Textual Analysis of "Mic Drop (feat. Steve Aoki) by BTS
International boyband, BTS, has taken the world by storm over the past few years. Their wide success came mostly from an interactive fanbase and record smashing music videos, including a popular collaboration with U.S. based producer Steve Aoki on a remix of their song, ‘Mic Drop.’ Steve Aoki took the song from a basic beat with spitting, harsh lyrics directed to their haters and added a bass beat that matched the sharp bite of the lyrics the boys were singing and rapping. On November 24th, 2017 BigHit Entertainment released a music video on YouTube for this song, directed by Woogie Kim, depicting the group in an interrogation room. Kim described his goal for this music video in an interview with The Korea Herald saying, “…I wanted to show viewers how they [BTS] manage to escape the room and free themselves with music (Hong).” The dance-filled video draws heavily on elements of the hip-hop genre, including flashy shots, street-style outfits, and visual and metaphoric symbols of both rebellion and confidence. These images being depicted throughout the video challenge the ideas of cultural appropriation and race identification as well as critiquing certain forms of government by glorifying others. In this paper, I will argue that both BTS and Woogie Kim are critiquing typical societal structure and governmental power while also appropriating black culture through typecasting certain elements of the hip-hop genre.
Within the first few seconds of the music video and before the music even starts, three important images flash: a security camera, an interrogation room where all seven boys sit in various states of apathy, and a lot of microphones. All of these symbols play a part in representing aspects of governmental control or a defiance against governmental power. A security camera is a common indication of surveillance – a way for the “outside”, or those in power, to gain insider access to a certain spot. By using images of security cameras in the music video, surveillance is being questioned. Who, in this case, has the power? Who is on the outside looking in? And who is being observed? If the viewer takes a closer look at the image in the security camera, BTS themselves are the ones being watched. They are stating here that they are constantly under the view of the public eye, being watched as someone’s entertainment, with the main goal being to keep the group complacent and compliant. As musicians and as artists, BTS is addressing the culture surrounding surveillance in the music industry, including the way that they are constantly being videotaped, followed by news sites, and surrounded by cameras in their everyday life (Iwicka). The constant inspection on their every move is something that they are calling out here as wrong, that they should have the opportunity to escape from the scrutiny of constant viewership and live their lives without worry of someone capturing their every move. It is common practice in Korea for celebrities to be marketed to the public as commodities, much like in any country. However, K-idols are crafted in a special sort of training including “singing, dancing, acting, modeling, and foreign languages (Fedorenko).” In his piece on Korean-Wave Celebrities Between Global Capital and Regional Nationalisms, Fedorenko sums it up best: “The best trainees join idol groups, which are tied to the company with multi-year contracts, live in company dorms, and continue the demanding regime of training, now combined with performances (Fedorenko).” He goes onto explain in this piece how these idols are tasked with the responsibility to represent South Korea as patriotic citizens and adhere to the standard beliefs and practices of typical Korean behavior. This complacency and false imitation are what BTS is fighting against in their video. They call out the idea that this constant watch of the country, government officials, fans, and other countries as something that is negative in their life and toward their craft. This is not the only place visually where a security camera is shown, but also in the middle during a rap verse by the member RM, a handful of the boys are dancing in a room filled with tape recorders, televisions, files, cameras, and other devices of recording. These also serve to symbolize BTS’ rejection of the industry’s intense gaze upon the group as idols.
The setting of BTS’ MIC Drop music video is also unique to serving as examples of both my arguments of the video’s critique of government and society as well as cultural appropriation. I will focus now on the aspect of government, explaining how especially the interrogation room where the boys are located a few times, calls out again the issues this group has with the industry they work for and the brand South Korean government has created from this industry. The interrogation room is a common symbol for the justice system at work in a society. Here, BTS is the one answering the questions, the ones being interrogated, once again by all the people who have their eyes on them. This is a verbal, oral representation of the kind of surveillance they are calling out – proving that the words they say are just as important to the audience as their actions. This has many layers of meaning because as artists, their songs, which are auditory entertainment, is how they are famous and make money. The lyrics of their songs are what people pay attention to, making them yet another example of the audiences’ watchful eye on them. But the groups words outside of their songs are just as important. What strikes me the most about the interrogation room set up is the way that they boys are positioned visually to look as if they are at some sort of press conference or media event. Their words are being forced here to satisfy an audience, but BTS is trying to claim that that is not what they stand for. They do not want to be a group that says what people want to hear all the time. They want to be a group that is known for calling out the people that need to be called out. As if full circle, this also happens to be what their lyrics are explaining. “Careful of your feet, careful of what you say, somebody stop me, I’m boutta pop off (Appendix 1).” These lyrics make up the chorus of the song which is all about calling out the haters. And the best way to do this? Through a MIC Drop moment.
