Speaker 1: UM, you're good, levels wise, everything good. Um. How do
Speaker 1: you introduce yourself to people? I don't even know how
Speaker 1: to introduce myself anymore. MM to tell you the truth, UM,
Speaker 1: because I think before, you know, I would say that, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm Tableau. I'm like the front man for this group
Speaker 1: called Epiccai. We have these songs, we have these albums.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know mentioned a couple like Accolades. But over
Speaker 1: the last you know, two decades, you're I think there
Speaker 1: have been so many things that happened that have that
Speaker 1: have you know, become a part of who I am,
Speaker 1: that it's really complicated for me to just try to
Speaker 1: figure out how to introduce myself, especially in Korea too,
Speaker 1: because the way people see me, Like some may just
Speaker 1: see me as a musician, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: some people see me as this person and who went
Speaker 1: through a lot. So I don't know what tableau they
Speaker 1: know or what tableau they may be interested in. So
Speaker 1: I I just, you know, I just say hi, I'm Tableau,
Speaker 1: and then I let them figure it out in the
Speaker 1: room as you talked to him, Yeah, as I talked
Speaker 1: to them, just starting starting on you every time. I guess, baby, baby,
Speaker 1: who want a suit of Korea doesn't want a neat
Speaker 1: day baby back that he praise a better way that
Speaker 1: d D two cut play that ship, lay that at
Speaker 1: a feeding fip pop a fee a feeding filth free
Speaker 1: tip fip fipop what flyns my name whatever? You can
Speaker 1: be drupaking writing. Then my book arounds on the words
Speaker 1: passed the marks. Yeah, vice and I heart this is authentic.
Speaker 1: I'm Dexter Thomas Episode one, God blow Hello, coachhull up.
Speaker 1: The Coachella Music Festival has become such a milestone for
Speaker 1: musicians that even getting invited to play it's something to
Speaker 1: get congratulated for. In April, a hip hop trio from
Speaker 1: South Korea called Epic High did an interview with Billboard
Speaker 1: about becoming the first big Korean act to play Coachella.
Speaker 1: Their frontman Tableau, told the magazine that he thought it
Speaker 1: was kind of weird to already be getting so much
Speaker 1: praise and attention, considering that they hadn't even gone on
Speaker 1: stage yet. I begot you do it got a few
Speaker 1: days later, they got on stage not far from Ice
Speaker 1: Cube and a reunited Guns and Roses. Asap Rocky and
Speaker 1: Run the Jewels had played the night before this was
Speaker 1: some pretty legendary company they were in. But as excited
Speaker 1: as Tableau and Epic High were to be there, this
Speaker 1: was just another achievement in a long list of achievements.
Speaker 1: Not only were they massive back home and Soul, but
Speaker 1: by this point they were already well established as one
Speaker 1: of the first, if not the first, Korean hip hop
Speaker 1: groups to pull a mainstream international audience. Hanging out with
Speaker 1: Epic Hai, there's so many cameras, Where do we love Hi?
Speaker 1: How are one? It's maddox hanging out with the legendary
Speaker 1: fellas of Epic Hi and Studio. They'd already done several
Speaker 1: tours overseas, standing room only shows in Tokyo to New York,
Speaker 1: and they had no problem selling out the will Turn
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. Epic High formed in the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: and a lot of their influence came from the American
Speaker 1: nineties underground hip hop scene. Tableau burst onto the Korean
Speaker 1: hip hop scene around two five. Young, handsome and just
Speaker 1: back from the US where he went to college. I
Speaker 1: would say that he was part of the reason that
Speaker 1: hip hop became big. Tableau and Epic High started in
Speaker 1: the underground, but as they got bigger, so did hip hop.
