Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
I typically don’t get involved in the constant plagiarism accusations that the K-pop world obsesses over, mainly because I don’t know enough about what actually constitutes it. Somehow, though, that neutral stance makes me more reasonable than most netizens by default, as people love nothing more to endlessly speculate on supposed copycats when they basically know the same amount as me on the issue: shit.
Over the years, though, if there’s one rule I learned to memorize it’s that soundalikes are not plagiarism in and of itself. Thus, while I identified the clear Dr. Dre influence on MAMAMOO‘s “Pride Of 1 CM” literally minutes after it was released (instead of three weeks later), my initial reaction wasn’t to cry plagiarism, but to rather just enjoy the soundalike (and borderline parody anyway) and move on.
Others felt differently, however, as a Pann post has gone up accusing the song of biting Eminem‘s “Under The Influence” and Dr. Dre‘s “The Next Episode“, “Still D.R.E.“, and “Forgot About Dre” (no “The Real Slim Shady“?). Additionally, they dragged “You’re The Best” into it by comparing it to Aqua‘s “Happy Boys And Girls“.
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I listened to all the examples given, and in my uninformed opinion it did sound similar but fell well short of plagiarism, much less anything legally actionable. But like I said, I don’t actually know shit, just what I read, so I asked KPOPALYPSE about it instead.
KPOPALYPSE has spent a lot of time analyzing and explaining plagiarism accusations before and at length, and here is what he said about these allegations (in tweets cause I’m too lazy to transcribe everything).
https://twitter.com/kpopalypse/status/704606806182506496
https://twitter.com/kpopalypse/status/704607014375133185
https://twitter.com/kpopalypse/status/704607619940388864
https://twitter.com/kpopalypse/status/704608078453280768
https://twitter.com/kpopalypse/status/704608495484547073
But hey, remember last time when netizens were so sure that 4Minute‘s “Crazy” ripped off Knife Mode‘s “Boss Party“? That worked out well.
