By Mandy Day
Last month, Korean hip-hop group, Epik High, announced their first North American tour in nearly six years. Swift ticket sales have caused the tour to schedule additional performances in Vancouver, British Columbia and New York City. Now numbering eleven shows stretching across the U.S. and Canada, this tour will be K-Pop’s biggest since the Wonder Girls in 2010, according to Billboard.
Led by rapper and vocalist, Lee Seon-woong (a.k.a Tablo), a Stanford graduate who spent several years in Canada as a child, the group hasn’t seen meteoric rise, largely deviating from much of the younger generation of K-Pop stars. Epik High, including Kim Jeong-sik (DJ Tukutz) and Choi Jin (Mithra), have steadily built their career as Korea’s foremost hip-hop group since forming in 2003. With hit songs like, “Happen Ending” and “Spoiler” off their latest album, Shoebox, the set list is bound to display the diversity in the group’s sound.
As the K-Pop wave has made its way across the Pacific, fans of all ages and ethnicities have traveled in droves to see their favorite groups perform. Increasing visibility of Korean singers and music groups in Western pop culture, have caused tours to expand to markets not usually seen during past two-stop North American tours. Companies are now scheduling performers outside of the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas. Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle, and Toronto are scheduled stops on this tour, proving that Epik High’s popularity has eclipsed those of many wildly popular boy and girl groups. As the number of concerts and festivals increase stateside every year, the Korean wave shows little sign of fizzling out.
For show and ticket information regarding Epik High’s 2015 North American tour, visit Siva Group Entertainment, the official tour promoter. The tour kicks off at The Warfield Theater in San Francisco on May 28th and concludes on June 14th in Toronto.