Lets rewind back to the Millenium change. In the era where Rap and RnB went hand in hand like Nelly and Kelly Rowland, when RnB girls wanted a rapper on their track in a little verse and rappers wanted a RnB girl for the chorus, where RnB singers became more famous after revealing their rapping skills, there's a curious issue that permeated the Korean scene : uncredited rappers.

On a lot of tracks by predominantly female singers, there's a male rapper on a verse - often in a 16 bar verse after the second chorus, mostly adlibbing random "yeah, uh huh, check it, let's go" in the background, sometimes providing intros and backup vocals, sometimes some really dope verses, these guys had a significant part in the song and definitely gave the song a part of its flavour.

But who are they?

Shouldn't be too hard, right? Usually, they are featured - or if not, then at least credited? Just go and check on Melon or Namuwiki? Or if not there, at least on the album?

Well, we have a problem the more we go back in time - In some cases, there's absolutely no information except obviously the rappers voice and whatever comes with it.

There are different ways to find out who the rapper is, if they're credited nowhere:

Category 1 : Names and Taglines

The intro to Baby V.O.X.'s Get Up has "One time for your mind, two times for your soul". This is 1TYM's tagline, so we can assume it's a member for 1TYM, either Teddy or Danny. Same case goes to Baek Z Young's Pressure during the rap break. (Ummm... ignore the n word drop. Or you know what? Dont. Lets find the rapper lmao).

Similarly, the intro to Ock Joohyun's Come To Me has "2 double O 4, O double J H( Ock Joohyun's initials J for Jiwon), G1, Joohyun, collaboration" and 4 bars before The verse "This is G 1, I have a message for you".

The rapper is Eun Jiwon of Sechskies, who name drops him and the singer (Joohyun). It is impressive to see Jiwon agreed to feature considering he was already out of DSP to pursue a solo career, while Joohyun, pursuing a solo career apart from Fin.K.L. was still under them. As Fin.K.L. and Sechskies were sister and brother group, ^{plus it's rumoured Jiwon and Lee Hyori were dating at that time but idk if they really did, and even if hey didn't, I don't wanna know} they had a close bond and definitely did each other favours like this.

Category 2 : Performing alongside the artists

Another way of tracking the uncredited rappers is to see if they ever performed with them. Case 1, S.E.S.'s I'm Your Girlthe rappers who introduce S.E.S. and made one of the most iconic intros on Kpop ever, also performed with them as not only rappers but also backup dancers!

They are none other than then-trainees Eric Moon and Andy Lee, who would go on to debut in SM's second boy group Shinhwa a few months later. Another case would be S.E.S.'s Twilight Zone which featured a pre-debut Shim Jaewon of Black Beat [rapping very vigorously to not only the 808 beat, but in triplets too](https://youtu.be/sVdM_XCfnKg)

(He is now performance director of SME btw). Thing about these trainees is, unless they actually debuted, no one knew who they were. SM wanted to showcase their trainees but not say their name, so it would only be after they debuted that people would remember "ah that guy!".

Category 3 : guessing by company/familiarity

As many companies housed at least one rapper, a rapper featured might as well be from the same company as the singers.

A whole case in itself : Who features on S.E.S.'s Be Natural?

Booming system up uh huh, Hyuggie track, Hyuggie track.

Now, considering Taeyong changed the line to TY (= initials --> this place is for name tagging) Track, we have "Hyuggie" as the rapper. If you write that in Korean, you'd get 혁이. Now it shouldn't be hard, right? Was there a rapper in SM who's name had 혁이 in it? Yes. Not just one, but two. Candidate 1, H.O.T.'s Jang Woohyuk. Now, why in the world wpuld a H.O.T. member rap on a S.E.S. track - and even if he did, wouldn't it have been big news? Wouldn't the obsessive fans have found out?

Candidate 2, Shinhwa's Eric, Korean name Moon Jung-hyuk. As he already featured on I'm Your Girl alongside Andy, I'm sure they must've called him in again. But Shinhwa was already pretty established by that time, so wouldn't that have been big news, too?

Going by voice, it might also be aforementioned Shim Jaewon. Or maybe someone totally else. We'll never actually know.

