That Davichi reign just won't let up! The duo's new power ballad, "The Letter," enters the Gaon singles chart at No. 1 this week, making it their fifth hit single this year alone. The pair previously reached No. 1 with "Turtle" and "Be Warmed," while "Just The Two Of Us" and "Because I Miss You Today" both peaked at No. 2. Judging by the charts, there's no question that Davichi is one of the biggest female acts in K-pop today.
A few spots down is miss A's "Hush," which rises six spots to No. 5. Despite not topping the charts, the sexy single's been able to place first on two music programs so far, making this a fairly successful comeback for the somewhat struggling girl group. It also shows the importance of timing: T-ara's "No. 9" fared the same --if not better-- than "Hush," but was blocked on music programs by blockbuster acts like SHINee, IU, and K.Will.
Anyway, just below miss A is BIGBANG's Taeyang, who climbs 10 spots with "RINGA LINGA" to No. 6. This will likely be the peak for the single, which is another sign that BIGBANG's solo projects outside of G-Dragon just aren't doing the numbers that that they used to. Seungri's "Gotta Talk To U" peaked briefly at No. 3 back in August, whereas a few years ago Taeyang was reaching No. 1 with songs like "I Need a Girl" and Seungri was sweeping music programs with "What Can I Do."
Speaking of BIGBANG, T.O.P's "Doom Dada" enters at No. 10 this week. This isn't too bad considering that T.O.P's main activities outside of BIGBANG are either acting or as part of the GD&TOP unit, and "Doom Dada" still has a chance to rise a bit next week like "RINGA LINGA" did.
Trouble Maker's "Now" is already down to No. 13, which is a little surprising considering the NINE music program trophies the song has picked up. But again, this just shows how important timing is when it comes to winning Mutizens.
Miryo & Narsha (otherwise known as M&N) debut at No. 19 with their subunit single, "Tonight," while T-ara's "No. 9" remains in the top forty more than a month after its release at No. 37.
Check out this week's key K-pop hits, below!
No. 1. Davichi - The Letter
No. 5. miss A - Hush
No. 6. Taeyang - RINGA LINGA
No. 10. T.O.P - Doom Dada
No. 19. M&N - Tonight
Culture Feature
Dear White People: AAVE Is an Actual Dialect, Not Your "Stan Culture"
Using a Black dialect isn't a meme—it's cultural appropriation.
08.03.2020
As Black Lives Matter protests have rightfully taken the world by storm over the past couple of months, we're long overdue for thorough evaluations of just how often aspects of Black heritage have been co-opted by white audiences.
It should be obvious that much of fashion and music as we know it today was invented by Black people. We (hopefully) all know by now that we can no longer accept Blackface and use of the n-word by non-Black people as the norm—and Internet users have tried "canceling" offenders in the public eye, with varying degrees of success.
<p>It shouldn't require much explanation to understand that explicitly racist jokes are bad, but there line between "acceptable" and "offensive" can be a little more muddled in some other instances—like in the case of non-Black people using AAVE, or African American Vernacular English.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><p><a href="https://www.languagejones.com/blog-1/2014/6/8/what-is-aave" target="_blank">AAVE is a specific dialect</a>, like British English, and it's used by Black Americans and some Black Canadians (hi, Drake!). It comes with its own set of rigid grammar and pronunciation rules, despite decades of white people condemning it as being a "ghetto" way of speaking. However, as memes, hip-hop, and shows like <em>RuPaul's Drag Race </em>have spread AAVE outside of its typical Black communities, non-Black Internet users—such as Brittany Tomlinson, better known as the <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/daniellaemanuel/woman-trying-kombucha-meme" target="_blank">Kombucha Girl</a>—have demeaned AAVE to a simple source of the slang du jour.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-633"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent1 - mid_content --></p><p>In a TikTok video that's recently resurfaced on Twitter, Tomlinson seems to be addressing her previous use of AAVE, defending it as just a byproduct of "Internet culture."</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-634"> </div>
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</script></center><p></p><p>"I feel like it's a very fine line between genuinely calling out a creator who's using AAVE or 'the blaccent,' like, putting it on for comedic purposes, versus quoting something," Tomlinson explained. "The Nicki Minaj thing— 'big boobs? Chile, anyways...'—that's a meme, obviously. So when someone's quoting that, or when someone says 'periodt,' 'sis'—it's very much Internet culture. Like, stan Twitter. Stan culture has its own language… Collectively as a generation, if you're on the Internet, this is kind of how we all speak." Tomlinson has since <a href="https://twitter.com/brittany_broski/status/1289341598115889153?s=21" target="_blank">apologized on Twitter </a>and removed the videos.