Untitled, 2014: A Modest And Autogenous Apology

In Korean pop music, title tracks and singles are usually a marker being laid down by the artist, loudly and proudly proclaiming their return to performance artistry. It’s almost always accompanied with fanfare, bombast, confidence, and excitement. Especially in cases where the comeback has been years in the making. The marketing machines in overdrive with promotions, making its way across radio waves, and hopefully charting as record label and artist expected it would before release.

If any artist in the realm of Korean music would be expected to comeback in such a manner, G-Dragon would most certainly be high on the list. That’s not to say that his catalogue is devoid of substance and meaningful expression, but to deny his penchant for flair and flamboyance would be downright silly. His music videos have combined visually arresting and satisfying imagery with genuinely profound symbolism (Coup d’etat comes to mind). Even outside of the medium of music his wealth of fashion design related endeavors and entrepreneurship, clearly he is not a person afraid of a public persona that could be described by some as ostentatious.

With a setup like that my regular readers (or as I like to call them the real MVPs) will be able to tell from a mile away that their expectations are about to be subverted. Those of you who didn’t, prepare for a shock I suppose?

The majority of his 2017 EP titled “Kwon Ji-yong” (his real name) is a hard-hitting, brutally honest, take-no-prisoners rap album. With song titles such as “Bullshit” and “Middle Fingers Up” it would be hard, looking from the outside, to expect this EP to be anything other than a brash return to form for Korea’s premier rapper.

That is until you reach track 4, ironically titled “Untitled, 2014” that your ears must adjust from the heavy synths and drum machines to a singular piano and a singing G-Dragon, not the rapper we have become so accustomed to over the years. A song composed using common time in the key of E major, with a much more modest and measured tempo of 80 BPM. It is vocally and instrumentally minimalist, but the commitment to the small scale doesn’t stop merely at that, it goes even further and deeper than imaginable.

Initially the music video was meant to use intricately designed sets in multiple locations with various sets, as well as be a 2 day filming process. However it was shot in a single take, with filming finished in less than an hour! Whether or not this is just G-Dragon being drained and exhausted from the rigors of Korean pop star life or a genuine commitment to artistic desires of modesty, we’ll never know. The romantic and artistic idealist in me is going to always go with the latter, so for the purposes of this essay lets hope it was. 

Lyrically at first glance it may read like a fairly derivative break-up song. I’ve seen it described "a letter to a past lover” with G-Dragon "apologizing for his past actions, asking for forgiveness and the chance to see his ex again even if it's just one more time or in his dreams.” And as you might have expected, I have a slightly different interpretation.

I believe the song to be a personal letter to a young Kwon Ji-yong, before the days of the “G-Dragon” everyone knows. Reminiscing strongly for the days before the cameras, the interviews, the recording sessions, and the extracurriculars he didn’t sign up for as an artist in these hectic modern times of interconnectivity. In essence he is essentially apologizing to his past self for the person he has had to become in order to protect himself from those who seek to drag him down. In hopes that one day, when this life of celebrity is but a distant memory, he can get back in touch with who he was before he “signed his life and personality away” so to speak. 

It’s a somber song of poignant grief hoping against having to accept that this person he desires to get back in touch with is gone forever. The only chance he has left to recapture the pieces of himself he has lost is in his next life. Wondering if all he has had to sacrifice to achieve his dream was worth all of the quite literal self-destruction. 

The commitment to minimalism is such that it is even reinforced in the themes and messages that I believe it is communicating. The music video with its backdrop of a partly cloudy sky vivid with the orange of a summer evening, a more unkempt and casual looking G-Dragon, Kwon Ji-yong, this is the “past self” living the way he wanted to be before the influences of the industry he found himself a part of forced him to survive in ways that required different ways of being. Hell, even the physical album release was on a USB instead of the standard compact disc, the flash drive is inscribed with "Kwon Ji Yong, Blood type A, 1988, August 18", the print being handwritten by G-Dragon's mother when he was born.

"I approached this record a bit differently. There are so many things I don't know about myself. So I spent time looking over my past albums and thinking about my life. I've turned 30 this year and am going through an important phase in life. Instead of trying to create a trendy new look and sound, I worked on this album as if it were my last.” The fact that his military service was upcoming undoubtedly had a profound impact on the direction of this record and because of that Untitled, 2014 feels like a culmination of the emotional state of his life at the time. The transition from celebrity to armed forces reminded him of a time where he wasn’t the center of attention, he was just another foot soldier in the journey of life, and in a strange roundabout way, it was a chance to get back in touch with the person he fears he’s lost. A time before he himself, had a title.