Speaker 1: They helped make hip hop mainstream in Korea, and they
Speaker 1: didn't stop at the local scene. They went global. By
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten, they were beating out Jay Z
Speaker 1: and Kanye on the international hip hop charts, all while
Speaker 1: rapping mostly in Korean. And it was then, right when
Speaker 1: Tableau and his group were at the top of their game,
Speaker 1: when Tableau's life out of Nowhere got jolted off course,
Speaker 1: landing him in the center of a bizarre conspiracy. Someone
Speaker 1: began making accusations against Tableau on an Internet forum. Rumors
Speaker 1: had started spreading on the Internet, specifically on a site
Speaker 1: called neighbor, which when it first came out was kind
Speaker 1: of like Reddit, but nowadays it's more like if Reddit
Speaker 1: was also your Google homepage, and you had your Facebook
Speaker 1: context and you could order a pizza, so basically the
Speaker 1: center of your digital life. People were posting on online
Speaker 1: message boards saying the Tableau wasn't who he said he was.
Speaker 1: He went to Stanford so he could become an international
Speaker 1: hip hop star. You know, it doesn't make a lot
Speaker 1: of sense. The accusations started out small, questions about his
Speaker 1: academic credentials, doubts about worri he went to college. But
Speaker 1: pretty quickly they started spiraling out of control. They were
Speaker 1: like claiming that I had bribed the FBI, and that
Speaker 1: I had ties to the Manati, that Stanford is like
Speaker 1: a set and all these people are actors. I had
Speaker 1: pulled over the Korean president, the American president. The online
Speaker 1: forum grew to hundreds of thousands of members, and it
Speaker 1: put Tableau in the middle of something that we didn't
Speaker 1: really have a name for yet. Back in the relationship
Speaker 1: between the Internet and reality was still sort of quaint.
Speaker 1: Facebook had only recently gone from a college student website
Speaker 1: to a place where anyone could sign up. A lot
Speaker 1: of people didn't bother because they were still into my Space.
Speaker 1: Twitter was just a few years old here in the States.
Speaker 1: Social media was still something that was being used by
Speaker 1: young computer nerds, not say CEOs of electric car companies
Speaker 1: or presidents. We still drew a pretty bold line between
Speaker 1: the online and the offline. Black Mirror wasn't out yet,
Speaker 1: but I felt, I guess, was some horror sci fi
Speaker 1: thing where the entire country I had been living in
Speaker 1: I had collectively agreed to basically mind fuck me. Tableau
Speaker 1: was an early adopter but in the worst possible way,
Speaker 1: completely against his will, the dark part of the Internet
Speaker 1: selected him as one of its first high profile targets.
Speaker 1: What he experienced had never really happened before, not like
Speaker 1: this and not on this scale. You know, they had
Speaker 1: collectively agreed that nothing I say would be accepted as truth,
Speaker 1: and they had collectively agreed to be delusional. It's either
Speaker 1: they're delusional, like all of them, or I'm delusional. And
Speaker 1: it fundamentally changed not only the people involved, but the
Speaker 1: entire country, And maybe it would have changed a lot
Speaker 1: more of us outside of Korea if we'd been paying attention.
Speaker 1: I've listened to pretty much everything Tableau has ever released.
Speaker 1: I've watched a lot of his interviews. I've read things
Speaker 1: he's written, read things that other people written about him,
Speaker 1: the whole nine. And you would think this would give
Speaker 1: me a pretty good idea of who he is, and
Speaker 1: for journalists often that's enough. I've been deejaying and writing
Speaker 1: about Internet culture and music for years now. At the
Speaker 1: end of the day, though, it's still about the music.
Speaker 1: But this one, this isn't just about the music. It's
Speaker 1: also about the Internet and what happened to him when
Speaker 1: people who would also watched his interviews and seen his videos,
Speaker 1: decided that they knew who Tabot was better than Tableau himself,
Speaker 1: so much so that Tableau started wondering if maybe they
Speaker 1: were writing. So when Tabou decided that he was finally
Speaker 1: ready to talk about who he is twelve years later,
Speaker 1: there was only one way to do this, not online,
Speaker 1: in person, face to face. I was gonna fly out
Speaker 1: there to Soul and meetings over Google. You how's to say? Off?
