WEBVTT - God-Blo 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:05.840 UM, you're good, levels wise, everything good. Um. How do 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:09.680 you introduce yourself to people? I don't even know how 0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:15.160 to introduce myself anymore. MM to tell you the truth, UM, 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:18.520 because I think before, you know, I would say that, Hey, 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:21.200 I'm Tableau. I'm like the front man for this group 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:24.360 called Epiccai. We have these songs, we have these albums. 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:29.040 Maybe you know mentioned a couple like Accolades. But over 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:33.560 the last you know, two decades, you're I think there 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:37.760 have been so many things that happened that have that 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:41.920 have you know, become a part of who I am, 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:45.839 that it's really complicated for me to just try to 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:50.720 figure out how to introduce myself, especially in Korea too, 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:54.560 because the way people see me, Like some may just 0:00:54.600 --> 0:00:57.680 see me as a musician, but at the same time, 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:00.960 some people see me as this person and who went 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:07.679 through a lot. So I don't know what tableau they 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:12.280 know or what tableau they may be interested in. So 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:15.640 I I just, you know, I just say hi, I'm Tableau, 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:17.440 and then I let them figure it out in the 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:21.920 room as you talked to him, Yeah, as I talked 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:47.880 to them, just starting starting on you every time. I guess, baby, baby, 0:01:54.960 --> 0:02:01.120 who want a suit of Korea doesn't want a neat 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:06.640 day baby back that he praise a better way that 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:15.079 d D two cut play that ship, lay that at 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:20.280 a feeding fip pop a fee a feeding filth free 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:27.280 tip fip fipop what flyns my name whatever? You can 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:31.160 be drupaking writing. Then my book arounds on the words 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:46.080 passed the marks. Yeah, vice and I heart this is authentic. 0:02:46.480 --> 0:03:04.600 I'm Dexter Thomas Episode one, God blow Hello, coachhull up. 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:10.160 The Coachella Music Festival has become such a milestone for 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:13.440 musicians that even getting invited to play it's something to 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:18.160 get congratulated for. In April, a hip hop trio from 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:21.560 South Korea called Epic High did an interview with Billboard 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:25.160 about becoming the first big Korean act to play Coachella. 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:28.600 Their frontman Tableau, told the magazine that he thought it 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:30.680 was kind of weird to already be getting so much 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:33.560 praise and attention, considering that they hadn't even gone on 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:44.800 stage yet. I begot you do it got a few 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:47.760 days later, they got on stage not far from Ice 0:03:47.880 --> 0:04:01.960 Cube and a reunited Guns and Roses. Asap Rocky and 0:04:02.120 --> 0:04:12.720 Run the Jewels had played the night before this was 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:18.320 some pretty legendary company they were in. But as excited 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:20.840 as Tableau and Epic High were to be there, this 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:24.400 was just another achievement in a long list of achievements. 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:27.960 Not only were they massive back home and Soul, but 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:31.400 by this point they were already well established as one 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:34.680 of the first, if not the first, Korean hip hop 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:39.240 groups to pull a mainstream international audience. Hanging out with 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:44.720 Epic Hai, there's so many cameras, Where do we love Hi? 