Does this look like a group of people that want to purposely antagonize a religious group into blind hatred?
Well okay, based on that photo it does... But trust me that is not the case. If you didn't already know what I was talking about, you are probably wondering what on earth I'm talking about...
I'm talking about this--
The song that is being cross-examined is CL's solo track "Mental Breakdown" which was a part of their 2014 album "Crush". This song was highly regarded within the K-Pop community as everyone's "Jam and Peanut Butter" and was a lot more widely received than her first effort, The Baddest Female.
Looking at the evidence presented, it is pretty conclusive that both the offending part of the instrumental and the clips of the boy singing are pretty similar to the point where one could conclude that they are either identical or at the very least "cut from the same cloth".
Now I'm not here to argue whether or not CL sampled the verse from somewhere as I know next to nothign about the contents of the Qu'ran, but what I do know is that the reaction isn't worth it.
Religion is a touchy subject and I understand and can sympathize with that as I am religious myself, but the fact of the matter is this... You do NOT go around throwing death threats at the artist because of this, under any circumstance.
First of all, it's not something that even warrants a death threat. Honestly it seems like they used it for aesthetic purposes and stuff like this was done in more of a detrimental fashion in songs like "Arab Money" by Busta Rhymes... No one's made an issue of that yet surprisingly enough. Then again one could argue that the parts in "Arab Money" were not a part of the Qu'ran, heck they weren't even in Arabic...
Fair enough, so what's to say that the parts in "Mental Breakdown" are not in the Qu'ran either? They could've been singing anything in Arabic or better yet it might not even be Arabic, it could be Farsi or just a Synthesizer that sounds a lot like a human singing?
Better yet what if it was part of the Qu'ran, but it was done as a tribute to it? Or sampled out of respect? K-pop has been known to imitate, replicate or sample stuff they respect like Gain's Truth or Dare with "Blurred Lines" (which is based off of Marvin Gaye's song) or SNSD's Dancing Queen with "Mercy", or stepping out of music, how about G-Dragon's cosplay of Andre 3000 a while back... That brings me to my next point.
Secondly, Koreans (not all of them, just most of them) are racially insensitive due to the fact that they are a really isolated nation, not as Xenophobic as Japan but close enough to it. There have been repeated incidents of Blackface happening and yet as much outrage as there was internationally, it keeps happening.
As a black person myself, I should naturally be really offended at this right? How dare they mock my people with an act of pure racism and hatred?!
One problem, it's not racism and there is no hatred involved. Look at the context in which they do something, is it stereotypical? Hell to the fuck yes... are they doing it because they believe they are racially superior? No.
They do it because they actually admire black people and find us intriguing or funny or like something about us, there's a saying that fits this too... "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" and I abide by that here, because incidents like this is living proof. Does that mean that blackface is okay and that I should support them doing it? No it does not mean that, it just means that they are ignorant of how adverse and racially insensitive the act is and therefore should be educated otherwise, but if no-one is doing it how will they learn?
Black people are more of a minority in Korea than Muslims are, and because of that it is damn near impossible to ever get Korea to move away from that mindset unless there are more black people there or more racially aware people in Korea... That's why I find it moot point to get upset about the act and more of an incentive to show them that what they are doing is wrong.
The same mindset should be applied to this incident here... Obviously if the Qu'ran is being sampled, it is out of sincere flattery or respect for the Qu'ran or maybe they just felt that it sounded aesthetically pleasing in that part of the track, either way they liked it and aren't doing it because they dislike it... Therefore the right thing to do in this situation is to tell them that they are doing something wrong instead of telling them to go fuck themselves.
Islam is a religion and their followers (from what I've heard anyway) treat their religion with a lot of respect and always make sure that they themselves are a shining example of how a good person should act, so that it reflects well on their religion. Doing stuff like this equates to not being a good Muslim... It's okay to be angry, that's an emotion and we can't stop that. What we can stop is the death threats and insults, those needed to go yesterday.
Finally, they are blaming the wrong person. Yes CL was responsible for co-writing lyrics on some songs and actually writing all the lyrics on one of them, she was also responsible for some composition of the songs of the album as well.
But let's take a look at the writing credits for "Mental Breakdown" shall we?
Found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush_2NE1_album#Track_listing
It says here that while CL co-wrote the lyrics with Teddy Park (1TYM) she was in no way responsible for the Composition OR the Arrangement of the song.
What that means is that CL wrote part of the rap and that's as far as her involvement in the song goes. Teddy Park (the in-house producer of a lot of YG's music) was responsible for the inclusion of the offending part of the music and YG is responsible because he is the Executive Producer, as well as the goddamn CEO, and he let it get released.
So if you wanna blow up someone's instagram or make a complaint, go to them, not CL!
Anyway, the main point here is that the wrong person is being blamed and that this entire situation is just a big misunderstanding. People need to realize that looking for cultural sensitivity in a place with one of the worst cultural distributions in the world, is a pretty dumb fucking idea.
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