Speaker 1: You brought coffee? Come on in. I'm not sure we
Speaker 1: have enough slippers for everybody who everyone wants one, you
Speaker 1: can use one, Okay. Today table was forty one years old,
Speaker 1: but he still has the vibe of a college student.
Speaker 1: And then yes, like he was so cool about it too.
Speaker 1: He was like, no, I don't want to just use
Speaker 1: it all you want. We're sitting in a studio and
Speaker 1: Seoul owned by DJ two Cuts, who along with Tableau
Speaker 1: and the group's other m C myth with Jim makeup
Speaker 1: Etic High. Yesterday I met him and he's like, smoothly,
Speaker 1: how about like I pay a half and then you
Speaker 1: and myth Thrill. You guys paid each right, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: there's no way I can say no, right, because I
Speaker 1: have to use it again today, right, So I'm like, oh, intelligent,
Speaker 1: well played. Tableau cleaned the place up before I got there,
Speaker 1: but you could tell they were in the final stretch
Speaker 1: of completing the next album. There's a bunch of music
Speaker 1: equipment like samplers and MIDI input devices scattered all over
Speaker 1: and on the door they'd written the track list and
Speaker 1: dry a race marker for the next album. Tableau was
Speaker 1: wearing an oversized T shirt and playing kind of dad
Speaker 1: jeans and sandals. He doesn't look like a rapper, but
Speaker 1: then again, he doesn't look like anybody in particular, and
Speaker 1: anyone who knows him says he's sort of always been
Speaker 1: like this, the kind of guy who if you pass
Speaker 1: him on the street, you wouldn't even notice until you
Speaker 1: talk to him. Um. Actually didn't have breakfast today. Woke up.
Speaker 1: I had to help my wife brush my dog's teeth.
Speaker 1: I had to leave in the middle of it because
Speaker 1: the dog hates it, like obviously, but we need to.
Speaker 1: You know, he's gonna appreciate it later. And he's got teeth.
Speaker 1: He's got this way of always cracking jokes at just
Speaker 1: the right moment. But it's not just that. Aside from
Speaker 1: the rap thing, he's also written collections of short stories
Speaker 1: and poetry, both in Korean and English, and that versatility
Speaker 1: crosses over to his work as a musician. He's done
Speaker 1: every thing from the serious tracks talking about societal injustice
Speaker 1: or religion to just flexing and dissingwack um seas. I
Speaker 1: spent days in that studio with him and our producers
Speaker 1: talking about music and how this all came to be.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that that story begins really truly
Speaker 1: at the beginning. I mean, tell me about what were
Speaker 1: you like growing up? Growing up? So I grew up
Speaker 1: in many different places. I was born in Korea. I
Speaker 1: don't remember this, but that's what it says, um. And
Speaker 1: then apparently my parents took me to Indonesia supposedly spoke
Speaker 1: um two languages before I returned to Korea. Around the
Speaker 1: time Tableau was in second grade, his parents moved the
Speaker 1: family to Canada. Yeah, I have a perfect visualization of
Speaker 1: what went down when we were when I realized we
Speaker 1: were leaving, because it was during the Olympics and Soul
Speaker 1: and the games had just begun. Welcome athletes of the world.
Speaker 1: After seven years of preparation, difficulties and hoop the Olympic Games.
Speaker 1: I'm like, where are we going? And then you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of days later, we were in Canada and
Speaker 1: on TV we were, you know, now watching the Olympics.
Speaker 1: The people of the world returned as Caria hosts the
Speaker 1: games of the twenty four Olympia, but from from abroad.
