Artists, specialty labels, the media, fanbases and communities, put all together, form one scene. And many genres have grown up around these scenes. The same is true in the world of Korean pop music. The further a given genre is from the mainstream in particular, the more the presence of its scene, or a lack thereof, influences the judgment call as to whether the genre is alive or not. What’s more, having a scene also opens the door to musical and commercial development and expansion. Hip hop is emblematic of this phenomenon among music enjoyed by enthusiasts, having rapidly increased in market share. Debate around their internal workings and current health aside, a genre and its scene are locked in a three-legged race together.

With that in mind, the current state of Korean R&B/Soul (Writer’s note: hereafter simply “R&B”) is truly amazing. To be perfectly candid, it’s actually curiously uncommon. The reason is that it completely bucks the trend of genre music developing naturally and independently. Over the past few years, the competency of Korean R&B artists and the quality of their music have increased remarkably. That said, nothing that could’ve been called a scene had developed. It’s a completely different situation from hip hop despite it also being Black music and having similar characteristics. Specialty labels that focus exclusively on R&B were nowhere to be found, and that remains the case; on the media side of things, there were a small number of webzines, but they all disappeared a long time ago. RHYTHMER, which revolves around musical criticism, is still in operation and is the sole webzine to cover hip hop and R&B, but in practice their coverage of hip hop is far more prominent. Although the scale of the fanbases may differ in size as well, in truth, unlike the fanbases we see for genres like rock, hip hop, electronic, trot and jazz, the distinction is very hazy.

It started in the 2010s. During this time, a whole string of singer-songwriters who had absorbed American R&B like a sponge appeared. Each of them pursued a variety of styles and different directions. If I had to choose three artists who were at the forefront of this new wave, they would be JINBO, Junggigo and Boni. JINBO surprised music lovers with his first proper album, Afterwork, where he showed off his strong command of neo soul—a genre born through a combination of elements from 1970s soul, hip hop, rock and jazz—and the kind of hip hop that had come into fashion in the early to mid-1990s. In both the vocals and melodies, the production value of his songs and way they naturally unfolded stood out for the way they broke away from the obvious narratives of other Korean R&B of the time, while his lyrics cast off the naive and melancholy love stories between men and women to instead indirectly express physical love and give encouragement and consolation to the young people of the era, setting his work apart from the rest.

Junggigo, who earlier went by the name Cubic, gained himself a unique foothold as a hip hop vocalist while working mostly with rappers. Since then, he has moved away from hip hop fusion and devoted himself to pure R&B, crossing back and forth between indie and mainstream music. The majority of people might be most familiar with the song “Some” that he did with SoYou, but his true talent can be heard in the songs “Byebyebye” and “Blind.” He returned to the indie world after completing an exclusive five-year contract with Starship Entertainment and worked toward fostering a scene by planning performances for up-and-coming R&B artists and inviting them onto his radio show. Boni is the new identity of Shin Bo Kyung, who rose to prominence singing on 015B’s song, “Losing the Way at the Moment.” After her debut album, Nu One, piqued the attentions of music critics and enthusiasts for its sound that drew on popular R&B of the 1990s and 2000s, she truly established herself as an artist with the release of her album dedicated solely to 1990s R&B, appropriately titled 1990. Above all, she explicitly presented herself as a genre-specific female R&B singer—a rarity in the Korean pop music scene.

These three veterans are still contributing to the improving standards behind Korean R&B’s very real upward momentum with their quality output. But even for a long time after that, it continued to be the case that the quality of the music and the public interest toward it were exactly inversely proportional. However, rather than facing a death sentence, it kept on beating. It wasn’t something that sparkled for a moment and then fizzled out. Despite the large indifference, outstanding works continued to be released. Even though the genre was in danger of disappearing at any minute, the artists practically grabbed it by the collar and lifted it up.