Microphones are another symbol, referencing in this music video the idea of free speech. The microphone is both used specifically for musicians, who might be performing and need their audience to hear, as well as a device through which any public speaker can give an address and pass along a message. In this music video, BTS is doing both. Microphones are the avenue through which BTS is able to break through the standards placed on them and speak their own truth and message. This is a bold statement to make as an artist and even more so as an idol group in Korea. However, time and time again BTS has proved to a global audience, as well as a domestic one, that this self-expression and departure from typical standards is both more successful and more rewarding. The expression “mic drop” is used to emphasize that a particularity good point has been made in a speech or performance and this song serves as both a speech and a performance. At the end of the music video, lead rapper Suga is shown literally “dropping” the microphone, in order to show that 1.) the song is over, 2.) they have delivered a message that was worthy of being listened to, and 3.) they are finished with accepting the standards of the industry and they have no more to say on the matter. The only question left here is, did people listen?
These themes that are being prioritized in this music video are ones of self-narration and rebellion (Dreier). BTS is attempting to speak on their own behalf about issues that they find in society and that they are working towards changing. These two themes happen to be major components of the genre that this song is emulating: hip-hop. Korean hip-hop music has seen a growth over the years, just as much as hip-hop and rap music has become popular culture in the United States as well. However, when these two genres of Korean pop music and hip-hop collide, where is the line drawn between what is simply a creation of a new genre/the appreciation of a genre and what is culturally insensitive to the races that built hip-hop music from the experiences of their own struggles and oppression? Hip-hop music as a genre grew from the expression of young African-American and black people to tell the story of their history. The genre is typically depicted through imagery of rebellious acts like loud music and graffiti, as well as stylistically in terms of street style, city clothes and bright colors (Watkins). Many of these elements can be found in the BTS MIC Drop music video, with a bit of a modern spin. I would like to focus on the BTS member’s outfits and hairstyles, the setting, and return to the theme of critique on society and government, to prove that this music video appropriates black culture by passively using tropes of the hip-hop genre as an aesthetic.
In her piece about Moving from Cultural Appropriation to Cultural Appreciation, Hsiao-Cheng Han explains that cultural appropriation is an “unavoidable action. (Han)” She states, “When people within a dominant culture use objects from another culture without thorough research, and remain ignorant of the cultural context, cultural appropriation takes place (Han).” This is what is happening within the BTS music video, especially in terms of style choices concerning the members’ looks. The main rapper RM, is depicted in this music video with his hair twisted, as if to create a texture of fine curls or coils. This is not uncommon to see in media today of people who are not black or do not have fine curls or coily hair, attempt to adapt their hair (usually straight) into box braids, cornrows, or other hairstyles for black hair. There is a double standard that is being drawn out here, that while black hair is typically considered as “unkempt,” “unprofessional,” or needing to be changed in some way for the professional life, it is completely acceptable to be used when attempting to emulate the ideals of the hip-hop music genre (Thompson). By styling hair in order to achieve a certain aesthetic for a music video, BTS is appropriating black culture without any regard to the repercussions that might have on their black fans or on black people in general (Oh). While BTS’ clothing choices are less direct in their appropriation of race, they still borrow from the typical trope of street style clothes in typical hip-hop music videos: baggy jackets and pants, bucket hats, and headbands/bandanas. All of these different outfit changes still serve to fit the aesthetic of what a hip-hop music video is “supposed” to be. These stylistic choices also bring up the idea of a “Koreanized” hip-hop genre, considering that while still borrowing from the cultural aspects of the genre, there is a creation of an almost new genre as more Korean artists are attracted to the hip-hop scene. This really brings up a question of authenticity, which Marina Terkourafi describes as “a kind of ‘genetic inheritance’ that is able to generate the ever-changing understandings of authenticity that run through and link together all of hip hop (Fendler).” Authenticity is a big factor, because the definition is so subjective, but it is what holds the line between appropriation of culture and the creation of something new based on one’s own experiences.
