This story is taken from the spring 2026 issue of Dazed. Buy a copy of the magazine here.
In Korea, it’s rare to refer to older acquaintances by their names. Boys traditionally address older males as hyung (elder brother) and older females as noona (elder sister), while girls are expected to use oppa and unnie respectively. Used as a way of showing respect to those with more life experience, the titles are spoken in public spaces, social gatherings and even school hallways, where the younger person is expected to bow in greeting.
This kind of deference never came naturally to Effie, the 23-year-old Seoul-based singer and rapper who stands at the vanguard of Korea’s underground music scene. “Fuck that culture, it’s too outdated,” she says. “It’s one of the reasons I dropped out of school and couldn’t relate to people there. Me and my friends don’t care about that culture – we don’t have that hierarchy.”
Referring to her friends simply by their names may be a minor act of rebellion against mainstream Korean society, but it’s one that swathes of the country’s younger generations increasingly subscribe to. And challenging the status quo is a recurring theme in Effie’s musical output, which has been prolific over the past year. “Tapped-in young people know how other countries are, and how other people are free to do what they want and be freer in their relationships with each other,” she continues. “We still have conservative young people – but usually they hate my music.”
We still have conservative young people [in South Korea] – but usually they hate my music.
Her latest EP, pullup to busan 4 morE hypEr summEr it’s gonna bE a fuckin moviE, is a carefree and confident celebration of the freedom of youth. There’s the raged chaos of “2025담배”, the melody-maxxing rush of “MORE HYPER”, and the crunched-out bass of “CAN I SIP 담배”. Standout “MAKGEOLLI BANGER” is a feel-great anthem for hazy, laughter-filled evenings surrounded by friends. The tracks – all produced by her close friend and collaborator, kimj – are wild and unapologetically hyper-digital. But what ties them together are Effie’s diverse deliveries, which float between urgent and ethereal, see-sawing between Korean and English to create a vocal vernacular that is entirely her own.
Yet finding the full, expressive range of her voice has been a turbulent path for the young star. After her family moved to a Seoul suburb from Busan when she was 11, she struggled to fit in at school, mostly finding solace in her own company. Instead of going to the mall with friends, Effie spent countless out-of-class hours immersed in the internet, like many outsiders across the world. She binged Skins, played [Japanese rhythm game] BanG Dream! and sought refuge in the cloud-rap discographies of Drain Gang and Yung Lean’s Sad Boys crew.
In 2018, Effie started experimenting with making music herself, recording vocals on FL Studio and splicing together samples she’d downloaded online. “I just typed in a random-type beat into YouTube, made two songs and then released them on Spotify,” she recalls. “Then I started making music videos by myself and had my first official release in 2021.”
That official debut, named “Neon Genesis” after the classic Japanese anime, saw her labelled as a rising figurehead of Korean sad-girl music. When we speak, she’s wearing a red hoodie printed with Rei Ayanami on the front – one of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s main characters –and red sunglasses to match. “It feels like Japanese anime culture was at its peak in 2010 to 2020,” she says. ”After that it got too commercial, and it’s not really artistic any more.”
This comment offers a glimpse into Effie’s creative psyche, and what she values in art and music. In Korea, the country’s music scene and cultural exports (as fans of 2025 animated sensation KPop Demon Hunters will know) are dominated by the K-pop industrial complex. Young artists are often assembled into groups via auditions and scouts, then put through intense training regimes designed to produce commercial success, working alongside sprawling teams of expert songwriters, musicians, producers, choreographers and creative directors.
It means that, at the top of the charts, millions of pounds are poured into producing highly polished songs, music videos and perfectly synced dances on stage. Meanwhile, Effie recorded the video for her hit down entirely on a MacBook webcam. “That was all with Photobooth, and I use an old iPhone and this iPhone 15 Pro [for my other videos],” she says, lifting up the device in question. Effie’s music videos give off the vibe of a teenager vlogging fun days out during the early YouTube and Tumblr heydays, harking back to a less-curated era of the internet. “MAKGEOLLI BANGER”, for example, sees her sing into a camera at the seaside, with a portable JBL speaker clipped onto her jeans.
