Trump’s tweeting fuels rap response
Where Donald Trump’s tweets spark public contention, rapper Dumbfoundead used the president’s drubbing of Kim Jong Un on social media last year as fuel for his latest record.
But “Rocket Man,” the six-track EP named after the lead single inspired by Trump’s feud with the North Korean dictator, represents more than a knee-jerk reaction by the Korean American hip-hop artist.
“It was just funny to me,” says Dumbfoundead, whose real name is Jonathan Park. “I wanted to create a fictional, ethereal persona that wasn’t necessarily Kim Jong Un but the embodiment of this whole other animated character.”
The “rocket man” tweetstorm is one example of how the president slings insults at political opponents and world leaders, which struck a nerve with Dumbfoundead. The song, and the entire project concept, was meant to repurpose the insult for more empowering effect.
The music video for “Rocket Man” was banned in South Korea by the country’s censors, but Bay Area fans can catch the song live at the Regency Ballroom during Dumbfoundead’s Yikes! tour stop on Friday, March 23. The 31-city marathon will have a different opener for each region (National Poetry Slam champion G Yamazawa is scheduled for the San Francisco date) with a focus on highlighting Asian American acts.
Dumbfoundead made his music career by flipping realworld scripts into lyrical critiques using his quick wit and sense of irony. That style earned him respect during his battle-rap upbringing in the Los Angeles underground.
After more than a decade of making music, Dumbfoundead skillfully blends comedy and advocacy in his words. In some tracks, such as the slowburning “Every Last Drop,” he hilariously praises his immigrant upbringing (“Mama turned yellow trash into straight gold”). In “Harambe,” off his 2017 full-length “We Might Die,” he challenges the state of the modern world (“Welcome to the jungle, with more guns than roses”). In “Safe,” which was written with the 2016 #OscarsSoWhite campaign in mind, he calls for more Asian representation in Hollywood (“The other night I watched the Oscars, and the roster of the only yellow men were all statues”).
“Dumb is a pioneer,” says Yamazawa, a Japanese American rapper from North Carolina. “He represents a time in our generation of hip-hop that’s beginning to embrace new stories and perspectives.”
Waxing political was not Dumbfoundead’s intention when he started rapping (the 32-year-old is not shy about young Dumb’s aspirations: “I just wanted to get girls,” he admits, with a laugh). A graduate of Los Angeles’ hip-hop conglomerate Project Blowed and a freestyle veteran impervious to stereotypical Asian jokes, race was never his topic of choice either.
“Ultimately, his craft is his own, and he represents a high level of artistry that isn’t held back by his cultural background,” Yamazawa says. “That’s something all of us (Asian American artists) are trying to accomplish.”
But while Dumbfoundead rose in the rap ranks on his unique material and delivery, not his Asian roots, he couldn’t remain silent on how ethnicity ties in with identity and humanity.
“I realized that if I’m not talking about (my ethnicity), I’m wasting an opportunity, wasting a voice,” he says. “When you hop on stage, you have an opportunity to say something and change people’s minds about who you are and what your people are.”
Born in Argentina and brought to Los Angeles by way of Mexico with his mother and sister, Dumbfoundead was a latchkey kid, “growing up in front of a television.” As an arts and entertainment nerd, he related more to his Latino and black friends — skaters and punk rockers from Silver Lake and Echo Park, northwest of his Koreatown neighborhood — essentially disconnected from Los Angeles’ Korean community.
That distance eventually faded with time, as proved by his “Koreatown” chest tattoo and his ongoing support for Asian Americans in the arts. Still, he frequently calls on those adolescent experiences for insight into how to tell Asian immigrant stories.
Outside of rapping, Dumbfoundead has had his fair share of screen time, most recently as one of the subjects in “Bad Rap,” a Netflix documentary about Asian Americans living the independent artist grind, and with a supporting role in “Bodied,” a 2017 independent comedydrama centered on battle rapping. He wants to write for television, orbiting the small screens of Donald Glover (“Atlanta”), Issa Rae (“Insecure”) and Aziz Ansari (“Master of None”).
From rap to television, Dumbfoundead always felt a gravitational pull to cultures other than his own. Now he’s shepherding a new generation of Asian American hip-hop artists.
“I think it’s important that individuals coming into a culture that wasn’t necessarily started by you or your people, you gotta bring something to the table,” he says. “I think that’s the key to even telling the Asian American story. … We have to start thinking from the outside, not staying in this bubble or being angry, (and) kind of try to find humor and make fun of ourselves too.”