Greatest Hits:: Yezi: Cider
Welcome to June, where I'm going to be stepping outside my comfort zone a little bit! It's also going to be majorly sentimental here at the end of this month because I've got two discharges that I'm looking forward to. But that's in the future, and we're going to start the month off with a me kicking myself off a cliff. I touched a solo rapper (metaphorically, please don't come at me with the pitch forks because I have never actually been close enough to RM to touch him and unless something really weird happens in my life, I never will) back in March, but I picked a soft, comfortable-for-me song that wasn't too far away from something I normally would vibe with. When I was looking for songs to put in June, I decided to do a female rapper, because I thought that would match the Woodz submission coming up in a few weeks and force me out of my safety zone. And I listened to a few songs with none of them giving me that "Yes, I need to do this now" bolt of lightning I look for when I'm left wandering around in K-Pop. And then I found this one. And I went "Oh?" And then I watched the music video and went "That'll do." And then I haven't touched it since, so I cannot remember any of the details of the song, which is what I wanted.
Yezi originally debuted in 2012 as the maknae of FIESTAR, and later debuted in 2016 as a soloist with this song after being on Unpretty Rapper. There's also a surprise NU'EST connection because they were on Weekly Idol together back in 2014. Babies.
Cider is the debut track from Yezi's 2016 single, Foresight Dream. The solo composer is 9999 (AB6IX, Swings, Shin Jimin, MXM, Monsta X, Park Woojin, Bumkey, Infinite H, Younite, BDC, SBGB, Super Junior, Kim Wooseok, Yang Dail, I.O.I, DK, San E, Mad Clown, Miryo, Kim Donghyun, Sistar, Verbal Jint, Gree, Kanto, Rana, Han Donggeun, and Jessi) and the composer and lyricist is Rhymer (Monsta X, AB6IX, Shin Jimin, NU'EST W, MXM, Vincent Blue, VIXX LR, Bumkey, Eunsang, I.O.I, T-ARA, Lee Hyori, Block B, Younite, Ailee, DK, The S, Sistar, Cross Gene, Mighty Mouth, 4Minute, 9Muses, Kassy, P-Type, Raina, Infinite H, and Shinhwa). The other lyricists are Yezi (ifeye, PLAVE, Momoland, History, and Lim Youngmin) and MINOS (NCT, SHINee, Gwangil Jo, Epik High, E Sens, Justhis, P-TYPE, AB6IX, Park Woojin, Younha, INITO, and Kassy).
- Group: Fiestar
- Debut Date: 2016 January 28
- Company: LOEN Entertainment
- Status: Active
- Album: Foresight Dream
- Song: Cider
- Release Date: 2016 January 28
2012 groups are just my big soft spot.
This is going to be interesting because I don't know how to talk about rap well. So I'm going to give myself a crash course in the academics of rap structure. I apologize. I don't know how to approach it other than by being a nerd about it, and my current understanding of rap is that it's essentially a form of poetry that uses an external beat to help tightly control the flow and emotions.
Okay. Flow, delivery, and message. So, poetry that uses an external beat to help control the flow and emotions. Good to know I wasn't super off. This is something I have to feel. I can do that.
But there are some interesting things going on in this song. First of all, there's a melody going on in there with the instrumental, which is not something I normally would have expected from rap. Often instead we get something that's very rhythmically stable, but we're getting a little bit of a melody that uses the rhythm of the rapping to bolster the rapping. It's very well crafted that way to have a few different textures going on.
I like this.
I listened to four or five songs, any of which I do not remember, before I landed on this one, which means that there's something sticky about this song that didn't just roll off my personal preferences. And I've had this on repeat for probably about half an hour while I've been trying to figure out how I want to talk about it, because it would be easy for me to just dig into the music video and the stages, but the song deserves more than that, as do people who prefer rap. You are out there and I see you and offer this song to y'all.
The weight of the rapping, the relative deepness of her voice, the doubling up of male and female voices during the chorus, these things all give the song a low center of gravity. It's not particularly aggressive in sound, although it's fierce in message and probably stems from the four years she'd had in the industry and her experiences on Unpretty Rapstar.
I really like the internal rhyme we got during the chorus that rhymes "flow" and "가위바위보" for a couple of reasons. I always think that bilingual rhymes are clever. (One of my favorite bad jokes is the one about the Frenchman counting boats. "One, two, three, four". "What happened to the fifth boat?" "Sank." (Because that's how you pronounce the word for five (cinq) in French).) I'm also a huge fan of puns and wordplay in general, multilingual or not. Also, give me an ABABCC rhyme scheme any day of the week and I'm a happy girl, but internal rhymes are more difficult because they require a higher understanding of language manipulation to make it not feel forced.
I super love that she's showing off the black bra strap from underneath the white shirt in the music video while she's tearing up the place. What a rebel. And she's doing it so calmly, which is even more fun. Obvious wrath is one thing, because it will eventually run out. But a calm fury is scarier because that's when the person has thought it through and decided this is the correct course of action. It reminds me a bit of Jungle by SCoups, because there's that same level of controlled power and heavy swagger earned by having the world think it can crush you beneath its heel with no more effort than my cat takes with flies. Yezi mentioned that she didn't have people start recognizing her until she was on Unpretty Rapper, which means that she spent three years in the industry with very little recognition with Fiestar. And then with how she was treated on Unpretty Rapper, well, I'd be pissed too. "I'm sorry for those who have said I cannot make it". Yes, queen.