We don’t need to be polished. We don’t have good gear, or a good studio – we just made a whole record in this messy room.
“We don’t need to be polished. We don’t have good gear, or a good studio – we just made a whole record in this messy room,” she explains, briefly showing Dazed her apartment’s living room, which has the organised chaos typical of someone in their early 20s. Bags and hats hang off a coat rack, a jumper sits crumpled on the floor, and a pair of headphones lie discarded on the seat of a chair. Her recording setup is suitably minimal, fitted with a laptop, monitors and condenser microphone. “Sometimes we master without good headphones or good speakers and just use the laptop speaker. I don’t like to spend too much time on one song, because I don’t want to ruin the fresh and wild vibe.”
Suffice to say, Effie’s creative process is a far cry from K-pop’s usual mode of operations, and the same goes for how she releases her music. “In Korea, it’s usual for artists to sign with a label early on in their careers, and then get fans after that,” she says. “So this underground scene is a whole new thing in Korea. We have a big music scene because of K-pop, but almost every small artist has a record deal or a label, and it goes with them everywhere. I didn’t sign with any label or company.”
In doing so, Effie is reframing what artistry in her country can look like from the ground up. A growing fanbase has followed, while her personal journey has seen her come out of her shell, forming a close circle of friends and collaborators. In turn, working with the likes of Korean-American producer kimj has helped evolve her sound from the blog rap-derived sonics of her self-produced days to the daring, futuristic pop of her newer releases. “My personality changed after I started doing music,” Effie explains. “I’ve met really good friends like kimj, [fellow K-pop singer] The Deep, [Korean producer] SOUP and [Chinese producer] SEBii. I never had friends before, so it changed my life.”
A vibrant underground scene is forming around them. While social media followers and streams spiked online, Effie has started to really feel its effects IRL over the past 18 months – most notably when she supported Dazed cover star 2hollis in August for the Seoul leg of his Asia tour. Dressed in traditional Korean clothing and wielding a red-and-blue sword, she ran through a medley of her recent hits, while the crowd responded as though she was headlining. “That was my first big indoor concert with lighting and production, and there were a lot of people, all singing my lyrics,” she recalls. “It was crazy – the whole set went super fast, even Hollis was surprised that so many people knew all my lyrics for the full 30 minutes.”
I see hyperpop and underground hip-hop getting bigger and bigger – it’s a really peak time for me and my friends right now.
Another eye-opening moment came when a joint show with SEBii in a Seoul nightclub drew such a large crowd that the police had to shut it down. “Too many people came to that party,” she remembers. Along with SEBii, Effie has also collaborated with nu-China rap sensation Billionhappy, as well as Japanese artists Manaka and kegøn. East Asia’s underground is bulging beyond its borders – and the west is starting to notice. “When I was in LA for a show with kimj, I met a fan in Target who wanted to take a photo with me – in a country on the opposite side of the earth, it was crazy,” says Effie. “I see hyperpop and underground hip-hop getting bigger and bigger – it’s a really peak time for me and my friends right now.”
If 2025 was her breakout year, 2026 is set to be even more explosive. The album she recorded in her room is due to be released, along with a slew of collabs with new friends she has made along the way. But while Effie is looking ahead to the future, she’s not losing sight of why she began making music in the first place. “I was super shy, I couldn’t even sing in front of people, but I wanted to make something and to show it to people,” she concludes. “I never wanted to be famous, I just want to make fun music with my friends.”
Hair Oh Seongseok, make-up Semin Park, photographic assistant Taewon Choi, styling assistant Doyeon Kim, hair assistant Minjeong Kim, production Starch Haus, executive producer Min Kim, production assistant Yujin Jung.
This story is taken from the spring 2026 issue of Dazed, which is on sale internationally now. Order a copy of the magazine here.