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:50.360 How are one? It's maddox hanging out with the legendary 0:04:50.440 --> 0:04:55.920 fellas of Epic Hi and Studio. They'd already done several 0:04:56.000 --> 0:05:01.039 tours overseas, standing room only shows in Tokyo to New York, 0:05:01.279 --> 0:05:03.440 and they had no problem selling out the will Turn 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:16.440 in Los Angeles. Epic High formed in the early two thousands, 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:19.080 and a lot of their influence came from the American 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:22.520 nineties underground hip hop scene. Tableau burst onto the Korean 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:26.120 hip hop scene around two five. Young, handsome and just 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:28.560 back from the US where he went to college. I 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:30.880 would say that he was part of the reason that 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:34.440 hip hop became big. Tableau and Epic High started in 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:37.880 the underground, but as they got bigger, so did hip hop. 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:41.400 They helped make hip hop mainstream in Korea, and they 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.839 didn't stop at the local scene. They went global. By 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:47.280 two thousand and ten, they were beating out Jay Z 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:50.960 and Kanye on the international hip hop charts, all while 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:55.640 rapping mostly in Korean. And it was then, right when 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:58.280 Tableau and his group were at the top of their game, 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:02.640 when Tableau's life out of Nowhere got jolted off course, 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:09.360 landing him in the center of a bizarre conspiracy. Someone 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:13.720 began making accusations against Tableau on an Internet forum. Rumors 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:17.040 had started spreading on the Internet, specifically on a site 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:20.000 called neighbor, which when it first came out was kind 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:23.200 of like Reddit, but nowadays it's more like if Reddit 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.520 was also your Google homepage, and you had your Facebook 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:29.920 context and you could order a pizza, so basically the 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:33.560 center of your digital life. People were posting on online 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:37.040 message boards saying the Tableau wasn't who he said he was. 0:06:37.279 --> 0:06:39.520 He went to Stanford so he could become an international 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:42.360 hip hop star. You know, it doesn't make a lot 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:46.520 of sense. The accusations started out small, questions about his 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:50.000 academic credentials, doubts about worri he went to college. But 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:54.400 pretty quickly they started spiraling out of control. They were 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:57.800 like claiming that I had bribed the FBI, and that 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:03.040 I had ties to the Manati, that Stanford is like 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:06.320 a set and all these people are actors. I had 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:10.520 pulled over the Korean president, the American president. The online 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:14.840 forum grew to hundreds of thousands of members, and it 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:17.520 put Tableau in the middle of something that we didn't 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:21.640 really have a name for yet. Back in the relationship 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:24.960 between the Internet and reality was still sort of quaint. 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:28.920 Facebook had only recently gone from a college student website 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:31.520 to a place where anyone could sign up. A lot 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:34.320 of people didn't bother because they were still into my Space. 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:38.800 Twitter was just a few years old here in the States. 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:41.560 Social media was still something that was being used by 0:07:41.760 --> 0:07:46.160 young computer nerds, not say CEOs of electric car companies 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:52.120 or presidents. We still drew a pretty bold line between 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:56.000 the online and the offline. Black Mirror wasn't out yet, 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:59.880 but I felt, I guess, was some horror sci fi 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:03.480 thing where the entire country I had been living in 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:11.400 I had collectively agreed to basically mind fuck me. Tableau 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:14.840 was an early adopter but in the worst possible way, 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:18.960 completely against his will, the dark part of the Internet 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:22.680 selected him as one of its first high profile targets. 