Chapter Text
Pitchfork | The Most Trusted Voice in Music.
Runch Randa
The Cypher EP
by: Min Yoongi
Contributor
Rap / Pop/R&B
2.3
On this record, 19-year-old South Korean rapper Runch Randa packs a do-it-yourself feel into his attempt to crash the party of the Western industry’s new-artist bottleneck — but doesn’t quite make it in the door.
Stop the presses: another hyperprolific under-25 SoundCloud rapper has released a mixtape.
Well, start the presses back up, actually. This is exactly how I plan to make my millions.
The Cypher EP desperately hopes to sit at the juncture between the genius of Kanye West’s Yeezus and the unexpected breakthrough of Epik High’s Swan Songs, ideally serving as a body of work that showcases why we should have been paying attention to Runch Randa all along.
But I’m not convinced that this is his big break; in fact, I’m not even convinced that Runch Randa has done much more than break down the structures of rap into a clinical, childlike show-and-tell. Melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, form. Nearly every track on Cypher sounds more like a music theory audiobook than a sound thesis.
From a production standpoint, though, Runch Randa shows a truly notable kind of promise. He is boasting a hip hop historian’s lexicon and a student-budget recording setup, and this underground flair meshes nicely and authentically. It’s a shame that his immature lyricism doesn’t quite match up to his Cubase skills. To evoke a popular theorem, if you sat a chimpanzee down at a typewriter, they’d come up with “버려 (Throw Away)”’s “Got an automatic dick / Got an automatic stick” far faster than most other producers in the business could generate Runch Randa’s nuanced beats.
This dissonance stands out as a motif throughout the entire runtime. There’s a marked difference between inspiration and mimicry, between respectful leaf-taking and careless repackaging. While he mostly lands his attempts at artistic nods to the likes of Post Malone, Drake, and Nas, Runch Randa spends much of the EP flailing on these wasted beats rather than giving the listener anything crisp and clean to sink their teeth into. He plainly assumes that his audience is similarly versed in 1990s American hip-hop (and that this will be good enough to guarantee his success), but in reality, his audience seems to be a conference room full of largely unimpressed, pop-oriented Korean entertainment executives. It’s no wonder that his review packet was found shoved at the bottom of the pile on my desk.
In short, Runch Randa has a lot of growing up to do.
-
When Namjoon drags himself behind the counter at his shitty part-time job, Hoseok’s ever-cheery voice is already ringing in his ears.
“Did you see it?” He’s white-knuckle-gripping the countertop, nearly bending himself in half over it. “Namjoon, tell me you fucking saw it—”
“See what?” Namjoon grumbles, fumbling with the lid of his travel mug.
Hoseok’s nearly launching himself over the counter, waving his phone in Namjoon’s face. “Pitchfork!”
Namjoon sighs, shaking his head. Hoseok’s always five steps ahead of him in the mornings, probably because he actually wakes up when his alarm goes off, unlike Namjoon, who just sort of vaguely experiences things until somewhere around lunchtime. “I’ve barely had time to check my texts, man, I—”
“Okay, well,” Hoseok blurts, “Get this.”
“Mm?”
“Min Yoongi wrote a review for Cypher.”
Namjoon stops fucking with the lid on his coffee mug.
It feels like he stops breathing, actually.
“What?”
“Min Yoongi, you know? The Korean guy who writes for the—”
“Of course I fucking know who Min Yoongi is, Hoseok, show me the fucking website—”
Namjoon’s blood is shock-cold in his veins.
There’s no way.
There’s no way that Min Yoongi, the most discerning and reputable writer at Pitchfork in Namjoon’s personal opinion, wrote a review of his EP.
How the hell did he get wind of Namjoon's entirely-unhyped SoundCloud upload? Was it fate? Was it God? Either way, Namjoon’s entirely ready to subscribe to whatever personality cult could belong to the guy that dropped his album link in Min Yoongi’s inbox. Should he track him down and send him a bottle of wine?
The thing is, Namjoon’s a nobody. He’s a work-by-day, record-by-night rookie who can barely get a consistent open-mic slot in the underground scene. Hip hop is already so fucking invisible in this city compared to Min Yoongi’s territory — how had Namjoon’s untested offerings managed to catch the light, to be beamed over the ocean to reach some tall, shining tower in New York City?
Namjoon’s breath is coming in short, frantic bursts.
This could change everything for him.
Hoseok finally manages to thrust his phone into Namjoon’s shaking hands, booking it around the counter to crowd against Namjoon’s shoulder. “I haven’t read it yet, I just freaked the fuck out when I saw it in my notifications—”
In what feels like the most limitless stretch of time imaginable, Namjoon drops his eyes down to the screen.
He scans the header, the title, the byline—
It’s real.
That’s his name, and that’s his album title, and that’s Min Yoongi, and this is Pitchfork—
Something like hope blooms bright in his chest.
But when he starts to read, his blood turns from ice-cold to boiling in about three seconds flat.
“‘The Cypher EP desperately hopes to sit at the juncture between the genius of Kanye West’s Yeezus and the unexpected breakthrough of Epik High’s Swan Songs, a body of work that showcases why we should have been paying attention to Runch Randa all along,’” Namjoon reads slowly, translating the general gist of it for Hoseok.
