Kpopalypse Nugu Alert Episode 13: pinkfunniAde, Yaya, Nutaz

Hi there cao ni mas, and welcome to another episode of:

Your favourite series of music that nobody besides me and maybe three other people give a fuck about is back!  Read on to listen to even more nugus for your nugutainment!



Every time I do an episode of Nugu Alert, I try to tie the videos together into some kind of theme.  The list of themes so far have been:

Episode 1: Introduction to Nugu Alert
Episode 2: Female-fronted bands
Episode 3: Awkward dancing
Episode 4: Drama MVs
Episode 5: Genuinely cheap MVs
Episode 6: Ballads
Episode 7: Female rappers
Episode 8: Drug-influenced MVs
Episode 9: Budget cinematography
Episode 10: Camera filters and effects
Episode 11: Yoloswag trap
Episode 12: Odd musical choices

This time I thought I'd bring you something different and instead of collecting MVs under a particular theme, I'm just going to give you three songs that I think are not complete shit, and that maybe I think you should listen to because maybe you might like them too.  Or maybe you'll think they're shit but then I don't really care that much, Nugu Alert posts have always been the least popular type of post that I do on Kpopalypse blog but I don't blog for popularity, I blog because I feel like it and in this case also to please my personal nugu fetish.  So I guess "I would probably listen to these songs instead of lick a bulldog's ass" is the theme here.  Usual rules apply: less than 20000 hits, your international k-pop loving friends don't care - but I do.

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pinkfunniAde - Shez Punk

Let's start off with pinkfunniAde and this great melodic pop-punk song.  K-pop fans raised on a diet of singers with super-pristine k-pop voices where every characteristic trace of human expression is electronically smoothed over into a generic mush of corporate-rubber-stamped blandness that sounds like an averaged-out computer algorithm of the last 15 years of k-pop singers mixed together might find the female singer's voice here to be an initial barrier to digging this song.  However punk doesn't value "pristine perfect vocal" and never has - in punk music the fact that you may or may not be all that talented but still have the drive to give it a go anyway despite any shortcomings you might possess is the whole point.  It's also worth noting as well that for all the singer's rough edges and out-of-tune notes this group and this song are both still way, way over on the "pop" end of the "pop/punk" spectrum.  Settle down vocalfags because this is not exactly The Exploited, it's just a nice harmless piece of music that rocks maybe a little harder than whatever pussy shit your friends listen to.  Also the girl is cute in a "you're definitely not my type but you kind of get over the line anyway because of your attitude" sort of way, and that doesn't hurt my appreciation levels because I just have to be that kind of objectifying bastard.

YouTube views at time of writing: 1330
Notable attribute: feminine hygiene products displayed in a way that is not gimmicky or playing off on any gross-out/humour factor
Nugu Alert rating: extreme

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Yaya - Ghost

I've known about Yaya for years and I always had the impression that she was mildly successful in Korea or something, but judging by the amount of hits on her YouTube videos I'd say that either I'm wrong, or her bread and butter is just more in another part of the 186 things she does with her time, like web designing, music video directing, column writing, fashion styling, ben-wa bead crafting or whatever.  Yaya has a pretty pro-looking website with some nice pictures and shit so she's at least pretty good at that part, and the song here is decent too, some kind of trip-hop/tango song with an odd almost stoner-rock feel with its layers of feedback and noise, like French doom band Monarch having a crack at playing Portishead songs on an accordion.  It works well enough and it's actually really nice and did I mention the elephant in the room which is TITS and goddamn is she putting them out there.  There are more boob shots in this video that you could possibly wish for, and before anyone gets started on any "oh look she's being exploited how dreadful" bullshit concern-trolling bandwagoning pseudofeminist claptrap remember that Yaya is an independent artist who directed this fucking video herself so you know she's 100% cool with everything that's going down here.

YouTube views at time of writing: 2925
Notable attribute: possibly the lowest amount of YouTube views ever in history for a video containing this much cleavage
Nugu Alert rating: extreme

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Nutaz - Whatever Happens, I Will Try To Achieve My Dream

T-ara, DIA, SPEED, The Seeya, Gangkiz, F-ve Dolls... Nutaz.  One of these things is not like the others.   MBK's best kept secret is hip-hop nugus Nutaz and they could be possibly the most nugu group alive.  People who think of MBK as a "smaller k-pop label" need to remember that MBK is a subsidiary of CJE&M which itself is a subsidiary of CJ Group, a big-ass corporation with fingers in everything from pharmaceuticals to home shopping and that pretty much owns the other 33% of South Korea that Samsung and LG don't own.  It's a much larger business entity than SM and YG in terms of both the scope of the entire organisation and the raw amount of money involved, so for Nutaz to maintain such a consistently low profile while being hooked up to one of Korea's most sprawling corporate entities surely makes them the nugu masters.  What's even more astonishing is that they're keeping this low profile with the kind of a-little-bit-rough-but-not-really-that-rough-so-don't-get-scared-kids mid-tempo DJ-Premier-on-a-lazy-day hip-hop shit that Korea usually can't get enough of.  Actually it's better than most of that stuff, the beat here is pretty damn decent so maybe that's the problem - the shit I like never seems to chart any good so I guess too much quality in music doesn't sit that well with Koreans who would probably rather be listening to some weak-ass ballad bullshit and typing paragraphs about things like "resonance" and "nasality" like anybody with a life gives a fucking shit.

YouTube views at time of writing: 2234
Notable attribute: like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, we'll never truly know what's in those backpacks
Nugu Alert rating: off the chart

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That's it once again for another episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!  Oh, and thanks to all the caonimas who are sending in Nugu Alert submissions to me via Twitter and ask.fm, I appreciate it!  If I don't reply to your submission, take that as a good sign, as I tend to only reply to the submissions that I definitely won't use in future episodes.  Anyway thanks for reading and Kpopalypse Nugu Alert will return in the future!