Another case where it's easier to pinpoint who it is is in Fin.K.L.'s 1st Album b-side, 낙서. At that time, there was only one proper rapper in the company, so the answer is obviously Eun Jiwon.

An example of "familiarity" would be S.E.S.'s Slip Away, where the female (!) rapper's voice is easily identified : Tashannie's rapper Annie Kim a.k.a. the member who is not Yoon Mirae /Tasha. There weren't many female rappers that rapped in English at that time, so finding the person is easy.

Something pretty cool about Annie featuring on a S.E.S. track is that Tashannie had already disbanded in 1999 (a year after they debuted) and that she was one of the line-up members for "DSP98GG", a.k.a. Fin.K.L., before the company changed Fin.K.L.'s debut concept from Hiphop to RnB and Annie, who was given the dancer role, didn't have much to do and left. An almost-Fin.K.L. member featuring on a S.E.S. track is kinda dope, ngl. Plus, in Hee interview with the Daily Life Olympics a few years ago, she did mention working with S.E.S.

Category 5 : Absolutely lost

And then there are cases when you just cannot guess who it is - neither a tagline, nor a company affiliation, nor familiarity voice-wise.

And going by Tiger JK's words in his Dive podcast episode, the problem lied in the perception of rap in the industry itself.

They called us in the studio, played us the song and told is to rap to it, and their idea of rap was what we call the bridge, so we went in there, for 8 bars, we did "yeah, uh huh, gimme some, check it out" and then thats it, they stopped the track, said thanks and gave us a chunk of money, and I thought "no, this is not what rap is!". That's how "너희들은 힙합을 아느냐" (Do You Know Hiphop?) was born."

Adding u/imnanbaboya's comment on this post (bestie pulled UPPP with the receipts) :

Most rappers were session rappers and not all rappers have connections to the company the main artist comes from.

Some songs I know off my head where I just can't place the rappers that have proper verses :

• The oldest one this list, probably "Lee Jiyeon - A Thousand Dances" on her 1992. A very short but sweet rap verse on a very upbeat, city pop genre song, and it even works - just, who is it? The verse is in 100% pure Korean, and the rapper has very deep voice. The only rappers that were active while Lee Jiyeon recorded the album were Hyun Jinyoung and probably Yang Joonil? But it's none of those two.

• Baby V.O.X. - Killer (definitely Korean-american, going by pronunciation but who is it? Baby V.O.X. was DR Music's only group)

• Fin.K.L. - Fin Killing Liberty (all we know about this rapper is that if in case he wrote his verse himself, Hyori was definitely his bias)

• O-24 - Freedom (to be honest, his verse was kinda redundant considering there were 3 girls rapping on the track already, but nice voice variation) *Edit : there's probably an answer!

• Isak N Jiyeon - The Way I Love U (he actually plays kinda a big role in this. Might as well be a in-house SM rapper but I can't place him)

• Fin.K.L. - Waiting For You : here it's actually two people, a male vocalist who does vocal adlibs, and a male rapper who gives narration-type adlibs and the intro. Again, probably a KorAm going by pronunciation, but I doubt it's one of the 6kies boys, and the male vocalost really sounds older than twenties. He really remiss me of Yoo Youngjin. As this song really reminds me of S.E.S. composition-wise, I would not be surprised if it's actually Yoo Youngjin, who got to sell the song to Fin.K.L. in some way. It would have made a big news then though because SESFIN and SM-DSP were blood rivals.

• Uhm Junghwa - Invitation. There's two dudes rapping - one korean-american, and a rapper rapping completely in English. Why do I have a feeling the second rapper is not a Korean and probably even a black rapper? Its the super natural intonation/ pronounciation and the more deeper voice that give it away to me.

They could have picked a random black guy off the streets of Itaewon, but I have a feeling it isn't. Could it maybe be Mickey Romeo - the black rapper who was a short-termlm member of Roora during their "Couple" era? Lee Sangmin, frontman of Roora, has a lot of industry connections as well as personal connections to Uhm Junghwa. I would not be surprised to find out Lee Sangmin found him from this.

Edit : I think we found the answer here too!