Returning back to the settings where this music video takes place, such as the interrogation room, there are a few other locations that are depicted in BTS’ music video. The boys go from dancing on the tables in the interrogation room, to dancing in what seems like an empty, abandoned room, which based on the doors and balconies could be best described as an abandoned prison. When RM’s verse hits, the location switches again to outside, surrounded by police cars, flashing lights of an ambulance and eventually to cars that are being blown up. Here, there is imagery of once again governmental control, such as the justice system of the interrogation room and the representation of police force. While this still plays into the challenging of authority and governmental control like I described before, I also believe that these symbols contribute to the stereotyping and association of hip-hop and rap music against the authorities of government. In the United States, where hip-hop and rap music saw it’s rise from black communities, there is racial tension between police and black people. By using these images in a hip-hop song, BTS is playing into these stereotypes and inadvertently typecasting black people to be pitted against the law. By continuing to associate hip-hop music with this idea of total anarchy against the government, black communities will continue to suffer the consequences of these harmful stereotypes.
It must be said before I conclude with my findings that this music video could be decoded by someone else in a completely different way, depending on gender, race, and a myriad of other factors. Stuart Hall’s piece on encoding and decoding highlights the way that the production of a media product may have had a completely different mean then they way it is received by an audience (Hall). It may be found that black BTS fans may argue that they see this music video not as appropriating, but rather as relatable to their own experiences, life, and interests (Oh). Someone of a different gender may choose to look at this music video through the lens of dance or look, rather than see this as a statement against industry and one that promotes a certain person’s narrative at the expense of someone’s race. The director himself had a vision for this music video to project a sense of BTS as a group that solidified them as artists that are not to be messed with. Woogie Kim may have encoded the project as such but as a media text should, BTS’s MIC Drop music video leaves room for interpretation and opinion.
In conclusion, I found that by looking at this music video from Korean boyband BTS, that there are some clear messages that this video is conveying to their audience. The first being that the normal structure of government and society must be challenged when celebrities’ voices are being cut out. The second being that by taking standard tropes of the hip-hop genre, BTS is partaking in cultural appropriation. The symbols, settings, lyrical content, and aesthetic all fit to defend these theories. For a group that is so widely popular on the global sphere, it is important that they begin to take a look at the different ways their content might be decoded in order to ensure that they are adhering to a standard of excellence and knowledge. As fans, we all want to know that our favorite bands are inclusive, respectful, and knowledgeable about different cultures and ways of life, so that we are more comfortable in the fan world. In the past two years, BTS has done a great job of educating themselves on topics such as cultural appropriation and making sure that all of their fans feel represented but not ostracized. It is a lot of responsibility and power to be in the public eye the way that BTS is right now, especially in America as a minority, but by making steps to be progressive like this, BTS continues to shine in comparison to the other idol groups of Korea – helping them stand out overseas.
Works Cited
Dreier, Peter, and Dick Flacks. "Roots of Rebellion: Music and Movements: The Tradition Continues." New Labor Forum, vol. 23, no. 2, 2014, p. 99.
Eberhardt, Maeve, and Kara Freeman. "'First Things First, I'm the Realest': Linguistic Appropriation, White Privilege, and the Hip-Hop Persona of Iggy Azalea." Journal of Sociolinguistics, vol. 19, no. 3, 2015, pp. 303 - 327.
Fedorenko, Olga. "Korean-Wave Celebrities Between Global Capital and Regional Nationalisms." Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 18, no. 4, 2017, pp. 498 - 517.
Fendler, Ute. "ROOTS and ROUTES: Hip-Hop From South Korea." Kritika Kultura, no. 29, 2017, pp. 188 - 213.
Hall, Stuart. “2. Encoding and Decoding Stuart Hall.” Remodelling Communication, 2012, pp. 48–62., doi:10.3138/9781442699717-005.
