One thing I love about kpop is the prevalence of background vocals. Pick almost any kpop song, and you can find vocal harmonies in some part - and not just in the chorus! It really speaks to how kpop producers focus on the little details of song construction, adding understated little touches to create texture in their music. 

Here are a selection of kpop title tracks which I think make great use of background harmonies. None of these songs are ballads, which just goes to show how even in kpop songs that are not vocally driven, vocal harmony can be used really well.

• scream - dreamcatcher
• senorita - (g)i-dle
• feel special - twice
• sherlock - shinee
• run - bts
• gotta be you - 2ne1
• cupid - kara
• not that type - gugudan
• chewing gum - nct dream
• answer - ateez
• four walls - f(x)
• oh! my mistake - april
• every night - exid
• ssfwl - oh my girl
• the chaser - infinite
• on and on - vixx
• that day - lovelyz
• mansae - seventeen
• mr chu - apink
• no air - the boyz
• cactus - a.c.e
• hate - 4minute
• paparazzi - snsd

please don’t @ me if I haven’t put a song you think has great harmonies - I’m not joking when I say that they’re literally everywhere in kpop. (also, I limited myself to one song per group, because otherwise I would have just picked 20 snsd songs and left it at that)

I’ve seen a lot of rhyme scheme analysis’ for Western rappers, but like zero for any kpop rappers. Which I think is unfair because seriously, these guys impress. And I want to talk about Stray kids’ rappers, because as much as people have talked about their amazing skills I think the general kpop fandom doesn’t do a lot to say just why they are so amazing, so I’m here to do that today.

I’ll be doing Jisung too, but today I want to zoom in on a specific verse about my boi Changbin, because he deserves the world.

Which verse? Broken Compass, still one of the best 3racha and k-hip-hop songs ever.

Changbin’s rap in Broken Compass (I’m talking about the original 3racha version, because Mixtape 4 cuts his rap in half) is one of my favorite verses in history, and it comes down to two factors - his absolutely mindblowing internal rhyme scheme and the way he plays with your expectations of rhythmic structure.

I don’t think much has to be said about his rhyme scheme that can’t be described in this picture:

Like dude, leave some talent for the rest of us.

A lot of his rhymes in this verse bleed together too, which is why I agonized a bit on how to do this. I’m sure if you were to analyze this, you might come up with a slightly different rhyme scheme, since Korean words blend together a lot more than English words and therefore sometimes the rhymes are less distinct.

If anything, though, that just makes it even more impressive. Changbin raps this verse really fast, too (I mean, it’s I love dak boy, what do you expect) and with this amount of alliteration and internal rhyming, that ain’t easy. A lot of kpop raps don’t put much thought into rhyme - the fact that Changbin as a trainee was able to do this just makes it all even more mindblowing.

There is a ton of alliteration and consonance in this verse too, which makes it all the more pleasing to listen to.

Another reason why I love this verse is the rhythmic structure of it. A lot of rap has a 16 bar (bar = measure) structure. Usually, these 16 bars will further be subdivided into four phrases of four bars - kind of like four quatrains of poetry, which rhyme at the ends. A four-bar (or eight-bar) phrase is very typical in rap, especially for beginners. It’s an easy quantity of music to grasp.

Well, Changbin’s verse does consist of 16 bars of rap, but he takes the four-bar phrase concept and completely yeets it out the window. Take a look:

(Every ‘|’ indicates a new beat in a bar. Most rap is in 4/4 time, which means four beats per bar, and Broken Compass is this way as well. There seem to be 5 beats in the first bar, but the ‘neon’ is a pick-up note.)

Each different color of highlight is a new phrase from Changbin, but on the right you can count the bars and see how a normal four-bar phrase would work. As you can see, Changbin steamrolls right over that structure. His phrases bleed through phrases, he starts new phrases in the middle of bars - and it all sounds so. damn. good. The way he plays with rhythm and yet still manages to make it pleasing to the ear is completely genius.

Now, I’m not going to say that I’ve gotten everything completely right here. This is just what I have gathered from listening to Broken Compass on repeat. I do think that Changbin’s verse in Broken Compass is one of his best verses, so not all of them are this complex. Still, most of them are just as or almost as impressive as this one. I can not stress how good of a rapper he is. He may not be the best freestyler, but his lyric writing ability is insane.

All the more reasons to appreciate our Binnie!

Look forward to part two, (hopefully) coming soon - Jisung’s rap in P.A.C.E!