Daniel Park on Representation and Producing the K-drama, ‘IDOL: The COUP’

Success never comes easy and especially when the odds are stacked against you, but with an authentic voice it can shape a generation. Daniel Park knows this personally as he is most notably known for his work with Far East Movement and his production company Transparent Agency. Daniel Park has been pushing the boundary of Asian American media and music into the broader American culture for more than a decade. Now as we are starting to see more Asian and Asian American artists take center stage on the path he helped create, we got sit down and talk with him about his thoughts on representation, the music industry and producing the K-drama, IDOL: The COUP.

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Teen Titans Soul: De La Go!

One of the the greatest cultural tragedies of the digital era is that De La Soul’s early music isn’t streaming. An early victim of the sample-clearance wars (over 70 on their masterful debut, 3 Feet High and Rising), De La’s cultural impact — and promise — has never been allowed to be fully realized. Not only has the streaming era proved to stifle De La’s early output, their contracts only covered physical media releases as no one anticipated that streaming would become the primary way we’d all experience media.

With new modes of delivery, new contracts have to be made for those previous albums. And De La has tried to do this in good faith, but Tommy Boy Records, the label De La was originally signed to, has refused to give them a mutually equitable deal. Tommy Boy would take the lion’s share of the profits, even though all of De La’s albums have recouped (made back initial production/investment costs).

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