Speaker 1: The big question mark in my head was why we
Speaker 1: had decided to leave our countr Tree at a time
Speaker 1: when the entire world is celebrating our country. I think
Speaker 1: it made me feel like, oh, Korea has like its
Speaker 1: place in the world. I felt like this is the
Speaker 1: beginning of the bright future. But immediately, because I was
Speaker 1: taken elsewhere that I had to face being an outsider
Speaker 1: and it was it was like a huge wake up
Speaker 1: call because I couldn't speak English right. So, um, first
Speaker 1: day of school in Canada, I guess some kids wanted
Speaker 1: to play a prank call me because you know, I
Speaker 1: was the new kid from from Asia, which was maybe
Speaker 1: a foreign concept to them. So they put some school
Speaker 1: supplies in my pocket and I wasn't aware of it.
Speaker 1: We went through recess and they came up and they
Speaker 1: reached into my inner jacket pocket and pulled out the
Speaker 1: supplies and pretty much just creating a scenario where I
Speaker 1: had stolen this and now it gave them the right
Speaker 1: to do whatever they wanted. And some of the guys
Speaker 1: held me to a tree, held my arms. Onea had
Speaker 1: an umbrella he started hitting me with it. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My parents came to pick me up, and I remember
Speaker 1: like crying and telling my dad I wanted to leave.
Speaker 1: In the span of like a few months, I had
Speaker 1: gone from feeling like, oh, Korea kind of rocks right,
Speaker 1: and I'm proud to be Korean, and immediately I was
Speaker 1: like in a place where in a situation where I
Speaker 1: did not want to be Korean more. After the break,
Speaker 1: Tablo's parents moved around a lot, and he was often
Speaker 1: in the new kid in school, but his parents had
Speaker 1: a plan. Moving the family to Canada had a specific objective.
Speaker 1: It was for my brother and my sister, you know,
Speaker 1: for their future, for the education. Tablow's father had a
Speaker 1: hard time finding a good paying job in Canada. The
Speaker 1: thing that kept him stable was that his mom still
Speaker 1: owned a hair salon back in Korea, but that meant
Speaker 1: that she had to go back and forth to Soul
Speaker 1: to keep it running and all this made things even
Speaker 1: harder on the kids. He's the youngest of three. His
Speaker 1: sister Christine is in the middle. His brother David is
Speaker 1: the oldest. My brother had to literally memorize the entire
Speaker 1: English dictionary. I mean, like my my dad like forced
Speaker 1: him to because he had maybe two years to apply
Speaker 1: to a college, and um, they wanted him to go
Speaker 1: to an Ivy League school, which is ridiculous considering he
Speaker 1: just left Korea. I would always see him like pass
Speaker 1: down on the desk. He started like kind of hallucinating
Speaker 1: at some point. I remember this one time he was
Speaker 1: slouched on his desk like he had fallen asleep while
Speaker 1: you know, with the dictionary and everything open, And my
Speaker 1: dad tried to wake him up, and he got up
Speaker 1: and he ran to the front door and he started like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole for the for the mail, the
Speaker 1: mail slow, yeah, yeah, the mail slot. He opens it
Speaker 1: up and he started taking something out of it, like
Speaker 1: out of thin air, as if there was a package,
Speaker 1: and he was like talking to himself. So seeing that,
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, well, you know, I think I'm good,
Speaker 1: Like I'm grateful that no one's paying attention to me.
Speaker 1: Eventually though, they started paying attention. So your your parents
Speaker 1: told you you need to go to an ivy league.
Speaker 1: Here's a list of the schools. Like I want you
Speaker 1: to either go to Harvard, Stanford or like M I T.
Speaker 1: And then you need to get one of these jobs.
Speaker 1: We had three. Uh, you could be a doctor, you
Speaker 1: could be a lawyer. And what else was there? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a like a professor, or or like a Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize winner. I really heard the words out of my
Speaker 1: parents mouths Nobel Prize winner, exact same list my parents
Speaker 1: gave me. That's Minjiku. She's one of our producers. She's
Speaker 1: younger than both Tableau and I. She grew up in
Speaker 1: South Korea, and thankfully for her parents, she went to
Speaker 1: law school. Yes, we all have a shared experience in that.