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:27.480 What he experienced had never really happened before, not like 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:30.200 this and not on this scale. You know, they had 0:08:30.280 --> 0:08:35.560 collectively agreed that nothing I say would be accepted as truth, 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:40.200 and they had collectively agreed to be delusional. It's either 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:45.079 they're delusional, like all of them, or I'm delusional. And 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:49.559 it fundamentally changed not only the people involved, but the 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:53.720 entire country, And maybe it would have changed a lot 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:57.680 more of us outside of Korea if we'd been paying attention. 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:04.240 I've listened to pretty much everything Tableau has ever released. 0:09:04.720 --> 0:09:07.080 I've watched a lot of his interviews. I've read things 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:09.720 he's written, read things that other people written about him, 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:12.640 the whole nine. And you would think this would give 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:15.160 me a pretty good idea of who he is, and 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:20.160 for journalists often that's enough. I've been deejaying and writing 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:23.160 about Internet culture and music for years now. At the 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:25.720 end of the day, though, it's still about the music. 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:30.839 But this one, this isn't just about the music. It's 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:34.280 also about the Internet and what happened to him when 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:37.520 people who would also watched his interviews and seen his videos, 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:42.160 decided that they knew who Tabot was better than Tableau himself, 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:46.720 so much so that Tableau started wondering if maybe they 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:54.560 were writing. So when Tabou decided that he was finally 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:58.000 ready to talk about who he is twelve years later, 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:01.440 there was only one way to do this, not online, 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:05.720 in person, face to face. I was gonna fly out 0:10:05.760 --> 0:10:32.840 there to Soul and meetings over Google. You how's to say? Off? 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:54.079 You brought coffee? Come on in. I'm not sure we 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:57.280 have enough slippers for everybody who everyone wants one, you 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:01.120 can use one, Okay. Today table was forty one years old, 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:04.000 but he still has the vibe of a college student. 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:06.440 And then yes, like he was so cool about it too. 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:08.040 He was like, no, I don't want to just use 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:10.480 it all you want. We're sitting in a studio and 0:11:10.600 --> 0:11:14.520 Seoul owned by DJ two Cuts, who along with Tableau 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:17.680 and the group's other m C myth with Jim makeup 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:21.360 Etic High. Yesterday I met him and he's like, smoothly, 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:25.360 how about like I pay a half and then you 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:31.679 and myth Thrill. You guys paid each right, And I'm like, 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:35.199 there's no way I can say no, right, because I 0:11:35.280 --> 0:11:40.840 have to use it again today, right, So I'm like, oh, intelligent, 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:44.079 well played. Tableau cleaned the place up before I got there, 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:46.199 but you could tell they were in the final stretch 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:48.720 of completing the next album. There's a bunch of music 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:52.640 equipment like samplers and MIDI input devices scattered all over 0:11:53.320 --> 0:11:55.559 and on the door they'd written the track list and 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.800 dry a race marker for the next album. Tableau was 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:02.080 wearing an oversized T shirt and playing kind of dad 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:06.280 jeans and sandals. He doesn't look like a rapper, but 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:09.480 then again, he doesn't look like anybody in particular, and 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:12.160 anyone who knows him says he's sort of always been 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:15.000 like this, the kind of guy who if you pass 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:18.800 him on the street, you wouldn't even notice until you 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:25.240 talk to him. Um. Actually didn't have breakfast today. Woke up. 