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omonatheydid
Interview for InStyle
[MAY 2015 – INSTYLE] CHEETAH – INTERVIEW
Early in the morning, we met her at the photo shoot set. It might be because of her crazy schedule since the end of “Unpretty Rapstar”, but it was obvious that she was tired. However, as soon as her trademark eyelashes are on and she stands in front of the camera, she oozes charisma. Her image, her pose as she politely greets the staff that is bewitched by her, this is Cheetah.
So you’re the “hottest girl” these days, are you aware of your popularity?
It’s awesome when I get out of a car to go into a building and people recognize me. Even when I don’t have makeup on, people recognize me.
“Unpretty Rapstar” made your life take a 180° turn.
Yes, everything has changed. I keep getting requests constantly. My appearance fees are ten times higher than before. Tomorrow is finally the day to check the counts, so my heart is racing. (laugh)
As you took over the ultimate track, you became the main character of this program. How do you feel about getting recognition from the audience through their votes?
When rappers are rapping and running all around the stage, I couldn’t really understand what they said. I thought it was only fair for regular people to feel the same way. However, as I got to perform, I realized that the audience actually opened their ears and and listened to the rap. It made me happy because I feel like I’ll be able to try more daring challenges in the future.
Do you have your own rapping method?
I think the most important thing about rap is to convey your lyrics well, so I do worry to convey the lyrics I wrote in the best way possible. The intonation of Korean language doesn’t vary much, so it’s hard to create a rapping flow. That’s why I’m trying to keep this wave-like flow going when I’m rapping. And it’s also hard to make rhymes at the end of the sentences. I’m looking for ways to keep the sentences going while I manage to make them rhyme. I also extended my vocabulary by watching movies, going to exhibits, reading books.
I’m curious to hear about your singing skills.
I used to be a singer. Because of the traffic accident, I stayed at the intensive care unit for a long time and singing became harder for me. That’s why I started rapping because it was the closest form similar to speaking. I haven’t practiced singing in a long time, so when I go to the noraebang with my friends, I don’t even sing more than one song. If it’s necessary, I will sing and rap, but I think it’d be better for the song quality to have an expert be featured on it.
Switching from long hair to short hair was a drastic change.
When I got a bit bored with having long hair, I got it cut and got the hairstyle I had been thinking about. I asked the designer to make me a man hairstyle. (laugh) I couldn’t cut it all off at first. It took quite some time to reach this hairstyle as I slowly got it cut shorter and shorter. It was the chaos in my mind because I did it gradually. (laugh) The hair designer who handled my hair contacted me not long ago, said many people asked to have the same hairstyle as me, said that he/she bragged about it. I also want to use this opportunity to thank him/her.
There’s a “Cheetah makeup” fever.
My fake eyelashes are my trademark. I have more than 50-60 of them at home. As for my eyebrows line, I managed to find the right shape after many attempts. Because my eyelashes, my eyebrows and my red lipstick complete my style, I think I will keep this image for a while.
Your lyrics of “Coma 07′” was based on your memory about your brain death situation.
It was about gaining back consciousness from this state that felt like a dream and then going back into it again. It was repeated several times. Being alive was a blessing, but not being able to sing was a disaster for me. The fact that I was able to get back completely to this life is all thanks to my parents. My mother told me that she slept on a bench in front of the intensive care unit every single day until the day I woke up. Once I recovered, when I became a rapper, my family was in a complicated financial situation. Still, they gave me their full support and even told me “we’ll find one way or another to take care of things, so stay at home to write your lyrics instead of working part-time at the convenience store.”
I watched a video of you during “Show Me The Money 1″. You can dance too.
Dancing is what I started first. I was a fan of Baby VOX when I was a kid. I would teach the choreographies to my friends and we performed at the school festival. When I was in middle school, I attended a dance academy and studied dancing at a professional level. The sense of rhytm and the groove I learned back then help me when I rap. You might be able to see me dance during a performance one day.
If you were to grade your current life.
80 points. I’m doing what I wanted to do, so I’m happy, but as work is taking more importance in my life, it’s also becoming more mentally exhausting for me. I don’t even have time to talk with my mom these days. I feel like I’m missing out on things that should be a priority. There’s a time to relax and talk, right now is an important moment of my life, so I must clear my mind and I must work hard.
You’re planning to release an album by the end of May.
It will be a 3-4-track mini album. If you want to create music, stamina is more important than anything else, so I started working out recently. Music will always be my top priority, so I’m determined to release cool tracks because I will work hard on them no matter what.
- translation by thesunnytown
Photoshoot and Interview for Vogue
When Cheetah appeared on the stage of “Unpretty Rapstar”, I had the premonition that the throne’s shift of generation was happening. Like the cheetah which is the fastest running mammal, her rap is fast and sharp. She moves freely on stage where her innate swag can be seen. However, she even expresses indifference to any uproar. It only seemed that a new species called Cheetah who belonged to the mankind had appeared. As she began ranking number 1 starting from the first mission, Cheetah’s existence wasn’t something that would volatilize fast.
With her “kki” rhyme in “My type is someone with more sex appeal than me, even if I don’t say it, a bastard who shows me through actions”, she seized “My Type”, the song produced by Verbal Jint and she sang with Kangnam and Jessi. She created a sea of tears during her “Coma ’07” performance that told her own real life experience and she did an all-kill on the charts the next day.
