‘Show Me The Money’ and the Distortion of Reality Competitions in Korea

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Stacks on Stacks on Tracks

Korea’s hit shot Show Me The Money is running it’s 7th season on MNET right now and just about to cross the midway point in the competition to award the next big rap/hiphop artist. Rap culture is growing tremendously in the culture, moving away from being just add-ons to pop groups and establishing a major genre standing on its own.

Last season (6) exemplified this and truly leveraged the show to find and nurture the best unknown performers on the main stage. The judges were top tier, globally-known artists including Tiger JK, Dok2, Jay Park, Zico, and Dynamic Duo, many with their own agencies. The primary goal was to find underrepresented talent to sign and produce with, a parallel goal with shows we know so well like American Idol. With this pure ethic, incredible finds were made like Hangzoo and Nucksal, the latter of whom currently sits as a judge for this current season. Non of these contestants had produced music or albums that were widely accessed.

This season is quite a bit different. The judges themselves are not that much more famous than the contestants, many of whom already have videos garnering millions of views one YouTube. In fact, most are actually colleagues with the judges, having produced videos in collaboration.

Here are some examples like Kid Milli and Nafla -

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Not exactly ‘unknowns.’

Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing and it’s certainly entertaining to see top-tier performers compete. This can also be partially accounted for by the fact that it is actually season 7 and one can imagine that the pool of viable contestants shrinks each season in such a small country. But with the amount of heavy product placement and staging to promote different companies throughout the show, there is a growing public suspicion that this year’s process is fairly rigged compared to the last seasons.

Again, many of these contestants are already signed with profitable labels and have huge fanbases. It would actually be a brilliant strategy to cherrypick aspirers that are part of these labels and leverage their respective communities to promote the show and maybe even earn a bit more profit in shady deals. The way the season has unfolded is also very artificial-feeling compared to previous ones with few to no ‘underdogs’.

Obviously, I can’t prove whether or not this suspicion is substantive, but if it is true, man what a business model. Regardless, I’m still enjoying this season and happy to have found a reason to listen to artists like Kid Milli. I particular love this jam that was created and performed during the last episode -

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Steem on!