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:29.360 I had to help my wife brush my dog's teeth. 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.040 I had to leave in the middle of it because 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:37.400 the dog hates it, like obviously, but we need to. 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:41.839 You know, he's gonna appreciate it later. And he's got teeth. 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:45.079 He's got this way of always cracking jokes at just 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:48.959 the right moment. But it's not just that. Aside from 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:52.120 the rap thing, he's also written collections of short stories 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:56.520 and poetry, both in Korean and English, and that versatility 0:12:56.760 --> 0:12:59.760 crosses over to his work as a musician. He's done 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:03.160 every thing from the serious tracks talking about societal injustice 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:18.599 or religion to just flexing and dissingwack um seas. I 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:21.599 spent days in that studio with him and our producers 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:24.520 talking about music and how this all came to be. 0:13:25.400 --> 0:13:29.080 And it turns out that that story begins really truly 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:32.480 at the beginning. I mean, tell me about what were 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:35.400 you like growing up? Growing up? So I grew up 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:40.880 in many different places. I was born in Korea. I 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:44.880 don't remember this, but that's what it says, um. And 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:52.120 then apparently my parents took me to Indonesia supposedly spoke 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:57.319 um two languages before I returned to Korea. Around the 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:00.599 time Tableau was in second grade, his parents moved the 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:06.520 family to Canada. Yeah, I have a perfect visualization of 0:14:06.920 --> 0:14:09.199 what went down when we were when I realized we 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:13.839 were leaving, because it was during the Olympics and Soul 0:14:14.880 --> 0:14:20.000 and the games had just begun. Welcome athletes of the world. 0:14:21.760 --> 0:14:28.840 After seven years of preparation, difficulties and hoop the Olympic Games. 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:33.920 I'm like, where are we going? And then you know, 0:14:34.160 --> 0:14:36.960 a couple of days later, we were in Canada and 0:14:37.920 --> 0:14:42.480 on TV we were, you know, now watching the Olympics. 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:47.440 The people of the world returned as Caria hosts the 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:53.560 games of the twenty four Olympia, but from from abroad. 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:57.880 The big question mark in my head was why we 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:01.120 had decided to leave our countr Tree at a time 0:15:01.280 --> 0:15:04.320 when the entire world is celebrating our country. I think 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:07.800 it made me feel like, oh, Korea has like its 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:10.600 place in the world. I felt like this is the 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:16.240 beginning of the bright future. But immediately, because I was 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:20.800 taken elsewhere that I had to face being an outsider 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:25.840 and it was it was like a huge wake up 0:15:25.880 --> 0:15:30.640 call because I couldn't speak English right. So, um, first 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:35.000 day of school in Canada, I guess some kids wanted 0:15:35.040 --> 0:15:36.720 to play a prank call me because you know, I 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:42.680 was the new kid from from Asia, which was maybe 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:45.640 a foreign concept to them. So they put some school 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:48.640 supplies in my pocket and I wasn't aware of it. 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:53.760 We went through recess and they came up and they 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:58.680 reached into my inner jacket pocket and pulled out the 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:02.680 supplies and pretty much just creating a scenario where I 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:06.800 had stolen this and now it gave them the right 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:09.080 to do whatever they wanted. And some of the guys 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:12.600 held me to a tree, held my arms. Onea had 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:16.840 an umbrella he started hitting me with it. Um. Yeah. 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:20.320 My parents came to pick me up, and I remember 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:22.880 like crying and telling my dad I wanted to leave. 