I N N E R C I R C L E

 

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12.

 

I was very, very young when I started rapping. My father is a DJ, and so I emerged myself with all the records that he specifically told me not to touch, “not until you are eighteen”. Being a child as I was, the only reason I could have imagined was that my father didn’t want to share his treasures with me. And I was right, those records were such treasures. I spent hours listening to the language I didn’t understand, the thick and heavy bass that made my heart go numb, the flow of a foreign language that sticked to each other in the most mesmerizing rhythm and rhymes. Before I knew, I started to imitate the way they sounded, with little to no understanding of the meanings.


My parents would only laughed when I performed such songs to them; my father being the always missing person that he was during our dinners would pat my head and tell me not to perform it elsewhere, since the words I just spurred out of my mouth weren’t all that polite. The first English word I learned turned out to be a curse word that was proven helpful in many other circumstances that I’d encountered later on in life.


Now thinking back, it was almost a lifetime ago when I first hung out with the underground crew and attended performances in those small venues of bars and pubs. I was underage, but always managed to sneak in with the help of the hyungs. I wasn’t inclined to perform at first, not until I was eighteen and could properly get in using my real ID. My life as a rapper officially started there. However, it certainly didn’t end there; my path led me to another world, more glamorous, perhaps, but also darker and much brutal. And here I used to think nothing can get darker than a crooked bar with broken backdoors where all the kids got drunk and smoke weed talking , from hookup fantasies to broken education system and politics. Life never failed to prove you wrong, one step astray and you would find yourself walking on thorns in a path to a destination that you had no idea.


After failing to debut the first time and to make a name for myself the second time, here I was again, in the front door to YG building, hoping to be inside one day. And in the future, I would – I was just not sure how long it would take and how far I had to go at that time. The length I would go for a secured future, sadly, was much further than I’d expect. I inhaled deeply before opening the door and walk straight to the reception table where I would be told to wait at the hall until my name is called. “Don’t wander too far, in case the director wants to see you right away,” the receptionist lady would say, “but you can take a look around.” I thought about it, but decided not to. If I get in, this sightseeing tour would be unnecessary, but if I don’t, it would only be just another story to tell. And I honestly didn’t need more stories to tell. I needed one to live. So I sit down quietly at the waiting area, constantly swiping my phone screen and jumping from tracks to tracks. I wondered is this would be similar to the ‘job interview’ I had with my previous company. But this is YG, things are bound to be different. I ended up listening to one of my favorite artists that I sampled from a lot; the familiar lyrics and rhythm helped me calm my nerves to a certain extent.


‘I’m just doin’ what I gotta do,
Flyer than the rest of them
Still got my nikes on’


I quickly got excited and started to shake my head along with the heavy beats, not realizing that there was a guy across the hall in one of those closed doors looking at every of my movements. The day I learned who it was, indeed, was the day I understood how cruel a joke of fate could be. Whoever he was, I didn’t learn his name at that time, was a tall guy around my age. His face was shadowed under the snapback so I couldn’t see clearly, and as I would be told, he belongs to a group of trainees which “you might join if you pass the audition.” When I was called into the office and caught his eyes, there was something so strange about the way he looked at me that I never fully understood. Not even now. We exchanged glance for a split of second before I turned around, and without looking back, for some reasons, I felt that he had not broken his glare. The back of my neck felt like it was burning, but I shook it off quickly as I entered the room at the end of the hall. I almost constantly forgot this fast encounter, as it never occur