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-635"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent2 - long_content --></p><div id="49ca2" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d2d2aef010af7c5d32765942f3b32e0a"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1289286200285569024" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">y’all really let this yt woman sit up and here and boldly tell black people AAVE is “stan culture” i’m sick https://t.co/QjD4mixEr0</div> — flo millicent stan account (@flo millicent stan account)<a href="https://twitter.com/slitmyclitt/statuses/1289286200285569024">1596224758.0</a></blockquote></div><p>It's true that many words rooted in AAVE have become so common that many people who use them have become desensitized to their racial connotations; <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-slang-white-people-ruined_n_55ccda07e4b064d5910ac8b3" target="_blank">slang terms like "lit," "bae," and "throw shade" can all be traced back to AAVE</a>. Words like "sis," "periodt," "deadass," and "chile" are more recent arrivals in the general cultural consciousness, but as the responses to Tomlinson's video indicate, they've already been used by Black people for ages.<br></p><p>There's a lot of issues with Tomlinson's statement, and perhaps the most obvious is her assumption that "we all speak" in this culturally appropriative manner. Plenty of white people know that using AAVE is culturally appropriative, and for Tomlinson to diffuse the blame onto an entire generation just comes off as an attempt to dodge responsibility for her own covertly racist actions. And even if Tomlinson genuinely does think "we all speak" that way, that just further proves the troubling degree to which AAVE has been co-opted.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-636"> </div>
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</script></center><p></p><p><strong>Furthermore, it's incredibly reductive to call AAVE a part of "stan culture." It's an actual dialect. </strong>There's a lengthy list of specific pronunciation and syntax guidelines to follow in AAVE—learning it as someone who learned English as a typical white American would require some tedious brain rewiring. There are even anonymous Twitter accounts dedicated to broadcasting embarrassingly misused AAVE by non-Black people (a quick tip: "chile" means "child," not "chill"), proving it's a language with complex structures and not just a batch of fun slang words to use as you please.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-637"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent3 - longer_content --></p><p>Since <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/blackenglishhistory/what-is-black-english/a-note-about-stigma" target="_blank">AAVE has often been considered "incorrect," "lazy," and "poor grammar"</a> since its beginnings during Civil War-era of slavery, many <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2019/12/17/culture-code-switching/" target="_blank">Black people feel the need to code-switch</a>—or change their way of speaking—in hopes of being better respected by White peers. It's pretty disturbing, then, to see AAVE become a "trend" among white people trying to be funny in 2020—especially when <a href="https://www.statista.com/chart/21857/people-killed-in-police-shootings-in-the-us/" target="_blank">Black people are still disproportionately murdered</a>, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/10/10/faces-poverty-social-racial-factors/37977173/" target="_blank">impoverished</a>, <a href="https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/un-report-on-racial-disparities/" target="_blank">incarcerated</a>, and <a href="https://www.popdust.com/megan-thee-stallion-shooting-reaction-2646844030.html" target="_self">made a mockery of online</a>. </p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-638"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent33 - longer_content --></p><p>Sure, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziM8LHGzFlk" target="_blank">that one video of Nicki Minaj</a> that Tomlinson referenced is pretty funny—probably because of her sheer confusion. But why is a behavior that's inherently Black, like speaking AAVE, considered humorous among stan culture? Whether intended or not, a white person using AAVE is likely doing so to be considered funny or cool among their peers online—I can't imagine them using phrases like "periodt" or "it really do be like that" with their parents or teachers.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-639"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent4 - longest_content --></p><p>Long story short, AAVE was only considered "ghetto" until white people appropriated it; that should be a dead giveaway that white people shouldn't use it at all.</p><h2></h2>
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Miryo and Narsha of veteran K-pop girl group, Brown Eyed Girls, have teamed up together to form a subunit, M&N. It's the first unit project for BEG, who up until now have stuck with full group activities or solo releases.
Fans expecting something as big as Narsha's "Bbi Ri Bba Bba" or Miryo's "Dirty" from M&N's debut single, "Tonight," will probably be disappointed. Rather than going all out for M&N's promotions, the pair have settled on a small digital single release -- "Tonight" doesn't even come with a proper full-length music video. The breezy midtempo recalls Brown Eyed Girls' 2012 non-promoted seasonal release, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," so it's more like a side project than a real K-pop comeback.
The good news is that M&N have recorded "Tonight" in both Korean and English, which their international fans (like us!) definitely appreciate. Since they sound so good, we wouldn't mind some more English-language BEG down the road.
Hopefully we'll still get another full solo release from Narsha or Miryo at some stage, but until then, M&N is a nice way to fill in the time between BEG's group releases.
