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www.groovekorea.com / March 2014 40 MuSIC & ARTS Edited by Elaine Ramirez (elaine@groovekorea.com) Living in the limelight Work doesn’t end when they walk off the set, and life doesn’t get easier off camera. They have to deal with scorn from the anonymous bullies of the Internet, telling Bronwyn that she’s ugly or Jake that they hate what he represents. Bronwyn has found the expat com- munity especially judgmental of her. One girl, she says, posted on Facebook: “‘She’s just a bad example to young women as a foreigner living in Korea. I’m so offended by her; she’s just uses her looks to get where she is.’” Jake’s solution is to kill hate with cordiality. “It’s like some people do it just to get attention, and if you give it back in a polite way, then they’re not as bad as you think,” he says. When a Twitter user told him he hated his work, Jake responded coolly: “‘If people re- ally hate you, that means people really love you, too. It’s better to have that than to have everyone indifferent.’” One tweet later and the hate-tweeter was telling him to keep up the good work. “That was the quickest turnaround ever. It’s maddening,” he says. Just like for other entertainers, fame has necessitated that the expats manage their celebrity personas even when not working. “There’s always a line. And even out of the public eye you have to be real careful,” says Jake. “You have these different personas that are you. It’s like you’ve crafted versions of yourself.” He has found he has to create separate personalities for different occasions: There’s Jake Pains the rapper and emcee, Jake Patchett (his real name) the global hallyu TV host, Jake the boyfriend and “Baek Young-nam,” as he is known in some Korean hip-hop circles. But somewhere along the line, either he becomes them, or they become him. “It’s weird because you’re not being yourself, and then that starts turning into yourself.” On the flipside, the constant limelight is a necessary evil, and one that Jake welcomes. “People talk about their privacy being invaded … I’d be like, ‘Fuck that, I don’t care man, come into my house and take photos while I’m asleep naked.’” He says that he was never in it for the fame, but attention is a gauge for success. “It’s like a verification of what you do. The more popular you get, (the more) it shows that what you’re doing is being noticed. It’s like a positive indication of what you’re doing is being recognized.” For Pinnacle, it’s a matter of professionalism. He has the added pressure of being one of the few black people in the public limelight here and feels like he must be a good representative. “You are defi- nitely an ambassador to your demographic when you’re in front of a lot of people. And for me, it’s kind of difficult sometimes because I have to combat the media portrayal that black people have,” he says. On top of that, he sees black people acting ignorantly in public and feels the need to offset the negative stereotype being reinforced. It’s important to adapt to your surroundings, he says. The fight- to-survive mentality of his hometown Cincinnati, isn’t necessary in Korea. “My mentality has been changed being out here, and the way that I conduct myself has changed as well,” he adds. “So, yes, I do feel like I’m an ambassador and, yes, I do feel like I have to keep a level head, in order to combat or to offset the ignorance that you see sometimes from other black people in Korea. But at the same time, I’m always gonna be real. I’ll always be me.” Sacrifices, mistakes and regrets Free time and privacy are not their only sacrifices. It’s a real- ity they all had to accept when they chose this path. Hobbies, friends and other passions, including love, have to come second. For Pinnacle, too much was happening at once. He was in his first long-term relationship when his career finally started to take shape, and trying to be both Pinnacle TheHustler and Pinnacle the boyfriend was tearing him in separate ways. “She was the first relationship that I had of that kind where it was a long-term relationship, and it was also the first time that I was so busy with so many different things that I was stressed out. She would say some things to piss me off, and it was like a back-and-forth,” he says. If he could go back, he would have treated her better, he says. “I would’ve employed better time management so that I could give her more time and attention and do things I need to do as a boyfriend, and then handle the business stuff. It was like 24/7 business, but not 24/7 girlfriend. So that was a mistake I made there.” In a sense, he says, he had to sacrifice her for his career, to the point where they had to split up for a spell. But he says he learned from mistakes he made and that the two are doing bet- ter than ever. “Now I know what I should not do. And because of that learning experience, me and her are stronger now. I think it was good for us to go through that.” He would do two things differently, he says, if he could start back at the beginning. One is waste less money learning the ropes and pursuing fruitless projects. The other is manage his relationship. But does he have any regrets about the sacrifices and mistakes he’s made for his career? “I thought about this the other day,” he says. “It’s an interesting question, and the answer is no.” At the end of the day, he says, it all made him stronger: “I needed to make those mistakes, and I needed to fail, and I needed to be broke. I needed to learn what it means to have absolutely nothing and rely only on yourself to pick yourself back up and to keep moving forward. “And when I bring somebody else up after me, I’m gonna know how to better navigate them so they don’t make the same mistakes I made.”
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