The advent of Zion.T and Samuel Seo in the mid-2010s marked a critical turn of events. Zion.T, whose debut music was strongly influenced by T-Pain, quickly found his own unique sound. His vocal style is unrivaled, characterized by a distinctive, thin tone and moments of intentionally choppy rhythm. His single “Yanghwa BRDG,” released in 2014, was the pinnacle of Zion.T’s style. The song is based on Yanghwa Bridge, which he uses to draw a tear-jerking portrait of his compassion and love for his parents as a symbol of the emotional connection between himself and his father. Above all, the singer’s unique vocals harmonize well with the song’s composition and melody, similar as they are to typical Korean ballads, resulting in R&B music that can’t be heard anywhere else. (Writer’s note: The ballad is not, strictly speaking, so much a genre as a style, but the term is used here, as it is in common parlance in Korea, in order to aid understanding.) Samuel Seo debuted as a rapper on Bigdeal Records—a hip hop label now lost to time—and has since transformed into a full-blown singer-songwriter. He started to flaunt such completely different aspects of himself and such an astonishing spectrum of genres that it’s weird to think it’s the same person. By combining and deconstructing various genres like soul, funk, boom bap hip hop, electro-funk, pop, jazz, and more, he’s made music that has produced many brilliant moments. It wasn’t only his production value: With lyrics that pierced social issues—including those from his own past—his music tackled subject matter that one could scarcely find anywhere else in Korean R&B. His album career, in particular, is resolutely unrivaled. From his first solo album, FRAMEWORKS, to EGO EXPAND (100%) and The Misfit, he released works every bit deserving of the label masterpiece, and the quality of his occasional one-off songs is just as remarkable.

As the latter part of the 2010s approached, the Korean R&B world entered yet another phase. Alternative R&B, already popular internationally, took deep root in Korea, and from some point the progress female artists had been making began to stand out. It was also at this time that the new faces who would go on to lead the current state of Korean R&B appeared in droves. Among those affiliated with alternative R&B, the duo Hippy Was Gipsy and solo artist A.TRAIN are notable. For each, their own worlds drew a slew of praise for their distinct albums. There was a clear difference in the quality of existing alternative R&B and the music of Hippy Was Gipsy, composed of producer Jflow from the hip hop group WAVISABIROOM and newcomer Sep on vocals. The overall sound and mood, for example, while not bright, were more tender than withdrawn, and more inviting than they are distant. They broke free from the shackles of melancholy-soaked vocals, contemplative lyrics and artificially arranged notes and instead struck a balance with free-flowing melodies to produce beautifully original R&B. What’s even more surprising is they were able to put out four full albums of this music in the span of two years (Tree, Language, Empty Hands and Fire).

A.TRAIN reflects on depression and death in sophisticated and sometimes experimental music. To that end, there’s an undercurrent of a very dark and unstable energy. Released after two impressive EPs, PAINGREEN, his first full album, aroused thrilling sensations with an ironic clash of moods like the album’s title suggests. One might point out the bold portraits of death set to the generally lively music, for instance. Had he been a different kind of artist, he might have avoided it or refused to even think about it in the first place. Consider the latter section of the song “NOT THIS TIME,” in which the two parts of the chorus don’t seem to care about the other in the least; to make matters worse, the drums just keep on going like a maverick. Listening to A.TRAIN’s albums is a sort of guilty pleasure—painful to bear witness to the artist’s suffering as you sit, listen and savor all the emotion in the music.

A considerable number of the key figures who led the rapid rise of Korean R&B music over the past five years were female singer-songwriters. They changed the landscape for female R&B artists entirely; previously, they had been relatively relegated to singing almost exclusively. They took charge of not only the melody and lyrics but also album production as well. You’ll find something interesting if you listen to the albums that came out during this time in particular: Male artists used lyrics that put the trendy sound represented by trap soul first, or wrote lyrics like they were transferring the language of rappers to song (Writer’s note: Trap soul refers to a style of music that fuses trap music and soul); unlike them, female artists managed to produce not only in trendy styles but also in other, more varied ones and concentrated on conveying lyrics with messages that dismissed conventional subject matters.

SUMIN is surely among the very best. She’s currently one of the top singer-songwriters and producers in Korea across all genres and regardless of gender. She was predominantly influenced by neo soul in the early days after her debut, but she branched out to master synth-pop, funk and electronic, coming out with a lot of unprecedented music. You can still feel her musical progress and expansion in her first studio album, Your Home. The music consists of a fusion of various genres drawing on Black music, entwining our ears in nonlinear rhythms and dreamy yet refreshing sounds. SUMIN’s vocals express the different emotions that change from song to song exquisitely and underline her inspirations. The artist SOMA adopted the sound of reggae and soul fusion for her debut but has repeatedly shown new sides to her talent with each new album. She’s the type to play her cards close to her chest and only show them one by one. If you give a listen to her two EPs, her mini album and her first full release SEIREN, it’s evident they’re centered around alternative R&B; however, she deviates from trends in all the right places, commanding a falsetto that is perfectly in tune with modern R&B, then suddenly uses her natural voice to superbly cross the line between R&B and pop. SOMA weaves the albums’ concepts based on her personal experiences and indirect experiences from a third-person view, putting a whole different sense of identity on display.

