Far East Movement is getting ready to drop their K-Town Riot EP album tomorrow, and their new BTS series on VEVO gives a little context behind the project and the Koreatown Los Angeles neighborhood that they’ve been reppin’ since day one. In addition to the video, they have a brief interview session with LA Weekly, where the clip was debuted. They are joined by a few K-Town legends who give a firsthand account of what went down 22 years ago.
When it comes to the riots — I know that you guys grew up in K-Town. Do you remember anything? Were your parents there?
We were all super young but we still remember the looting. It was a lot of racial tension. It’s like when your parents have a completely different concept of other races that you do, and vice versa. It’s like the liquor stores, y’know? A lot of our friends own liquor stores, a lot of our families own liquor stores, and we know the stereotype. Now it’s like we’re doing a song with YG from Compton and that stereotype’s completely washed.
How much of it [the EP] has to do with the riots directly? And how much is just about your childhoods in K-Town?
We wanted to take it to a harder sound than we were typically known for. So production-wise with “Illest,” “Bang It to the Curb,” “Grimy Thirsty” — we wanted to have that energy that the gangsta rap songs from that era had. Musically, we’ll make references, like on “Level” — we’ll say something like “refugee hustle, slippin’ Gs to OZs.’ That whole song, much as it sounds like it’s some tropical vibe, it’s really just about being young kids in K-Town looking for a level shot with everybody else.
You can check out the article over at LAW!
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