Vice Magazine: “How YG Crushed 2014”
[스포츠조선 이정혁 기자] America’s VICE magazine spotlighted YG Entertainment with a headline that read, “HOW YG ENTERTAINMENT OWNED K-POP AND CRUSHED 2014.”
With the headline on Dec 16 (local date), it featured YG’s music and the interview with its artists.
It wrote, “YG Entertainment made it tough to count all the ways they got it right. The rapidly diversifying record label’s eighteenth year in business saw it elevate to full-blown conglomerate status, with subsidiary brands like NONAGON marking auspicious debuts in the cosmetics and fashion industries… Uncoincidentally, Louis Vuitton granted YG a massive vote of confidence to the tune of an $80 million investment.
“Most importantly, YG spent 2014 releasing some phenomenal music.”
Introducing interviews with EPIK HIGH who recently released their 8th comeback album, it wrote, ““BORN HATER,” is a triumphant tell-off that sneers in the face of such critics. “
About YG’s new boy group iKON’s BOBBY and B.I from “MIX & MATCH,” it wrote, “Members first appeared last year on YG’s competition show WIN, displaying—with an average age of 17—precocious songwriting chops and perhaps the most militaristically perfect dance moves ever executed by a pop group.”
On WINNER: “Their debut, 2014 S/S, is one of the strongest pop albums out of Asia this year, and Winner remains one of the most exciting groups in Korea for the massive potential that comes with their rare talents.”
TAEYANG was spotlighted for the most loved K-Pop song in 2014, “EYES, NOSE, LIPS”: The 26-year-old R&B singer first came to light as a member of the super massive boy group Big Bang—you may have recently spotted him tearing it up with bandmate G-DRAGON for their club trap smash “Good Boy”—but for his solo career he’s exploring a sound that’s more akin to Miguel and Frank Ocean.”
It moved on to praise AKDONG MUSICIAN who hit the top of the music industry with their debut album “PLAY”: “Demonstrating a fluency in everything from folk to Motown soul to chamber pop, their debut album Play has done much to expand the definition of what an YG artist—and, in fact, Korean pop—can sound like.”
On on 2NE1 who released their 2nd full album “CRUSH”: “Crush delivered on high expectations, full of the group’s trademark genre-blender rave-ups, and preceded an excellent live album … But “Gotta Be You” has to be the single best distillation of 2NE1’s aura, a many-colored tour de force that wrings a surprisingly human rumination from the combined threads of dubstep, trap, and arena EDM.”
It wrapped up the article by writing, “2014 was, in many ways, a troubled time for the Korean music industry, but the acts above carried it with ease. Maybe the wildest thing about YG’s past year, though, is that they seem bound to top it in the next.”
2014. 12. 18.