And this is a song full of shade being thrown at Mnet. She is literally interrupting another music video, walking off set, ripping up the script, rejecting the pretty clothes and make-up, throwing paint at the Unpretty Rapstar logo (that starts at 1:54, but at 2:09, you can see the paint covered logo very clearly), basically all the actions of a very bothered queen. We love that for her. Also, one of the sponsors for Unpretty Rapstar is a brand of cider. Maybe it's less shade and more just the whole canopy being thrown at them.
And I love how there are a bunch of comments about how she needs to collab with Suga, and CL, and HyunA, and Jiyoon. Although I'm also seeing a few Changbin requests. All of that would be fire and I'd love to see it. Suga especially, which would be a masterpiece because the attitude and slayage could possibly break the internet and the charts.
Wait.
Wait.
Hold on.
Am I seeing this correctly?
Only five million views? Only five million views?!
I need a minute. I think my blood pressure just spiked.
You know, I never used to care about how many views a music video had. And now that I understand that to be an important metric for how important other people think a music video or group is, it's now a source of stress when I notice them.
Because what do you mean this song, this fabulous bullet-through-the-heart of a song, only has five million in ten years?
If you can honestly tell me that this does not vibe exactly like Jungle by SCoups, I'll accept it. But also, do you see that beginning? She just kind of emerges from the dancers like a final boss and all feline energy.
And the combo of the long coat with the crop top and the platforms? Swoon. I do find it pretty delightful that the most watched part of the video starts at :45 and is her body roll, that prompted a fantastic scream at :55 from the audience. I'm personally a huge fan of her smile at 2:43. It's such a surprisingly sweet expression from an otherwise intense performance, and then of course twenty seconds later, she's staring the camera down like she just killed a man and would do it again. Full Harley Quinn energy.
Also, can we appreciate the irony of her debuting and her first stage being on MCountdown, which is on Mnet?
Ooh, I don't know which she looks better in: the black coat from MCountdown or this pink one from Inkigayo. And that color of lipstick looks phenomenal on her. Well done, stylists. Well done.
And her female backup dancers are gorgeous. The male dancers are wearing hats and are much less prominently featured, but this stage is like a pride of lionesses.
The way she perches on the box like a throne while it moves across the stage is delightful. Why strut when you can be carried like a queen?
We've got a couple of radio performances and we're going to start with one from a year-and-a-half after this song was released.
We've seen some good intensity from her. Controlled intensity, but still intensity.
Here, she's got minimal visible make-up, smiles all over the place, and an absolutely adorable giggle at 1:06 after her little body roll. She's here to vibe, not necessarily perform, and the dichotomy is making me so smiley.
What made me gently laugh at her was at 2:59 when she brings the mic down and readjusts her grip. She knocks the cover off the mic, and then looks down at it like "How did that happen?" She looks back up and just starts smiling again as she picks it up. The confusion right there is precious.
I know she's a little bit older than me, but I kind of want to squish her a little bit right there.
Okay, let's go forward a few years to Idol Radio in 2020, when she was a guest along with Siyeon from Dreamcatcher and an independent soloist named Blue.D.
Seunghee was fangirling so hard through this entire thing that she flopped against Idol Radio backdrop and whacked it. Several times.
Yezi's juniors were hyping her so hard. I know one of her lines is "I'm sick of being cool" but her swag and stage presence here, even with as small of an audience as she's got (who, again, are hyping her up like they're besties drunk at karaoke) makes her so cool. Even her chill response when her headphones fall off her head, is just so cool.
Also, I think she may have stepped wrong and stumbled at 1:55, but it honestly isn't super noticeable, and she recovers almost immediately. Like a pro. Because she is.
Another radio performance, also from 2020, but this one is later in the year as part of her promotions for MIMEW.
I'm almost positive she's using her phone to refresh herself on the lyrics, which is fair because the song is four years old at this point and she's actively in promotions for another song.
This one is a little bit halfway between the attitude of the stage and the relative relaxation of the other radio performances. However, this one gives us something we haven't heard yet: a growl at 2:42. It's like vocal fry. I rarely get to hear either out of the women, and Yezi gave us one right there.
To wrap this up, pun absolutely intended, here's a special clip from part of the original promotions for the song. It's not quite a lyric video, because not all of it has the lyrics included, but it's kind of in that same vicinity. The way the lyrics were done were really cool, and there are a lot of people who preferred this one to the actual music video because you get the full focus of Yezi's lioness charisma. Plus, this one looks great in full-screen on a phone!
It's as close to a dance practice as I think I'm going to get, but there are a ton of dance covers and original choreography of this song.
And Here
There were others, but I didn't want to inundate y'all with them. But even though the music video has a bafflingly low number of views relative to where it should be if we were judging by just sheer excellence, the number of times people have looked at this song and obviously gone "I want to choreograph this" screams how much people love this when they find it and know it.
Thanks for reading and digging into this song with me! I'm glad I decided to step out of my comfort zone a little in June because this song is stellar and I'm still a little appalled by the low view count.
If you'd like me to cover a song, drop a comment or leave a submission in The Form! I've got a submission I've got planned for June, two for August, and a couple of open spots in July, so if you've got a b-side you want me to yap about and share, now would be a great time to share it with me. I want b-sides. I've been doing a lot of title tracks lately.
See you in a few days!
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