Thursday, September 1st, 2016

Agust D – Agust D

The penny drops too late as your editor only just realises “Agus” is “Suga” backwards.


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[6.50]

Iain Mew: I hope his tongue technology came with a heavy usage warranty.
[7]

Madeleine Lee: Two years ago, Suga of BTS introduced his “Agust D” persona in the group’s “Killer” cypher track, with a verse showing him at his most crotch-grabbing and outrageous. His proper debut as Agust D is basically a song-length expansion of his “Killer” rap, repeating phrases almost wholesale (“doesn’t matter if I’m wack or fake”) and turning its most triple-skull-emoji boast into the chorus: “Sending you to Hong Kong with my rap, my tongue technology.” He’s without a doubt one of the better K-pop idol producers and idol rappers currently active, but I’ve always been more impressed by the producing than the rapping, and the same is true here. Lyrically, “Agust D” is a manifesto we’ve heard from him before, never mind other idol rappers, and that spelling refrain is exhausting by the seventh or eighth go-around. But the way he’s handled “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World” makes an able foil, chopped and spun into pure triumphant sonics.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Jukeboxes who lament the dearth of rappers with booming voices need to hear Agust’s stentorian huffing and puffing, which owes a debt to Eminem and Linkin Park. I’m not sure what else is going — good horns though — but it sounds important.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Emphasising “S-T-D” as part of your name is Comedy ESL at its most tragic, as if Jay(-)Z had interrupted the chorus of “Izzo” to tell the listener “by the way, I have herpes.” On the other hand “tongue technology” is Comedy ESL at its best. A line that looks that whimsical, when the flow immediately brings to mind a fictional psychotic dictator is a bit of a head-fake, but the fanfare and James Brown sample make all the noise sound like a party.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: “Agust D” is a frenetic and excitable song helmed by a rapper adept enough to sound at home on a beat more American than the average Korean artist is usually awarded. Maybe that’s why it makes me uneasy; Agust D’s proficiency, his speedy, growling flow that seems too skilled for what one would expect a Western artist who isn’t black to possess, his Just Blaze-derived production, reminds me of OG Maco‘s criticisms of the similarly not-quite-K-pop Keith Ape track “It G Ma.” What happens when a boy-band MC doesn’t remain sufficiently boy-band? In some ways, this is a question for all of us who aren’t American: what cultural borrowings are we entitled to, and what foreign history and context must we understand to embark upon them? But it’s also something for Americans to deal with too: what does globalization mean for a cultural hegemon? (Beyond whining about trade pacts, that is.) What does it mean to have the privilege of having your own culture being, in many ways, a global culture — a privilege that extends to all Americans, not just those who are advantaged in their own nation?
[8]

Adaora Ede: I’m not quite sure that I’ll buy what you’re selling if you package it in the form of a repetitive GarageBand loop, but I’d probably be more willing to put it on layaway if you told me that the very generic MIDI beat in the background of your song is actually a distilled version of the big band intro from James Brown’s “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World”. BTS Suga’s mixtape pre-single goes a more antiquated route for song style: who out here is still using heavy brass based samples since Kanye quit it? Agust D shows bravado, unsurprisingly so, as his rapid fire verbiage would not be that unusual of a BTS cypher B-side. In fact, one of the raunchier hooks in this song (“Get turned on by my tongue technology”) is a pretty direct reference to another just as raunchy lyric in BTS’ Cypher Pt. 3. I do like a bit of a boastroduction track (even excusing the production), but render me unimpressed by an inability to distinguish oneself from one’s group. That name change feels jarring for nothing.
[5]

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