Speaker 1: In that way, it's it's the same now. A lot
Speaker 1: of parents still I still think that way. They may
Speaker 1: have added on a couple professions like CEO or Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 1: When Tablo was growing up, this academic pressure wasn't just
Speaker 1: something that was implied, it was explicit. One summer, his
Speaker 1: parents took him on a road trip across the United
Speaker 1: States along the way, they stopped at all these different
Speaker 1: elite universities, Brown, Harvard, Cornell, and then they hit the
Speaker 1: West coast. When we got to Stanford, right in front
Speaker 1: of the church that I ended up graduating at, my
Speaker 1: mom and dad they were like praying, and then they
Speaker 1: told me they had stopped in the middle of the
Speaker 1: main quad at the Santa Campus, the iconic Stanford Memorial Church.
Speaker 1: We want you to go to. This is school you're
Speaker 1: gonna go to. And they really said this if we
Speaker 1: we just prayed that you go to this school. And
Speaker 1: this was when I was a kid. As I listened
Speaker 1: to him talk about this, there was something that felt
Speaker 1: familiar to a point, right because I'm not Korean, I'm Black.
Speaker 1: But my parents also took some pretty extreme measures to
Speaker 1: make sure that I got a good education too, because
Speaker 1: like Tylo's parents, they knew that the one thing that
Speaker 1: American society cannot take from you and can never deny
Speaker 1: from you, it will actually reward you for is a
Speaker 1: credential or a title or degree. It's a way to
Speaker 1: protect your kids. That also means keeping them away from
Speaker 1: anything that might stray them off that path, like say
Speaker 1: hip hop. My parents were and still are like extremely religious. Okay,
Speaker 1: very very Christian, but there's degrees to being Christian, right,
Speaker 1: And they were pretty hardcore, you know, the whole the
Speaker 1: whole thing with like devil music, right, yeah, I can
Speaker 1: attest that that's that's for real, Like that's what my
Speaker 1: parents actually would say. And you know, I had saved
Speaker 1: up enough to buy a CD. I wanted a CD
Speaker 1: with explicit content on the cover. You wanted, you wanted
Speaker 1: a little explicit lyrics thing. So I walked in and
Speaker 1: there was a CD with this little kid on the
Speaker 1: cover and it had explicit lyrics. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: this this looks like it has a lot of cuss words,
Speaker 1: right um. And I picked it up and I bought
Speaker 1: it and it was the Automatic Your Black Top. It
Speaker 1: didn't have as many cuss words as I expected, but
Speaker 1: the music like Blew Me Away. That's a pretty solid
Speaker 1: first CD. That's I just lucked out. But anyways, like
Speaker 1: the CD collection I had, if you eyes can think
Speaker 1: back to like early nineties, some of these album covers,
Speaker 1: like the art was like very to the point, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like you could just look at
Speaker 1: the cover and know that there's something wrong. If you're
Speaker 1: against it. Yeah, so, um yeah, I came home one
Speaker 1: day and my parents had you know, smashed it. They
Speaker 1: had put it into a pile in the middle of
Speaker 1: my room and and smashed it. And it obviously devastated
Speaker 1: me because when you're like, you know, twelve thirteen, that's
Speaker 1: like your life, you know, that's like your identity, that collection,
Speaker 1: and it was almost as if they had smashed me,
Speaker 1: you know. So it broke my heart, but you know,
Speaker 1: that just made me want it even more. All that said,
Speaker 1: his parents methods got results. His oldest siblings did get
Speaker 1: into those Ivy League schools. His brother got into Brown
Speaker 1: and a year later his sister got accepted the Cornell.
