You Need To Watch 1300 Tear Through ‘Gangnam Style’ On Like A Version
The best LAV of the year might have just landed.
Korean-Australian rap group 1300 — based in Sydney’s southwest — have dropped their first Like A Version today, covering the titanic song ‘Gangnam Style’ by fellow Korean superstar PSY.
1300 have been gaining global renown for their playful bricolage of rap styles, combining musical influences from UK-drill to K-pop while seamlessly rapping between English and Korean.
The band told triple j that their choice of ‘Gangnam Style’ for Like A Version was due to recognition the track gave of Korean culture by Australian audiences.
“Gangnam style made us some friends in Australia in 2012,” the band told triple j in an interview.”Everyone would come to us… ‘Do you know ‘Gangnam Style?’
“Gangnam Style was the first Korean song that went around the world, put Korea on the map and we want 1300 to do that.”
Speaking about their cover, the band said stayed faithful to the original while “adding the 1300 flavour, making it chaotic and confusing”.
The band also commented on the positive mainstream reaction the public has had to their multilingual lyricism. “Performing in Korean on a big platform like Like A Version means a lot to us,” said the band. “It’s almost like a blessing that we can just speak the language that we’re more comfortable with, but the people that don’t speak our language still interact with what we make.”
1300 have recently supported Genesis Owusu and will be heading to Byron Bay for this year’s Splendour in the Grass.
The band are no strangers to blending their music with other Korean cultural touchstones. They recently released a music video for ‘Oldboy’, remixing the 2003 anti-hero film of the same name by South Korean director Park Chan-Wook.