Honorary Mentions : The absolute legends that I actually found and the contradicting sources

1) Rapper Shijin/N-SON (credited on Namuwiki) who feautures in Ivy's A-ha, who had originally gotten this para in Category 5 in his name :

"Who the hell is this dude? He better get an award , because he gave us the most iconic guilty pleasure English rap lyrics. "I like my donuts with jam in the middle"? "I'm a star but no Patrick?" Forget that. This man is definitely Korean American, again, because out of all lyrics to rap, who else would rap "When I said I was down bad" "mama make it boom" "work it work it all night" "sorry I'm so tight" in a song about cheating? I doubt any amount of English lessons would teach slang and double meanings lol."

Turns out, he's a native Korean rapper from a crew called Infinite Flow and later Soya and Sun. He has worked on a bunch of RnB songs and underground crews.

2) YouTube and Melon seems to credit a rapper called Ha Daehwan on S.E.S.'s I Love You, but Namuwiki says it's Shim Jaewon on the track with Black Beats Jihoon performing alongside them. A but contradictory, so we might never even know.

3.) Rapper guy who featured on BoA's Girls On Top is only credited in the album booklet.

Edit: u/imnanbaboya pulled up with some receipts in the comments and gave me a few answers indeed!

For example, the rapper in Dana's Diamond (often wrongly believed to be TVXQ's Yunho) is a singer called Hur Se-won, who AFAIK has no connection to SM. If it's not a voice one would recognize from a big group, it's probably a session rapper. But these rappers can also come from already established groups; a few songs on BoA's debut album (e.g. Come to Me, No Way) credited their raps to the group X-Teen, who'd debuted in 1998. One thing I do notice is that SM is more meticulous with crediting their rappers than other companies (the SM albums I've seen credit each rapper on every individual track, as opposed to others cough cough Fin.K.L's first album cough cough where there's just one big rap credit).

Speaking of Fin.K.L's first album, I'd like to give big props to Bobby Kim, who was a very prolific session rapper before his debut. He's credited on Fin.K.L's debut and is very obvious on songs like To My Boyfriend (pretty sure one of the guys on there is Eun Jiwon) and 유혹, but one can also find him on early Sechs Kies songs like Taming of the Shrew. But he's damn near everywhere, including on O-24's 1st album - consult his NamuWiki page. (Also on O-24's first is someone called 이승주, who's also on Fin.K.L's debut... huh!)

So that means we probably have an answer for O-24's Freedom? Is it Lee Seung-ju? I do know Bobby Kim too and that's definitely not him on Freedom.

Also - on Uhm Junghwa's Invitation, the two rappers are probably members of g.o.d. I can't recognize all of their voices, but the Korean rapper is a familiar voice to me (I think it's Danny Ahn?). The English rapper is most definitely Joon Park - he has a very distinct voice (and I've listened to a good amount of g.o.d to know it). Invitation was produced by J. Y. Park, who also formed g.o.d under his wing; it would make sense for him to lend out his boys for the song.

DAMN! WE FOUND AN ANSWER! It's not a black guy, just Uncle Joon. Let's goooooooooo

This makes so much sense and imma be petty and say I would have found that out too if I listened to more g.o.d. songs LMAO. And if I didn't write this writeup in the middle of the night.

For now, these are the few examples I can think of. There are obviously many more (that y'all need to drop in the comments). I personally think it as pretty good that crediting became a bigger thing from the 2000s onwards when the industry realised "damn, feauturing - sharing credits - works".

Big shoutout to Jinusean ft. Uhm Junghwa for like the biggest feauture of the 90s and making it popular. There was one Korean comment on a kpophelp post detailing the exact circumstances of this but the reply has been deleted RIPPP

I'm actually kinda surprised none of the uncredited rappers have come forward and asked for credit or a part of profits (or maybe I missed something). I don't see a reason why someone would deny them rightful credit especially in case 4 where it's as obvious as daylight who featured.

I can see a reason being that a) the feauturing artists are so "small" that them featuring as not seen as a collaboration but as a "oppurtunity to work with a bigger artist, so be grateful". As Tiger JK described, often, there wasn't even a contract in place, you were hit up by producers at some clubs or so, called to the studio, given a few beats to rap to, and when it was over, given a bit of money - that's how "rowdy" and "unorganised", in a way, the industry was.

I'm still very much on the lookout as to if I can find some other rappers names on famous tracks.