Speaker 1: They were done with project number one and Project number two,
Speaker 1: which were my brother and my sister, and I was
Speaker 1: supposed to carry out Project number three and that meant
Speaker 1: getting really serious about his studies, which at this point
Speaker 1: Tableau was not. So they sent me to a boarding
Speaker 1: school and then left Canada. Parents did. They went back
Speaker 1: to Korea. This was the kind of boarding school that
Speaker 1: pumped out Ivy League kids, which was great for the parents,
Speaker 1: but hell for Tableau. He didn't last long there. He
Speaker 1: started pulling pranks to getting into fights, and after a
Speaker 1: couple of years he was kicked out, Even though the
Speaker 1: school didn't exactly word it that way, they don't kick
Speaker 1: you out right because they're they're too sophisticated for that, right,
Speaker 1: so they just don't invite you back. His parents brought
Speaker 1: him back to Korea when he was fifteen, and is
Speaker 1: piste off as his parents were about him having to
Speaker 1: come back home. Pretty quickly, it started looking like this
Speaker 1: had been a good decision. He now had family around
Speaker 1: who could keep an eye on him. His cousin Sam
Speaker 1: even went to the same high school, and he started
Speaker 1: getting good grades. But more importantly for Tableau, he was
Speaker 1: also starting to find his own motivation. He'd started writing
Speaker 1: poetry not for school but for himself, and then something
Speaker 1: wild happened and it ended up giving Tableau a huge opportunity.
Speaker 1: A couple of poems I had written had somehow traveled
Speaker 1: outside of the school and gotten into the hands of
Speaker 1: a musician in Korea who was huge at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Kim Gamo. He was actually the number one top selling
Speaker 1: album like artist. Obviously, I had no connection to celebrities
Speaker 1: or musicians right, but someone that he works with contacted
Speaker 1: my mom through like found a mutual connect and apparently
Speaker 1: they had somehow read some of my poems and he
Speaker 1: wanted to make an English album with Bobby mcfern. Bobby mcfern, okay,
Speaker 1: that's don't worry. Be happy, Bobby mcphern. If the name
Speaker 1: isn't ringing a bell yet, be happy. They had agreed
Speaker 1: to do a like a collab album and needed uh
Speaker 1: someone to write lyrics in English, and for some reason
Speaker 1: they wanted it from me from from my high school kid.
Speaker 1: So um, I was like what it was just weird,
Speaker 1: but um, so he had me writing lyrics. I wrote
Speaker 1: lyrics for a ton of songs. Only one came out
Speaker 1: right Christmas, I broke my thought, my dreams, but one
Speaker 1: came out during winter break, and when I got back
Speaker 1: to school, I had somehow like you sort of become
Speaker 1: a minor star in the school. Obviously right, because they
Speaker 1: were like what the heck? Writing not only helped Tableau
Speaker 1: keep his sanity through high school, but it eventually ended
Speaker 1: up helping him get into college. Tableau ended up fulfilling
Speaker 1: what his parents asked of him. He got into stand
Speaker 1: for just like they had prayed for. So he went
Speaker 1: As it turned out, that same cousin, Sam, that Tableau
Speaker 1: went to high school with, had been admitted to Stanford
Speaker 1: the year before. They weren't close, but Tableau's mom said
Speaker 1: he should go hang out with him, and he had
Speaker 1: been there a year now. I thought, maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: would be awkward, but he can like talk to me,
Speaker 1: maybe give me some tips about like life there. But
Speaker 1: honestly I doubted it because I just thought that it
Speaker 1: was gonna be awkward. But we did sit down, and
Speaker 1: the first thing he said to me, how did you
Speaker 1: get into Stafford? Really? Yep? I was like, all right, Sam,
Speaker 1: let's just see. That's not exactly how his cousin remembers it,
Speaker 1: but either way, it didn't really face Tableau, especially because
Speaker 1: even his own friends were a little shocked he'd gotten
Speaker 1: into Stanford. But none of that mattered now though What
Speaker 1: mattered was a Tableau was finally out on its own.