All through the broadcast period, she never left the center of the attention and she ended up winning this 2-month journey as she was the main name of the final track. And right now, though the heavens fall on the music charts, Cheetah’s songs can be heard in any place where many people gather. Some said female rappers belonged to a “low-level job for a minority” [?], but the time for the female rappers to shine is finally here.
“It was like the Dark ages. I’ve been preparing myself, but I had so many concerns because the realistic conditions didn’t help me. Like for my age. I’m 25 now and I’ve been on the scene for nearly 10 years, but my name wasn’t known and I didn’t earn money. I received the offer to do this filming at a time when I was seriously wondering to myself if I should keep doing music.” She debuted in the group Blacklist in 2010. Two years later, she released an album under the group Masterpiece with Crush, but she didn’t receive much attention.
For the past ten years, it seemed that there was no female rapper to follow after Yoon Mirae and the genre was unpopular. To be honest, she’s been loving dancing and singing ever since she was a kid, so she even dropped out of high school. As it was revealed, the fact that she became a rapper was because of a traffic accident and she was even put into an articial coma.
“Because of the accident, it became harder for me to actually sing. However, I had to keep making music, but I didn’t know how at first and I just threw myself blindly into anything. Then I started falling for hip-hop little by little. Being able to reveal emotion through art gave me exaltation. There were almost no song that could do it with a rap only done by a woman. I thought it was a niche market. (laugh) I had this vague belief that if I was the one to do well, it would put it into the light one day.”
It seems to be a mix between unwavering tenacity and sharp insight. Among the other 9 female rappers in the show, there was no controversy about her unique talent and personality. And what speficially stands out is her rap that hits straight without losing its flavor. Through her lyrics, she unfolds her unique stories as she waited for the day of her breakthrough. This is the result of her expressing herlsef completely thanks to these moments she spent focusing on this. It was a time when she went to acting school just for her pronounciation, she read books out loud to monitor herself. “My hardware is a bit unrivaled. It’s nice to have my own engine, so it’s a bit hard for others to imitate me, right? (laugh)”.
Her lyrics like “it’s a jungle where no flower bloom, I reject becoming a flower, so I’ll become a wild animal, a bush” were also surprising, but the song that made Cheetah recorded her peak was “Coma 07′”. What made her overcome the resurrection experience that brain death is is nothing but her strong will power.
Cheetah says that she hoped people would find comfort through this song. “I wrote the lyrics while hoping that people would think “this girl is rapping on stage now, although she experienced such hard times. I won’t give up either and I will live hard”.” However, she doesn’t think about things like her childhood or today or her music direction. There’s also no theme she wants to definitely use for her lyrics.
She thinks that doing music while planning up something is a poison and a mistake. It’s only about the emotions she feels here and there in the moment. Each mission, she did everything herself. And it extended to her hair, makeup and styling. “Hair, makeup, fashion, they’re all an aspect of music. To me, every one of these things come together, like I think it’s just one genre. Styling is only a way to communicate the lyrics I wrote.” Between her very short hairstyle and eye-line that no calligrapher can imitate, this became Cheetah’s trademark, but it can change anytime.
“I’m the type to try many things when it comes to clothes. Sometimes, I wear slippers and training suits and I go out. Sometimes, I get all dressed-up with high fashion and I go to a pojangmacha to have a glass of soju. Sometimes, it can be interesting to mistmatch your outfit and the situation. I call it “situation collab” and I have fun.”
There are many things she likes like cooking, jet-skiing, hiking, shopping, pets and she writes her lyrics with such interests and it makes you want to call her “old wise man”. Cheetah is a rapper with the engine always turned on so that she might even share untold stories about fishing one day. “If you look at my life as a movie, right now is the trailer. I hope I will be able to make a full movie that is even more interesting than the trailer. What happens from now on is more important, right?”.
It is planned that Cheetah will stand on stage again by the end of May with an album that she thinks of as “good music no matter what”. By making us listen to the stories that no one but her can tell, by completing stories. Cheetah who spits and swallows her rap a thousand times has now started racing on a sparkling shining beat.
- translation by thesunnytown
Sources: thesunnytown (Vogue translation); Vogue Korea; thesunnytown (InStyle translation); mnbmagazine.
Bless thesunnytown tbh <3
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Date: 2015-05-19 03:42 pm (UTC)I thought she was just going to be mag model.
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Date: 2015-05-19 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-19 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-19 04:06 pm (UTC)i still need to look into finding fancams from the uprs concert, i keep forgetting it happened
"You might be able to see me dance during a performance one day." i might actually die
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Date: 2015-05-19 04:10 pm (UTC)Inspire me, Cheetah!
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Date: 2015-05-19 05:30 pm (UTC)I've been hearing a lot about her but was never interested in the show she was part of. Is she good?
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Date: 2015-05-19 06:29 pm (UTC)She is a good rapper and lyricist and she's been consistently improving since she released her first EP.
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Date: 2015-05-19 05:35 pm (UTC)Her interviews always give me the impression that she's really down to earth and hardworking but she's also very ambitious. I can't wait to hear more from her. I super love Expectation; I think she's really good at capturing atmosphere and that's totally my style \O/
And thanks OP for all your posts for Cheetah and all the other Unpretty Rapstars. Omona's the only place I get any info for them ;w;
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Date: 2015-05-19 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-19 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-19 09:53 pm (UTC)my sister in law met her last week and took a pic with her :((
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Date: 2015-05-19 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-19 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-20 09:48 am (UTC)