“It’s a little mean, isn’t it?” Hoseok says warily.
Namjoon sets his jaw, trying his damndest to take it in stride. “Well, yeah, but Min Yoongi’s always a little mean. It’s probably not all like this. It’s — this is just constructive criticism.”
Namjoon’s mood sours even further, though, as he scans further down the page, translating a few choice quotes aloud.
Nearly every track on Cypher sounds more like a music theory audiobook than a sound thesis.
To evoke a popular theorem, if you sat a chimpanzee down at a typewriter…
In short, Runch Randa has a lot of growing up to do.
“Shit,” Namjoon hisses. “How is he going to drop a better pun in this article than I did in my entire fucking EP — Hoseok, seriously?”
“Yeah, I know,” Hoseok says almost reverently, peering over Namjoon’s shoulder again. “‘A sound thesis’. Like, a thesis that holds water, but also a thesis on the nature of sound? This guy is really—”
“Shut the fuck up, dude,” Namjoon mutters without any real bite, blacking out the screen with an overly-aggressive click of the side button. He hands the phone back and hopes against hope that no one in the underground scene will come across the article between now and the battle he’s preparing for, but that would require some amount of luck, so Namjoon’s not feeling especially good about his chances.
“Hey, at least it’s constructive criticism, right?” Hoseok tries, cheery smile right back in place already.
Namjoon just glares at him.
-
Later, once Namjoon has left work and swung by the convenience store for his entirely-too-convenient nightly dinner of cup noodles and cheap beer, he takes himself on a solo bike tour along the Han River.
It’s one of the only things to do in his neighborhood that doesn’t take a sizeable chunk out of his meager paycheck — and one of the only things that grants him enough space to actually hear himself think — so he finds himself taking advantage of it more and more these days.
Tonight, the wind rushing off the river takes his breath away like it always does, but it feels frigid and biting instead of fresh and bracing. He chokes on it, swallows it down, lets it rush through him as he pedals faster, faster, too fast — and when he skids to a stop and lets the metal frame of his bicycle clatter into the dewy, dense grass at the bank, he falls with it.
“Fuck,” he says with feeling, wincing as the dampness from the dirt soaks through to his shaking knees.
In all his time as a musician, all the ups and downs, he’d never had a peak and a valley quite like this, rising high and plummeting low within seconds of each other, leaving him feeling weak and scooped-out and seen and so fucking embarrassed.
He flexes his hands in the grass, bringing his fingers to his face to feel the chill of the dew against his skin, searching for some kind of grounding in the earth itself. His first instinct is to lash out, to be fucking angry, to curse Min Yoongi and Pitchfork and all the other arrogant pricks that work there, to call up Hoseok and shout at him, demand to know why he didn’t tell him that his EP wasn’t worth shit (he’d heard it first!), to track down whoever sent Min Yoongi that link and let him know what a stupid fucking move it was.
But he can’t do that. It’s not Min Yoongi’s fault that Namjoon’s very first try at releasing material was a strike-out, can’t fault him for doing his fucking job. It’s not Hoseok’s fault that he could sense how much Namjoon needed his support, can’t fault him for being a friend instead of another heartless critic. It’s certainly not some random person’s fault for just sharing a link.
It’s Namjoon’s own fault for trying to be someone that he’s not.
The thing is, Namjoon knows that Min Yoongi’s right.
He’s not making the right kind of music.
He knows that his work sounds contrite, or predictable, or too much like somebody else’s. He knows this.
But, years ago, he’d figured that if he wanted to make it, he’d need to play somebody else’s game.
The music industry, a faceless, soulless machine that he didn’t understand then and only barely understands now, has things it likes and things it doesn’t like, and Namjoon made the shameful, sacrificial promise to swear fealty to it — for just long enough to get a leg up, to get some money, to get some breathing room, to get a record deal if he’s lucky.
And then, then and only then, he might be positioned well enough to start making the music he actually wants to make.
But this is now. This is the shitty part. This is the before, when Namjoon has to scrape from the bottom of the bowl for absolutely everything: money, inspiration, food, and enough energy to get him out of bed and out into the unforgiving rush of the city every morning.
He knows he’s not entitled to it, his after, but Namjoon can’t help but think that this could have gone so differently if the universe had just given him more time.
It’s not fair that what fell into Min Yoongi’s hands was Namjoon’s very first, very unpolished experimental mixtape. But, he thinks, it’s also not fair that he’s mad about it. Most people never get this, he tells himself. All those people you go up on stage with night after night — they may never get to see their names in print, but you do. You do. How does that feel?
He should be grateful that Cypher got picked up at all, even if it got trashed, even if he’ll get his ass handed to him by every guy he battles with from now until the end of time.
But, because he’s human, it still hurts.
Namjoon gives himself ten more minutes, lets himself snivel into the sleeve of his jacket, lets the chilly air scorch his windpipe as he sucks in deeper and deeper breaths.
Then, he picks up his bike, takes himself home, and turns on the computer.
When the sun comes up, he saves his Cubase file, drops his noise-canceling headphones in the computer chair, and snatches a piece of paper off the printer.
When Namjoon tacks it up above his desk, Min Yoongi’s review doesn’t burn in his chest like it used to.