Rapper Kim Simya Named Melon's "November Artist" for Track Zero

Kim Simya, selected as Melon Track Zero's Artist of the Month for November. Photo provided by Melon.

Kakao Entertainment said on November 5 that Melon, its music platform, had selected rapper Kim Simya as the November Artist for Track Zero, its indie music support program.

That day, Melon released an interview with Kim Simya about the production process and musical vision behind his second studio album, "Dogma." He released the new album in September 2026, six years after his first studio album, "Dog," came out in 2020.

"When I write 16 bars, I start knowing that those 16 bars won't necessarily make it into the song intact. I wrote the lyrics with the intention of using them as source material," he said. "At both the Jeju and European camps, I told the producers, 'It's completely fine to take this verse apart and break it down.'"

In addition to working on music, he has continued to livestream on YouTube. "The goal of reaching 100 episodes kept me going," Kim Simya said. "I wanted to use the channel not for commercial purposes, but like a portfolio of my work as someone who creates. I thought of each live clip as a work of art."

"After 'Dog' came out, a period of upheaval arrived, and I had to endure a lot of worries and various experiences. I couldn't get through it on my own. Then I read a book about Buddhism, and from there I got deeply into it," he recalled. He added, "There's a kind of freedom in the ambiguity of the Buddha's philosophy, and it's fascinating because, in a sense, it seems to take ambiguity to an extreme."

As he came to regard music as a profession, his approach to creativity also changed. "I increasingly came to see music as my livelihood, but that actually gave me a certain kind of freedom," Kim Simya said. "I began to think more lightly about work unrelated to my life, and the scope of my work also broadened. Of course, I'll always stay true to myself."

Track Zero, launched in April 2022, is an indie music support program in which experts select and introduce artists and new songs each month. Along with the interview, Melon also released a playlist of Kim Simya's music selected by its experts.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.