She’s Got Seoul (Pun? No?)

We’ve seen BoA tragically fail in the American market as she tried to exude an awkward sexiness that we fortunately never saw from her in Kpop. Unfortunately, we also witnessed the decline of Utada Hikaru’s American album sales in spite of her singing ability heavily overshadowing BoA’s broken Konglish. We then tried to ignore the fact that Min resembled a borderline mail-in prostitute from Korea when she became Lil Jon’s protege. It’s been a grueling and often embarrassing time of social change as Asians attempt to enter an industry that is known to break many hearts, music traditions and virgins. It’s what we call the mainstream music in America.

But I THINK we’ve found someone legitimate: A 20-year-old Korean American girl named Ailee, who hails from New Jersey and was recently signed to an agency owned by Kpop’s veteran R&B mogul, Wheesung. He was also once registered under YG Entertainment during the peak of his  career. Employing his affiliations with several entertainment gurus in the States, Ailee can use Korea’s resources to merge into the perilously fickle U.S. industry, giving Asians another hope  that ‘one of us’ could make it.

It’s true that Ailee’s voice isn’t extremely distinctive as Rihanna or Adele’s tone, which is another factor that generates much attention, but her pitch and range is still incredible. Girl has SOUL oozing from her aura – and this is something that Korea flagrantly lacks, especially for female KPop “artists” who have the singing capacity of a doped-up gerbil. Here, you can see it for yourself what I mean regarding Ailee’s potential to go far: