“I was born in a hospital in Incheon on March 31st, 1990. I’m the youngest out of two sons and one daughter in our family. My brother and I are twins.”
“I learned how to speak really late. I couldn’t speak till I was 5 so my family thought I was mute.”
“In kindergarten , I received a lot of awards in competitions like children’s arts or math competitions. My older brother always placed 1st and I was always 2nd though.”
“I used to really like sports when I entered elementary school. I liked all types of sports. In third grade, I was recommended by my coach to sign up for little league baseball since I liked sports and in 6th grade, I started soccer but because I caught the eyes of a recruiter from a different elementary, I even went to practice at a different soccer team in another school.
Also, I entered a basketball team without my parents knowing, in which I even advanced to the National Sports Festival. Back then, the anticipation of my surroundings were high and some even believed I’d become an amazing athlete. However, I wasn’t able to achieve that due to my parents being against it.”
“Because both of my parents were working in Seoul to provide income for our family, I spent majority of my adolescent days at my grandfather’s house. Even for school arts festivals, my parents never came and at the time, I was upset since I was younger but my grandmother always did.”
When he entered junior high, Yongguk rejoined his parents living in Seoul.
“I started gaining interest in music from junior high and on. One day, I just thought how hip hop music seemed cool. It was also because my older sister liked American music so when I’d turn on the computer in our house, there were only songs in that genre. Because of that, I naturally began listening to hip hop music and gained interest, which led me to start looking for related videos myself.”
“I think after seeing videos with rapping in it, I realized then for the first time that I wanted to rap myself.”
“In my second year of junior high I wrote lyrics for the first time. After composing lyrics, coincidentally I found an online forum that comprised of people who were interested in hip hop and rap just like me and it was a whole new world. I posted my lyrics for the first time on an online forum and the responses were really good.
At the time, I saw lots of responses like, “Your rap is unique” and “It’s refreshing.”
How did I feel? Of course I felt so happy that I felt like I was going to fly. Many people listened to my music and I even received a question that asked, “Do you live outside of the country?” I think my motive back then was to not be swayed by the trend and prove “I only do my kind of music” to others.”
In high school, Bang Yongguk was really a quiet student. Despite moving onto the same high school as his friends that he was with in his junior high years, he was known to be the kid who never really talked.
“I didn’t really talk in high school and I would just go to school and come back home to do music: that was all I did.”
In his second year of high school, Bang Yongguk started meeting up with his hyungs (who are label-mates with him currently) that were promoting at the time and began studying on composing. He said he started gaining more knowledge about music from professionals who were around this time.
“In meeting up with the hyungs of our label back then, I composed by myself. My spectrum in music began expanding and seeing them produce music, I learnt a lot from it. Even when writing lyrics, I used to just write what came to mind before but, then, I think I started thinking a little more before jotting down lyrics.”
However, Bang Yongguk’s parents were very against him doing music.
“Because my parents didn’t like me doing music, I even rebelled for the first time. I used to sneak out to produce music alone. The storage room we had, I remodeled it into a producing room and I used to stay there. That was the place where the life of rapper Bang Yongguk began.”
However, the bigger his dreams got, his parents’ disapproval grew stronger as well, but both parties eventually found a compromise:
“My parents told me, “Be studious first and then do what you like,” so I opened my eyes to studying as well. Having them tell me that they wouldn’t say anything afterwards once I would achieve something first, I went to the library by myself and began studying. My test scores? I eventually ranked first in the entire school. Even after that, I maintained my status in our school’s top rankings (smiles).”
With him being motivated to focus on his studies so that he would be able to make music in the future, he earned a scholarship, of course, but was also offered a job in a major corporation that is one of the top nationwide.
“I received an excellence award in studies for the first time in my entire life and received a scholarship as well.
Once I graduated high school, I was even offered a job in the S Corporation (Samsung). However, I wasn’t interested in any of those and I only had one thing in mind which was music.”
“I showed my parents my all in terms of being studious and it was my turn to do what I wanted which was to pursue in music. Eventually, I was able to convince my mother and she began to have an optimistic outlook on me pursuing music as well.”
“When I was 20, all I had to me was music really. When I promoted underground, I promoted with a quite popular crew and we released a compilation album, even so as to holding a nationwide tour and I stood on stage without any worries.”
However, Bang Yongguk never knew what satisfaction was. He even left the crew for the purpose of finding his own color in music and was on the constant search for finding his own kind of music.
“Even when I was a part of the crew, I still had dreams of going through my own challenges and when I left the crew, I still did music by myself underground. It was a difficult period of time in my life but with music, I was able to hold strong.”
With him being stubborn about music constantly, the opportunity of a major debut was given to him by fate.
“In 2010, the Untouchable hyungs that I’ve always known and was close with told a representative of our current label about me and when I was contacted by them for the first time, they said they wanted to make a hip hop idol group. I was shocked in hearing the term “idol.”
“I hesitated a lot at the time and I thought that if I was classified under an idol group, it would mean that the spectrum of music I was able to put out was limited. However, they told me, “If you come into this group, you’ll be able to live out your dreams” and that’s how they convinced me. After hearing about the members, I thought, “If I just work harder, it can be a good group.”
So I told them I’d do it.”
And that was how Yongguk took his first step into the TS Entertainment company.
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