre is suddenly lined with people fixing their hair and holding sweat-stained memorabilia in their palms as they anxiously wait their turn to meet Lee Byung-yoon, better known as BewhY.
The rapper, clad in a leather blazer and baseball cap, stands stage-centre. One by one, VIP fans have their photo taken with him before moving on to upload the moment to every hashtaggable platform possible. If instant fame can cause inflammation of the ego, then the antidote is built right in. That is, if it’s true that the faster fame comes, the faster it goes. BewhY’s reality TV glory days are over; this is real life.
When the VIPs dissipate, I’m called backstage by the tour manager where BewhY introduces himself with a handshake. The shirt beneath his blazer is recognizable from the merch table in the lobby: The Movie Star, it reads.
We set up in a dressing room in the venue’s basement. The room is hot—a portable humidifier hums in the corner. His translator sits across from our perch on the couch, though Bewhy admits he is learning English while on tour. He rubs his face. “So, so difficult,” he says.
In support of his third album, The Movie Star, this tour marks his second time in North America. The last instance was in 2017, while still riding the wave of hype from his 2016 victory on Show Me The Money, the über-popular South Korean on-air rap competition. “In this new tour, I really get to see who was with me from the beginning and who wasn’t,” BewhY says through his translator. “Kind of like a more honest audience.”
It’s true. During his show post-interview, the venue is far from packed, but the wild energy of the people there fills up the empty spaces in the room. His presence online is more impressive; in under seven months, BewhY’s music video for “GOTTASADAE” has almost eight million views on YouTube. The video is stunningly epic both sonically and visually, a highly cinematic film with wide shots, hundreds of extras, and endless, evocative symbolism that places BewhY at the centre of his constructed kingdom.
His talent still shimmers in the wake of SMTM5. The reality show first aired in 2012 and became a major player in galvanizing the wave of hip-hop that has surged over South Korea since, in the public and commercial sphere. Yet, the foundation was set in the 90s, with the popularity of “rap dance” group Seo Taiji and Boys, and the underground hip-hop scene that subsequently flourished, with much kudos to a thriving virtual PC community.
In the offline realm that followed, groups met in cafes or clubs to watch and listen to—primarily American—hip-hop videos and albums. Thus, networks of rappers, DJs, and producers were created. Club Master Plan opened in 1997 and maintained an alcohol-free space so that all ages could participate in the creation and consumption of the genre. Over two decades later, the space holds a reputation for being the “birthplace” of Korean rap, though it would perhaps be more accurate to dub it the place where hip-hop was nurtured IRL.
BewhY’s win on SMTM5 is a culmination of the hip-hop genre’s narrative arc in Korea, sloughing off the stereotypical focus on women, drugs, and money. BewhY has been open about his Christian faith and its heavy influence on his music. When I talk to some employees of the venue before the show, they express a sense of relief because this is “nice rap,” and they anticipate the show will presumably attract a more mild-mannered crowd than other shows.
Post-SMTM5 success, BewhY declared that he wanted to be the best rapper in the world—how will he do that, I want to know, and what makes him worthy of such a megalithic title? But he shakes his head when the translator relays my question. The question is reframed, because BewhY has had a change in his mentality.
“When I came off SMTM, as a Korean rapper, I thought I was the best,” he says. The impact his rapping had on other people impelled confidence that outlasted the fire of reality show stardom. “I have a bigger vision and a bigger thought process about how I want to make an impact for my future.”
In 2017, BewhY started his own production company called Dejavu Group. He produces all his own music, and became a mentor and producer for ascending artists—and SMTM contestants—Young B and Khundi Panda, eventually signing them to his label. “You can view rappers as a tree and from the tree, the producer is the roots behind it… If a rapper does not have a producer, the rapper cannot become a rapper. And it goes vice versa,” BewhY says, hands moving animatedly through the air. “I can rap as well, but I’m also going to be producing music and giving out water to trees that need to grow. That’s how I want to become a representative in this music industry, for this generation.”
Every time I watch the GOTTASADAE music video—the haunting precision with which BewhY presents himself as a deific figure wherein the men in his kingdom are under his control—I am further riveted. Translations of the lyrics solidify the imagery: The center will be me / I will be the figure of the god / The world will be in my hands / The glorious crown will take me. At the end, BewhY holds a burning white flag; the white flag is the international symbol of surrender.
Backstage, that pride does not translate. He listens intently and partially explains the concept of the music video (though some of the religious aspects will “take too long to explain”): a horse gallops around a stadium. In Korean, the word for horse, “mal,” holds a dual meaning, the other being akin to “talk.” “It was, in a way, a metaphor for me… it infused both the words “horse” and “talk” and with that it was kind of like, to go around the world and change what I started in terms of rapping and in terms of my symbolism for myself as an artist.”
The small audience is shoved up to the stage, screaming, as BewhY puts on an incredible show. His skills of spitfire raps, changing his flow multiple times within a single song, and maintaining a perfectly impassive expression, are undeniable. Echoes of his statement, “If a rapper does not have a producer, the rapper cannot become a rapper” make me wonder if his new musical ambitions retain the sentiment of his original goal of becoming the best rapper in the world. He is a self-contained unit.
More than once, BewhY spends long stretches conversing with the crowd in Korean. He’s charming—they laugh and respond constantly, and the rapper poses in different places on stage while people take long-distance selfies with him. Then, someone near the front yells, “BewhY the legend!” in English. BewhY points to the man, looks out to his fans from the stage above them and says into the mic, “Make some noise for him!” The crowd screams.