Han, Hsiao-Cheng (Sandrine). "Moving From Cultural Appropriation to Cultural Appreciation." Art Education, vol. 72, no. 2, 2019, pp. 8 - 13.
Hong, Dam-young. “[Herald Interview] 'Mic Drop' Director Hopes BTS Breaks Free of Social Fetters.” The Korea Herald, The Korea Herald, 28 Nov. 2017, http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20171128000813.
Iwicka, Renata. "Every Breath You Take: Sasaeng Fans." At the Interface / Probing the Boundaries, vol. 99, 2018, pp. 125 - 147.
Oh, David C.. "Black K-Pop Fan Videos and Polyculturalism." Popular Communication, vol. 15, no. 4, 2017, pp. 269 - 282.
Thompson, Cheryl. "Black Women, Beauty, and Hair As a Matter of Being." Women's Studies, vol. 38, no. 8, 2009, pp. 831 - 856.
Watkins, S. Craig. Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of Movement. Beacon Press, 2005.
Appendix 1
[Verse 1: J-Hope] Yeah, who says my spoon is dirty? I don’t care, when I grab the mic, I have several gold spoons Several uncooked steaks over there make me mad Once again, I’ll chew you all up, on the night of the stars Center of World Business 1st on the recruitment list, sold out This class is not common, enjoy this value Bad odors with good scents are against the rules Mic mic bungee
[Verse 2: Suga] Mic mic bungee Bright lights, going forward You thought I was gonna fail but I’m fine, sorry Sorry, "Billboard" Sorry, "worldwide" Sorry mom, your son’s too hot I’m being a good son in place of you No cons in our concerts I do it, I do it, you’re a bad ratatouille If you’re jealous, sue me Sue it
[Pre-Chorus: V, Jungkook, Jimin, Jin] Did you see my bag? (where?) Did you see my bag? (where?) It's hella trophies and it's hella thick (hella thick, hella thick) What you think 'bout that? (well) What you think 'bout that? (well) I bet it got my haters hella sick (hella sick) Come and follow me, follow me with your signs up I'm so firin', firin', boy, your time's up Keep on and runnin' and runnin' until I catch up How you dare? How you dare? How you dare?
[Chorus: Jungkook, RM & Suga, Jimin, RM & J-Hope] Another trophy, my hands carry 'em Too many that I can't even count 'em (turn it up now) Mic drop, mic drop Careful of your feet Careful of what you say Somebody stop me, I'm boutta pop off Too busy, you know my body ain't enough (turn it up now) Mic drop, mic drop Careful of your feet Careful of what you say
[Verse 3: RM] Baby, watch your mouth (mouth), it come back around (-round) Once upon a time (time), we learnt how to fly (fly) Go look at your mirror, same damn clothes (git) You know how I feel, damn happy (turn up) How many hours do we fly? I keep on dreamin' on the cloud Yeah, I'm on the mountain, yeah, I'm on the bay (pop) Everyday we vibin', mic drop, baam
[Pre-Chorus: Jungkook, V, Jimin, Jin] Did you see my bag? (where?) Did you see my bag? (where?) It's hella trophies and it's hella thick (hella thick, hella thick) What you think 'bout that? (well) What you think 'bout that? (well) I bet it got my haters hella sick (hella sick) Come and follow me, follow me with your signs up I'm so firin', firin', boy, your time's up Keep on runnin' and runnin' until I catch up How you dare? How you dare? How you dare?
[Chorus: Jungkook, RM & Suga, Jimin, RM & J-Hope] Another trophy, my hands carry 'em Too many that I can't even count 'em (turn it up now) Mic drop, mic drop Careful of your feet Careful of what you say Somebody stop me, I'm boutta pop off Too busy, you know my body ain't enough (turn it up now) Mic drop, mic drop Careful of your feet Careful of what you say
[Bridge: RM] Haters gon' hate Players gon' play Live a life, man Good luck
[Outro: All] No need to see each other ever again, this is my last goodbye Nothing more left to say, don’t even apologize No need to see each other ever again, this is my last goodbye Nothing more left to say, don’t even apologize Look closely, look at your pathetic self We shoot up just like Coca-Cola Your corneas will be so shocked Cause we’re just so cool