Image: Zico’s endorsement in Baek Ga-hee’s essay collection If You Are Light. “Even a booster shot can’t stop it; my goal is nurturing talent.” These are lyrics from “Trash Talk,” a track on Zico’s new album. Wordplay that conveys a double meaning — the punch line — is one of lyricist Zico’s specialties. In “Okey Dokey,” he raps, “Even if you look through tinted glasses, it only brings out the depth.” By twisting the idea that tinted glasses make a 3D movie look more vivid in a theater, he pushes back against some of the disparaging voices directed at him in the hip-hop scene. Books are the soil in which his writing grows. Zico left a mark as a “literary idol” by writing an endorsement for Baek Ga-hee’s essay collection If You Are Light. When asked how he writes lyrics, Zico made up lines and rapped them on the spot. The café latte on the table became his material. “Back in my day, you know, a latte is caffeine~.” — You seem interested in writing. “When I find a passage I like while reading, I take a picture of it on my phone. A line I photographed recently was from The Courage to Be Disliked: ‘As long as someone wields their unhappiness as a weapon to make themselves special, they will inevitably need that unhappiness forever.’” — Who is your favorite writer? “I like Osamu Dazai. After reading No Longer Human, I sought out and read The Setting Sun as well. The writing is pessimistic and closed off, but the astonishing expressions that emerge from it, with their vitality, amazed me. In Korea, I like Baek Ga-hee’s writing and bought each new book she released.” Image: Zico appearing as a judge on the rapper survival program Show Me the Money 4. Mnet broadcast capture. Image: Zico appeared as a mentor alongside HYBE chairman Bang Si-hyuk (left) on the 2020 K-pop survival program I-LAND. Mnet broadcast capture. Once the leader of the idol group Block B, Zico now heads KOZ Entertainment. The rapper produced Kim Se-jeong’s ballad “Flower Way” (2016), taking the song to the top of the music charts. He is now busy planning an idol group. Zico, who said he enjoyed watching the drama Extraordinary Attorney Woo, said, “I don’t want to be someone who points into the distance and orders people to run there, but someone who first leads the way to where we need to go and then beckons them to follow.” When he debuted with Block B in 2011, he went through difficulties including internal conflicts at his agency. It was a lesson this “dirt-spoon idol” learned through many ups and downs.