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:27.640 In the span of like a few months, I had 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:33.240 gone from feeling like, oh, Korea kind of rocks right, 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:37.600 and I'm proud to be Korean, and immediately I was 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:41.320 like in a place where in a situation where I 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:46.680 did not want to be Korean more. After the break, 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:06.119 Tablo's parents moved around a lot, and he was often 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:09.000 in the new kid in school, but his parents had 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:13.480 a plan. Moving the family to Canada had a specific objective. 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:17.040 It was for my brother and my sister, you know, 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:21.080 for their future, for the education. Tablow's father had a 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:24.280 hard time finding a good paying job in Canada. The 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:26.600 thing that kept him stable was that his mom still 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:29.600 owned a hair salon back in Korea, but that meant 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:31.320 that she had to go back and forth to Soul 0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:34.680 to keep it running and all this made things even 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:38.399 harder on the kids. He's the youngest of three. His 0:17:38.520 --> 0:17:41.800 sister Christine is in the middle. His brother David is 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:46.200 the oldest. My brother had to literally memorize the entire 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:51.000 English dictionary. I mean, like my my dad like forced 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:54.440 him to because he had maybe two years to apply 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:58.159 to a college, and um, they wanted him to go 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:01.960 to an Ivy League school, which is ridiculous considering he 0:18:02.240 --> 0:18:06.160 just left Korea. I would always see him like pass 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:09.880 down on the desk. He started like kind of hallucinating 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:12.359 at some point. I remember this one time he was 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:15.960 slouched on his desk like he had fallen asleep while 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:18.800 you know, with the dictionary and everything open, And my 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:21.320 dad tried to wake him up, and he got up 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:24.679 and he ran to the front door and he started like, uh, 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:27.240 you know, the whole for the for the mail, the 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:29.960 mail slow, yeah, yeah, the mail slot. He opens it 0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:33.720 up and he started taking something out of it, like 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:36.560 out of thin air, as if there was a package, 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:42.879 and he was like talking to himself. So seeing that, 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:46.600 I was like, Okay, well, you know, I think I'm good, 0:18:47.240 --> 0:18:50.119 Like I'm grateful that no one's paying attention to me. 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:53.600 Eventually though, they started paying attention. So your your parents 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:55.880 told you you need to go to an ivy league. 0:18:56.040 --> 0:19:00.840 Here's a list of the schools. Like I want you 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:03.600 to either go to Harvard, Stanford or like M I T. 0:19:04.160 --> 0:19:06.240 And then you need to get one of these jobs. 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:13.200 We had three. Uh, you could be a doctor, you 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:17.080 could be a lawyer. And what else was there? Yeah? Yeah, 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:20.840 like a like a professor, or or like a Nobel 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:24.840 Prize winner. I really heard the words out of my 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:33.520 parents mouths Nobel Prize winner, exact same list my parents 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:37.640 gave me. That's Minjiku. She's one of our producers. She's 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:40.040 younger than both Tableau and I. She grew up in 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:43.520 South Korea, and thankfully for her parents, she went to 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:49.159 law school. Yes, we all have a shared experience in that. 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:52.680 In that way, it's it's the same now. A lot 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:57.439 of parents still I still think that way. They may 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:03.600 have added on a couple professions like CEO or Jeff Bezos. 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:09.920 When Tablo was growing up, this academic pressure wasn't just 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:14.800 something that was implied, it was explicit. One summer, his 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:16.879 parents took him on a road trip across the United 0:20:16.920 --> 0:20:20.000 States along the way, they stopped at all these different 0:20:20.040 --> 0:20:26.080 elite universities, Brown, Harvard, Cornell, and then they hit the 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:30.240 West coast. When we got to Stanford, right in front 0:20:30.280 --> 0:20:32.840 of the church that I ended up graduating at, my 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:36.719 mom and dad they were like praying, and then they 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:39.119 told me they had stopped in the middle of the 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:44.280 main quad at the Santa Campus, the iconic Stanford Memorial Church. 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:46.520 We want you to go to. This is school you're 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:50.040 gonna go to. And they really said this if we 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:52.240 we just prayed that you go to this school. And 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:54.600 this was when I was a kid. As I listened 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:57.240 to him talk about this, there was something that felt 0:20:57.280 --> 0:21:01.399 familiar to a point, right because I'm not Korean, I'm Black. 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:05.520 But my parents also took some pretty extreme measures to 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:08.479 make sure that I got a good education too, because 0:21:08.760 --> 0:21:12.600 like Tylo's parents, they knew that the one thing that 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:16.280 American society cannot take from you and can never deny 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:19.399 from you, it will actually reward you for is a 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:24.119 credential or a title or degree. It's a way to 0:21:24.200 --> 0:21:27.320 protect your kids. That also means keeping them away from 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:30.520 anything that might stray them off that path, like say 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:38.080 hip hop. My parents were and still are like extremely religious. Okay, 0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:45.280 very very Christian, but there's degrees to being Christian, right, 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:48.760 And they were pretty hardcore, you know, the whole the 0:21:48.800 --> 0:21:54.199 whole thing with like devil music, right, yeah, I can 0:21:54.280 --> 0:21:57.520 attest that that's that's for real, Like that's what my 0:21:57.640 --> 0:22:01.080 parents actually would say. And you know, I had saved 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:05.200 up enough to buy a CD. I wanted a CD 0:22:05.400 --> 0:22:08.920 with explicit content on the cover. You wanted, you wanted 0:22:08.920 --> 0:22:12.080 a little explicit lyrics thing. So I walked in and 0:22:12.720 --> 0:22:15.359 there was a CD with this little kid on the 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:20.200 cover and it had explicit lyrics. And I was like, okay, 0:22:20.320 --> 0:22:24.159 this this looks like it has a lot of cuss words, 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:30.240 right um. And I picked it up and I bought 0:22:30.280 --> 0:22:43.800 it and it was the Automatic Your Black Top. It 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:48.840 didn't have as many cuss words as I expected, but 0:22:49.040 --> 0:22:53.320 the music like Blew Me Away. That's a pretty solid 0:22:53.440 --> 0:22:57.320 first CD. That's I just lucked out. But anyways, like 0:22:57.720 --> 0:23:00.680 the CD collection I had, if you eyes can think 0:23:00.760 --> 0:23:04.320 back to like early nineties, some of these album covers, 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:10.240 like the art was like very to the point, you 0:23:10.280 --> 0:23:12.439 know what I mean, Like you could just look at 0:23:12.520 --> 0:23:15.720 the cover and know that there's something wrong. If you're 0:23:15.760 --> 0:23:20.119 against it. Yeah, so, um yeah, I came home one 0:23:20.160 --> 0:23:25.560 day and my parents had you know, smashed it. They 0:23:25.640 --> 0:23:27.440 had put it into a pile in the middle of 0:23:27.520 --> 0:23:33.240 my room and and smashed it. And it obviously devastated 0:23:33.320 --> 0:23:38.920 me because when you're like, you know, twelve thirteen, that's 0:23:39.000 --> 0:23:43.200 like your life, you know, that's like your identity, that collection, 0:23:43.640 --> 0:23:45.879 and it was almost as if they had smashed me, 0:23:46.600 --> 0:23:50.280 you know. So it broke my heart, but you know, 0:23:50.520 --> 0:23:59.920 that just made me want it even more. All that said, 0:24:00.400 --> 0:24:05.040 his parents methods got results. His oldest siblings did get 0:24:05.080 --> 0:24:08.480 into those Ivy League schools. His brother got into Brown 0:24:09.200 --> 0:24:12.000 and a year later his sister got accepted the Cornell. 