emotion

Igor_Dmitriev

0/100 (Remark: a lone number without the full score looks aesthetically better, but the numbers' font size will be too large for the writer's liking on Tumblr.)

"Bad bitch in between your teeth" Wth? How we went from Antifragile to this shit? Hybe should stop give them mediocre songs for TikTok, Le Sserafim deserves better kind of music

rbbaddie

25/100

no one eating from that stinky plate [Face with Tears of Joy]

rickyrickymom

42/100

if i see a single one of you hoes saying 'yOu gUyS jUsT hAtE fUn' i'm going to throw myself out the nearest window. spaghetti is a boring, derivative slop song, and pearlies isn't interesting enough to compensate for it. none of this is fun.

SPAGHETTI // 20

Pearlies // 65

You just fucked up — big time.

You genuinely thought it's fun — sexy bass line, addictive lyrics, j-fucking-hope. Though perhaps fun doesn't translate into positive audience reception and a lasting legacy. Alright, sure, the stream numbers are promising for now. The thing is going viral on TikTok and Instagram. People are shaking their heads to it.

Hybe is on your fucking ass.

Well, they're not actively on a manhunt for you, just on the verge of being banished into the shadow realm until morale improves. Perchance it's a few years, which, again, is a long time in this branch of industry. A group can debut and disband during the period. Idols grow up. And by the time you're back, you realize that you're not getting the call of duty anymore, at least from companies of your former stature.

You better hit the green with the next shot, whatever fuckass it's going to be.

(4 fucks in almost 150 words, way to go.)

Eat it up, eat it, eat it up

—

You have your accolades — credentials, feats — despite the youthful age of twenty-one years old. Your production is one of the best in this ruthless industry for Hybe: ENHYPEN's Go Big or Go Home, to NewJeans' ETA, to LE SSERAFIM's Ash. Call you a nepo baby with your mom's connections, you don't give many fucks about it, not that you search for her name everyday on Twitter. The scores and the praise are up there. That's the protein shake that has been letting you feed your ego upon — awful analogy, isn't it?

There are a few templates that you can borrow from: ANTIFRAGILE, Blue Flame, Eve, Psyche & The Bluebeard's Wife. To make it easy, you can just make another reggaetón, you can just make another nu-disco, you can just make another Baltimore club. Still, you're too far up your own ass to use the resolute formulas that are tried and true from other producers. You need new genres. You need something shiny. You need some undiscovered cadence and melody.

You want to be number one.

(You need a hit as well, but that's kind of the second priority. That kind of undermines the urgency of the earlier paragraphs, sure, but again, you're too arrogant to produce another generic, widely accessible dance-pop.)

(Another parenthesis just to say that HOT is in your On Repeat, despite all the disdain you have towards it, despite all the erroneousness that it represents about the music industry, despite the contradictions it's turning your life into.)

So, to set the scene, here you are, holing up in your room for the last three days, searching for the melody and rhythm to resurrect your career with, to be your royal flush. The deadline is far away, but you're a firm believer in not beating it by a small margin. You tinker and configure the tunes on your Ableton almost frantically. What the fuck is the current trend again?

You experiment a lot, certainly, possibly, even with how scattered your shots are, no matter how the audience reception might prevail as — house, R&B, even jazz is registered on your interface. You squeeze every drop of your originality onto the slate. Every chord is there. Every rhythm is there. Every word is there.

Still, nothing feels right.

You need air.

A session of showering like your dad taught you, and you're ready for a walk in this late-winter-and-early-spring weather. You go ride the elevator down from your floor's hallway. You walk out the door of your apartment building. You meet the chilly wind on the roadside. It reminds you of the spoken word preludes in LE SSERAFIM's EPs and albums for some reason.

Burn the bridge

Burn it all

Maybe it's the chatter of the people passing through.

Each step on the footpath turns the gears inside your head by a few degrees. They've been working together for the music that's pleasant to the ears for years, at least ante-Spaghetti — note after note, scale after scale, arpeggio after arpeggio. Your mind wanders through the possibilities of your career in regard to the next project's success: accomplished, passable, failure. The path in front of you is right there if you could just stop being such a snob about innovation and pioneering K-pop and—

"Producer?" a voice cuts through the air. You stop, frozen for a heartbeat. Not that you're not used to being recognized in public, you're just wary of the unforeseen consequences of talking to someone outside your company — corporate secrets and all. You adore talking about whatever you're doing right now (telling and not showing, a common pitfall, a fix is desired). You're so fucking proud of yourself (emotional dictation, again, a common pitfall).

You turn to the speaker, nonetheless, hands in your pockets that's surely not out of cold.

"Afternoon?"

It's Eunchae — the Hong Eunchae you failed a few months back, at least the version of her in the figment of your imagination; you've never asked her explicitly — out with the band, all five of them, plus two bodyguards.

"Oh, hey, afternoon, girls," you greet with the lilt of a weak duck.

The other members wave at you politely, while the guards just nod.

"You out for a meal?" Eunchae probes.

"No," and you pause. Your stomach growls the moment Eunchae mentions food. You haven't eaten since breakfast, and it's two post meridiem now. The answer changes into indefiniteness, "Maybe?"

Eunchae's lips curve up slightly into a small grin, looking cheerful as ever. "Wanna come with us?"

"Didn't we just eat?" Chaewon prompts, unconvinced.

"We can just stand in front of the restaurant while he eats!" Eunchae proposes. "And I completely forgot about the notion of street food."

The bodyguards and the other members are chuckling, while Chaewon just shrugs. "Should be a few at the square on our way back."

"I mean, I don't wanna be your deadweight. I can eat by myself, I promise," you decline out of considerateness.

—

Alright, maybe eating this kebab alone might be detrimental to your morale. Shit's fucking delicious with seven other people with you to talk about nonsense, five if you don't count the big, muscular bodyguards (why even bother describing them like this).

"Fuck mint chocolate, that's my stance," you state, mouth full of beef and tortilla-like wrap and all sorts of vegetables.

"So uncultured," Yunjin says, almost dismissing of your statement. "Bet you hate cherry Coke as well."