Beginning her career as a member of the music collective Balming Tiger and later signing on with AOMG, sogumm made her appearance with the release of a full two albums within the space of one month. One is Not my fault, made in collaboration with the producer named dress, and the other is Sobrightttttttt, a solo effort composed entirely of songs featuring the artist herself and no one else. The first thing everyone notices in either of her albums is her vocals—they are, simply speaking, unique. With her flattened intonation, her vocals flow out to blur the boundaries between electronic, R&B and ambient music as she passes back and forth between personas on top of the unconventional production technique. They’re sometimes innocent or cynical; at other times, they sound like an incantation. In addition, she has an outstanding ability to write lyrics that capture love, a common topic, without cliché. Though a newcomer, sogumm comes closest to both the present and the future of Korean R&B.

Jclef, who takes hip hop and R&B equally seriously, is not to be missed either. She showed a breathtaking amount of talent as a singer-songwriter and lyricist on her debut album, flaw, flaw. The theme of the album is entirely unique, underpinned by her career as a rapper. Her song “mama, see,” one of the most important singles of 2019, embodies this point. The song touches upon the cross-generational issue of hate crimes against women directly. With a minimalist production style teetering on the border between hip hop and R&B, an unconventional yet pleasing melody, dramatic variations in the second half and more, Jclef allows the listener to experience the great wave of emotion that can rise up just from listening to good music when it’s backed by a powerful message.

Finally, there’s Sunwoojunga. Although she was not considered an R&B artist at the time she released her first album in 2006, Sunwoojunga also performed R&B-based music starting with her second album, It’s Okay, Dear, released seven years after her first. It’s difficult to pinpoint from listening to Sunwoojunga what drives her to pursue the trends she does. She passes between pop- and electronic-infused R&B and seems to follow the typical tropes of pop music, but she warps the whole song at certain critical moments, building excitement or moving forward with complete determination in a nonlinear fashion. Her third album, Serenade, is a masterfully condensed showcase of all her strengths. In addition, Horim, Jung Jin Woo, Simun (of CHUDAHYE CHAGIS, LIMHARA, and Organic Science), Syn, HYNGSN, jerd, from all to human, Rico, The Deep, Yeo Journey, DAMYE, jeebanoff, Hoody, and so many more—each with their own amazing performances and unshakable musical pursuits—are all leading the Korean R&B scene today.

Ever since soul music was first transfused into Korean pop music in the 1970s by Shin Jung-hyeon and his team, there have been more than a few masterpieces—barring a dearth in the 1980s—but R&B, as a genre, remained in an ambiguous position, even as recently as the late 2000s. It’s not wrong to think that R&B belonged strictly to the realm of mainstream pop, and more specifically ballads. There were those who insisted upon authenticity in the genre, like Solid, Yoonmirae (aka T), Brown Eyes and Ra.D; those who were on the border between R&B and ballads, such as Yangpa, J.ae, Wheesung and Lena Park; and some who played a version of R&B(?) that was created in conjunction with the unique situation in the Korean music market, like SG Wannabe. Each segment pursued the genre differently, but the media and the public of the time grouped their music together under one classification. In Korea, R&B was able to carve out a space clearly distinguished from ballads for itself thanks to the artists who produced outstanding works every year despite facing indifference for so long.

There’s nothing guaranteeing a genre will survive in the music world. There’s no obligation on the part of the media to cover or the public to listen to a particular genre. If it gets shelved and disappears, there’s nothing to be done. This is, in fact, a regular occurrence in music industries outside Korea. But here, sometimes the underlying nature and characteristics of a genre become distorted and the quality of the music declines under the media’s excessive and unforgivably weak attempts to popularize it. It might be better off dying out through natural selection. But R&B is in fact once again progressing and is on the rise even today. It can’t be stressed enough that we need to pay much closer attention to, and give more support toward, Korean R&B. I’m not talking about a shallow sense of obligation or elitism. I’m talking about a chance to enjoy another kind of music which is not to be missed.