Speaker 1: Now I could technically do whatever I wanted, Like I
Speaker 1: had the option of not doing well if I chose
Speaker 1: to do so. And I had dorm mates that would
Speaker 1: swing by and they because because of the music I
Speaker 1: was playing, like, you know, just like a lot of
Speaker 1: underground hip hop at the time, but like, who who
Speaker 1: are you playing? Hieroglyphics, hiro souls and mischief? Like like
Speaker 1: far side, I was, let's just do a lot of
Speaker 1: underground hip hop. I think my playlist maybe it drew people,
Speaker 1: but like I had football players in my dorm that
Speaker 1: would come hang out in my room because the music
Speaker 1: brought them. I don't know why I was in such
Speaker 1: a rush to get out of there, Like that's why,
Speaker 1: that's why I grad wated like a little earlier, because
Speaker 1: like I, I just piled on the credits. I think
Speaker 1: I tried to get out of there as fast as
Speaker 1: possible so I can be just done with that chapter
Speaker 1: of my life. Stanford has this program called a co
Speaker 1: terminal degree, where you do graduate level work during your
Speaker 1: undergraduate studies. If you can handle the course load, you
Speaker 1: graduate with a bachelor's and a master's at the same time.
Speaker 1: This requires a lot of extra courses, sometimes almost double
Speaker 1: of what's required of most full time students, and Tableau
Speaker 1: was going even beyond what most co terminal students do.
Speaker 1: That's how badly he wanted to be out of there.
Speaker 1: At first, his main goal was to get out of
Speaker 1: school a sam, but he was also starting to think
Speaker 1: of where he would go after he finally made that escape,
Speaker 1: and he was getting the feeling that there might be
Speaker 1: some answers in this hip hop group he started. It
Speaker 1: was small, but they were starting to make a name
Speaker 1: for themselves and even getting small gigs here and there
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area. We had two guys in the
Speaker 1: group at first that did nothing but break das two
Speaker 1: rappers and to be boys. It was just to taste.
Speaker 1: But from maybe the first time, Tableau had found something
Speaker 1: he wanted to take seriously. In two thousand two, after
Speaker 1: just three and a half years, Tableau's mom flew out
Speaker 1: to Stanford for his graduation. She sat in the pews
Speaker 1: of that same church they once prayed in at the
Speaker 1: Center campus. So they call you out and then say
Speaker 1: what you're gonna do well, for example, like Frank, Frank
Speaker 1: is going to Google or something like that. They're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: Daniel suddenly v A M A in English, Lad, he's
Speaker 1: going back to Korea too to do hip hop music,
Speaker 1: and everyone's like cracking up. My parents. I don't think
Speaker 1: they ever really like accepted it, And even after I
Speaker 1: became very successful, they would say it a weird way,
Speaker 1: like during dinner or something with someone else, like with
Speaker 1: their friends. You know, oh yeah, like you know, he's
Speaker 1: probably gonna go get a PhD later, So it's it's
Speaker 1: like hard for them to let go. You know, those
Speaker 1: credentials which are impressive, I mean, graduating with a dual
Speaker 1: bachelor's and master's degree unless time it takes most people
Speaker 1: just to do their undergrad They ended up being a
Speaker 1: part of Tableau's life forever. Even though he did something
Speaker 1: totally off the beaten path, he couldn't get away from
Speaker 1: that Stanford degree. It marked him for better and for worse.
Speaker 1: In Korea, when you when you think, when you when
Speaker 1: you're saying that someone's like dope, like rappers or like
Speaker 1: singers or actors or whatever, when someone is really good
Speaker 1: at what they do, they take the first letter of
Speaker 1: that person's name and replace it with God. They started
Speaker 1: calling me god blow because you would have to be
Speaker 1: a god to be able to do all that. God
Speaker 1: blow like Tableau as in, to have become famous and
Speaker 1: successful as a rapper and having a bachelor's and a
Speaker 1: master's from an elite school in the United States, he
Speaker 1: has to have been God to have accomplished that. That's
Speaker 1: how they um like compliment you. It was a reflection
Speaker 1: of that surprising contradiction. The educated rapper. Tableau fulfilled the
Speaker 1: model of a well educated Korean son, but he took
Speaker 1: an unadvised risk and beat the odds becoming a successful musician.