0:24:12.560 --> 0:24:15.880 They were done with project number one and Project number two, 0:24:15.960 --> 0:24:18.720 which were my brother and my sister, and I was 0:24:18.720 --> 0:24:22.080 supposed to carry out Project number three and that meant 0:24:22.160 --> 0:24:25.960 getting really serious about his studies, which at this point 0:24:26.480 --> 0:24:32.639 Tableau was not. So they sent me to a boarding 0:24:32.720 --> 0:24:40.040 school and then left Canada. Parents did. They went back 0:24:40.080 --> 0:24:43.200 to Korea. This was the kind of boarding school that 0:24:43.400 --> 0:24:46.479 pumped out Ivy League kids, which was great for the parents, 0:24:47.040 --> 0:24:51.240 but hell for Tableau. He didn't last long there. He 0:24:51.320 --> 0:24:53.960 started pulling pranks to getting into fights, and after a 0:24:54.000 --> 0:24:56.600 couple of years he was kicked out, Even though the 0:24:56.680 --> 0:24:59.720 school didn't exactly word it that way, they don't kick 0:24:59.800 --> 0:25:04.560 you out right because they're they're too sophisticated for that, right, 0:25:05.040 --> 0:25:08.960 so they just don't invite you back. His parents brought 0:25:09.040 --> 0:25:11.680 him back to Korea when he was fifteen, and is 0:25:11.800 --> 0:25:14.000 piste off as his parents were about him having to 0:25:14.040 --> 0:25:16.920 come back home. Pretty quickly, it started looking like this 0:25:17.080 --> 0:25:19.840 had been a good decision. He now had family around 0:25:19.880 --> 0:25:22.280 who could keep an eye on him. His cousin Sam 0:25:22.359 --> 0:25:24.720 even went to the same high school, and he started 0:25:24.760 --> 0:25:28.480 getting good grades. But more importantly for Tableau, he was 0:25:28.520 --> 0:25:32.359 also starting to find his own motivation. He'd started writing 0:25:32.400 --> 0:25:37.000 poetry not for school but for himself, and then something 0:25:37.480 --> 0:25:41.680 wild happened and it ended up giving Tableau a huge opportunity. 0:25:41.840 --> 0:25:44.560 A couple of poems I had written had somehow traveled 0:25:44.600 --> 0:25:48.040 outside of the school and gotten into the hands of 0:25:48.640 --> 0:25:56.720 a musician in Korea who was huge at the time. Yeah, 0:26:02.520 --> 0:26:06.119 Kim Gamo. He was actually the number one top selling 0:26:06.200 --> 0:26:11.960 album like artist. Obviously, I had no connection to celebrities 0:26:12.119 --> 0:26:17.640 or musicians right, but someone that he works with contacted 0:26:17.840 --> 0:26:24.480 my mom through like found a mutual connect and apparently 0:26:24.560 --> 0:26:27.840 they had somehow read some of my poems and he 0:26:27.960 --> 0:26:34.840 wanted to make an English album with Bobby mcfern. Bobby mcfern, okay, 0:26:35.720 --> 0:26:38.760 that's don't worry. Be happy, Bobby mcphern. If the name 0:26:38.800 --> 0:26:47.120 isn't ringing a bell yet, be happy. They had agreed 0:26:47.160 --> 0:26:52.080 to do a like a collab album and needed uh 0:26:52.280 --> 0:26:57.159 someone to write lyrics in English, and for some reason 0:26:57.480 --> 0:27:00.479 they wanted it from me from from my high school kid. 0:27:01.359 --> 0:27:06.439 So um, I was like what it was just weird, 0:27:06.920 --> 0:27:11.040 but um, so he had me writing lyrics. I wrote 0:27:11.119 --> 0:27:14.120 lyrics for a ton of songs. Only one came out 0:27:18.640 --> 0:27:29.160 right Christmas, I broke my thought, my dreams, but one 0:27:29.240 --> 0:27:34.760 came out during winter break, and when I got back 0:27:34.840 --> 0:27:38.160 to school, I had somehow like you sort of become 0:27:38.240 --> 0:27:41.960 a minor star in the school. Obviously right, because they 0:27:42.000 --> 0:27:50.879 were like what the heck? Writing not only helped Tableau 0:27:51.000 --> 0:27:53.880 keep his sanity through high school, but it eventually ended 0:27:53.920 --> 0:27:57.200 up helping him get into college. Tableau ended up fulfilling 0:27:57.280 --> 0:27:59.800 what his parents asked of him. He got into stand 0:27:59.840 --> 0:28:03.400 for just like they had prayed for. So he went 0:28:04.320 --> 0:28:07.159 As it turned out, that same cousin, Sam, that Tableau 0:28:07.160 --> 0:28:09.760 went to high school with, had been admitted to Stanford 0:28:09.840 --> 0:28:14.320 the year before. They weren't close, but Tableau's mom said 0:28:14.359 --> 0:28:16.560 he should go hang out with him, and he had 0:28:16.640 --> 0:28:19.399 been there a year now. I thought, maybe, you know, 0:28:19.480 --> 0:28:22.560 would be awkward, but he can like talk to me, 0:28:22.640 --> 0:28:26.240 maybe give me some tips about like life there. But 0:28:26.880 --> 0:28:30.000 honestly I doubted it because I just thought that it 0:28:30.080 --> 0:28:33.159 was gonna be awkward. But we did sit down, and 0:28:33.280 --> 0:28:36.159 the first thing he said to me, how did you 0:28:36.400 --> 0:28:42.880 get into Stafford? Really? Yep? I was like, all right, Sam, 0:28:44.680 --> 0:28:47.760 let's just see. That's not exactly how his cousin remembers it, 0:28:48.240 --> 0:28:51.840 but either way, it didn't really face Tableau, especially because 0:28:52.080 --> 0:28:54.080 even his own friends were a little shocked he'd gotten 0:28:54.120 --> 0:28:57.360 into Stanford. But none of that mattered now though What 0:28:57.560 --> 0:29:00.640 mattered was a Tableau was finally out on its own. 0:29:01.320 --> 0:29:04.760 Now I could technically do whatever I wanted, Like I 0:29:04.920 --> 0:29:09.000 had the option of not doing well if I chose 0:29:09.040 --> 0:29:14.120 to do so. And I had dorm mates that would 0:29:14.360 --> 0:29:18.080 swing by and they because because of the music I 0:29:18.200 --> 0:29:26.160 was playing, like, you know, just like a lot of 0:29:26.280 --> 0:29:29.480 underground hip hop at the time, but like, who who 0:29:29.480 --> 0:29:36.280 are you playing? Hieroglyphics, hiro souls and mischief? Like like 0:29:36.400 --> 0:29:37.960 far side, I was, let's just do a lot of 0:29:38.040 --> 0:29:42.680 underground hip hop. I think my playlist maybe it drew people, 0:29:42.920 --> 0:29:45.360 but like I had football players in my dorm that 0:29:45.440 --> 0:29:48.400 would come hang out in my room because the music 0:29:48.480 --> 0:29:55.800 brought them. I don't know why I was in such 0:29:55.800 --> 0:29:59.120