“Gook” director and star Justin Chon knows from personal experience what the 1992 Los Angeles Riots were like.
The Southern California native’s family owned a business in Compton, Calif., that was looted on the last day of the April 29-May 4 upheaval, which was sparked by the acquittal of the police officers videotaped beating Rodney King.
“I felt a need to tell the Korean perspective of what the riots were like because a lot of the Korean experience gets swept under the rug,” Chon told TheWrap at the Sundance Film Festival, where his film premiered to great reviews.
“Gook,” which draws heavily from Chon’s experiences, examines the racial tension between the African American majority of South Central Los Angeles and Korean business owners and neighbors as the city descends into chaos.
Those tensions were the subject of much artistic output of the era, particularly by hip-hop artists, notably in Ice Cube’s 1991 song “Black Korea.”
But the Korean-American perspective on those events has rarely been presented in mainstream media, something Chon aimed to correct on the eve of the riots’ 25th anniversary.
Watch the full video above.
27 Shamefully Underrated Rappers, From E-40 to Soopafly (Photos)
Just because rappers don't get the recognition they deserve doesn't mean they're no good. Here are 27 of the most underrated rappers and some of their most fire lyrics.
E-40 (Vallejo, California)
"I be more hipper than a hippopotamus / Get off in your head like a neurologist / Pushin more weight than Atlas / Got a partner by the name of 2Pacalypse"
"And yes I'm in the building like a horror movie killer / I gotta stay sick, I'd be dead if I was iller / Is it weird going hard when these n----s goin pillow? / Yep, my life is great, I changed my stars / I re-arrange fate when I rap on bars"
"I used to pray for times like this, to rhyme like this / So I had to grind like that to shine like this / In a matter of time I spent on some locked up shit / In the back of the paddy wagon, cuffs locked on wrists"
"Young Nipsey Hussle ain't some shit that you should sleep on / Rich before rap had to let the streets go / Faith in my transition I know I’ll be back in beast mode"
In mic fights I swing swords and cut clowns / Shit is too swift to bite you record and write it down / I flow like the blood on a murder scene, like a syringe / On some wild out shit, to insert a fiend
"The iron horse is the train and champagne is bubbly / A deuce is a honey that's ugly / If your girl is fine, she's a dime / A suit is a fine, jewelry is shine / If you in love, that mean you blind / Genuine is real, a face card is a $100 bill / A very hard, long stare is a grill"
“By the powers vested in me, I digested MCs / Food for thought, caught on to the end of the rope and swung / Then stood stiff, as if I was on a cliff / Knobby knee sticks, my feet are made of bricks / When I walk, my footprints indent cement"
"Psychosomatic, automatic static / Catatonic, supersonic, bubonic chronic addict / Astronomical in the Thunderdome center / In the depths of the dungeon, dangerous, dastardly"
"'Kiss hit you with consecutive hot shit / Therefore nobody ever gon' spit like I spit / Get money just to walk through, off the books / So when you mention my name, shit is off the hook"
"Volatile with my profile, like Molotovs / MC's must be on auto-pilot, waddle silent / Like some platypuses, Del is down with data pushers / With top secret floppy disk and battle armor and Mecha / Plus all the rhymes that I'm bangin are double-decker, to check ya"
"Chip on my shoulder, big enough to feed Cambodia / See, I never fit into they quotas / Sneakers wasn’t fitting and my knees needed lotion / Long before I knew the significance of a comb / I roam like phone with no vocal reception / Immigrant parents had me feeling like a step-kid / And black Americans never did accept me"
"Your child's future was the first to go with budget cuts / If you think that hurts then, wait here comes the uppercut / The school was garbage in the first place, that's on the up and up / Keep you at the bottom but tease you with the upper crust"
"The producer get funky down to the last ounce / And I'm creative too - so I don't need "Mo' Bounce" / But to you suckas in my city claimin' I got a "Def Wish" / You should try again fool, you ain't hittin' near this"
"But still I cry tears of a hustler / Wipe tears from my mother, pull out beers for her brothers / That's above us, make beds for the babies / Tuck kids under covers, buy cribs for their mothers / Shit, I'll probably be wilding with their fathers / Tell Ms. Robert, tell Anajmah that I'm riding for her father"
"People give your ears so I be sublime / It's enjoyable to know you and the concubine / N----s, take off your coats ladies, act like gems / Sit down, Indian style, as we recite these hymns / See, lyrically I'm Mario Andretti on the mo-mo / Ludicrous, we speedy, or infectious with the slow-mo"
"I launch tomahawk missiles when I talk / With promiscuous intelligence like Mr. Roarke / From New York into the world over / I walk MC's like Jesus walked on water"
"Torn in, poor men sworn in / Cornish hens switching positions, auditioning morticians / Saw it in a vision, ignoring prison / Ignoramuses enlist and sound dumb"
"It's the elephant in the room / Created by a collision of the sun and the moon / My sonogram was an image of a gun in the womb / That was soon to be doper than heroin in a spoon"
"I breathe down shit so hard you can see sound / And beat down these rap clowns in like three rounds / My pen 'bout as sharp as a dagger, walk with a swagger / Tie your wife to the back of a black Jag and I drag her"
"I’m the verbal-spit Smith-Wesson / I unload with sick spit / The quick wit could split a split-second / Bomb with a lit wick expression / You hear a tick-tick then you testing"
"Throw your hands in the air, and wave em like you just don't care / And if you haven't been f-----, by the soopaman luva Let me hear you say, oh yeah yeah! / Oh yeah yeah! Funkadelic, hit you with the irrelevant"
"It's my terminology that strike up mind and rips this beat apart / You know the many styles I choose will bruise crews from the start / I flow awkwardly cause awkwardly I flow fast to the rhythm / Incisions are made into the brain and then I begin to give em a lobotomy, follow me I'm shapin’ your brain…like…pottery"
"I spot a victim / The plot'll thicken when the clock is ticking / I caught him slipping / I gotta give him a shot I hit him / With proper spitting, hottest writtens and compositions / So competition's a contradiction"
"Extraterrestrial poet, my pen stroke is grotesque / Rugged n----, abrasive to any foe flesh / So let’s paint 1,000 words worth a picture / Panoramic though, more esoteric than hieroglyphs and scriptures / Chemical mixtures, spit yours, not just kick words / Spit swords when we joust from the mouth, dog"
Just because rappers don't get the recognition they deserve doesn't mean they're no good. Here are 27 of the most underrated rappers and some of their most fire lyrics.
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