Speaker 1: It became his hook. When he was on a TV
Speaker 1: show or did an interview, he get introduced as the
Speaker 1: genius Rapper until those rumors started online. In then god
Speaker 1: blow became more of a backhanded compliment or an ironic accusation,
Speaker 1: one that suggested that Tableau story was too good to
Speaker 1: be true, but it was to to basically mock me
Speaker 1: or two sort of shame me. It's often said that
Speaker 1: on the road to fame, people lose themselves person they were.
Speaker 1: More recently, people say that on the internet, for better
Speaker 1: for worse, we either forget or we abandon who we
Speaker 1: really are. But what if it's other people telling you
Speaker 1: that you are not who you say you are? Did
Speaker 1: you define what means tableau again? Change it yo guanda?
Speaker 1: It's we demand the truth from Tableau like an abbreviation
Speaker 1: yeah ta jin tab again change it which means truth
Speaker 1: yo guanda, We demand it um which is an ironic
Speaker 1: name considering that's not what they wanted. They wanted everything
Speaker 1: but the truth. But in the span of a day,
Speaker 1: like a virus, it spreads so fast. It was like
Speaker 1: a wildfire. It was insane how fast it spread. So
Speaker 1: I panicked. I was like, oh my god, this is like,
Speaker 1: this is like real. Over the next seven episodes, we're
Speaker 1: gonna look at how a wild but honestly kind of
Speaker 1: trivial accusation starts on an anonymous internet forum and then
Speaker 1: following as it explodes into a national obsession. Do you
Speaker 1: remember when you first heard about Tableau scan? Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I was like, whoa, what's happening? What's happening with our minds?
Speaker 1: Not only bringing Tableau's life to a complete halt and
Speaker 1: his families, but also messing with the lives of innocent
Speaker 1: bystanders living on the other side of the planet. I'm
Speaker 1: just like, who is this weirdo? Look, I'm hanging up now,
Speaker 1: please stop calling me, you know. And and I was
Speaker 1: about to hang up the last time, and I hear
Speaker 1: him yell, we'll pay you ten thousand dollars. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: let's hear some more and we'll see the lines between
Speaker 1: harassment online and real life consequences get blurred. Also thought
Speaker 1: to myself that might be getting too close to this
Speaker 1: weird conspiracy theory world. People were threatening me online. I
Speaker 1: tried to turn it off, but in the real world
Speaker 1: it still happened like it was connected and the whole
Speaker 1: country divides itself but never once looks away. People have
Speaker 1: a lot of built up resentment, and then when a
Speaker 1: situation like this happens, people were like just like ravenous,
Speaker 1: like zombies, just trying to like like suck the blood
Speaker 1: to try to feel like like their life would be okay.
Speaker 1: Authentic is a production of Vice Audio and I Heeart
Speaker 1: podcast Network, produced and reported by still Finny Karayuki, Minji Coop,
Speaker 1: Hate Osbourne, and myself with Janet Lee, Stephanie Brown, and
Speaker 1: Sam Egan. Sound design and original music composition by Kyle Murdock,
Speaker 1: with additional support from Natasha Jacobs. Our supervising producer is
Speaker 1: Janet Lee, editing from Lacy Roberts, fact checking by Minji
Speaker 1: Kop and Nikole Pasuka. Our executive producer and VP Advice
Speaker 1: Audio is Kate Osbourne. From I Heart Podcast Network. Executive
Speaker 1: producers Nicky E Tore and Lindsay Hoffman. This episode features
Speaker 1: Epic High music from their album's swan songs, High Society
Speaker 1: and Pieces. Part one distributed by c J Music Music,
Speaker 1: also from Kim Gun Moo and Bobby McFerrin. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Isne Bobo Nooiet for Epic High's original concert footage.
Speaker 1: I'm Dexter Thomas. Make sure to subscribe wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if
Speaker 1: you dig it, give us a rating and a review,
Speaker 1: and don't forget to check us out on Twitter and
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