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If you’ve read anything from me at all, you know I relish the opportunity to talk to any and all artists. I have a particular soft spot for independent artists trying to get the recognition they desperately need and certainly deserve. They all have intriguing stories and perspectives that many with much more to lose are less wont to express. The most recent artist to open up to me is Paul Shin, now known by his stage name V1NO. He’s another in the small circle of Korean-American rappers that have blessed me with both their music and their friendship.

I will say this. Paul is one of the few artists that I’ve spoken to who readily tell their entire story. Fearlessly, honestly, open. These are the markers of who he is as an artist. In fact, the entirety of the beginning of our conversation is just that. I’m lucky he humored me when I asked him to introduce himself as if summarizing his autobiography. Believe me, Paul’s life story is something you have to actually hear (or in this case read) for yourself to believe.

The Life of Paul

Paul’s story begins simply: “Immigrated here from Korea at the age of three. But you know, my parents instilled the Korean culture into me, like a lot of Koreans. I immigrated to San Francisco, CA, first. We lived there about a year, so that doesn’t really count. Then we moved across [the country] to New Jersey. Even though I’d lived in America since the age of three, I still had to go to ESL because my parents would constantly speak Korean with me, and I went to a Korean school.

“I grew up moving around so much because of my father’s profession. He’s a pastor. So he’d have to move churches or a church he was pastoring at would move, so I would have to go with him. Every time I would get a good set of friends, get really grounded, I’d have to start all over again. So from an early age I really learned just how to adjust and adapt to different situations. It definitely applies to my music, because as a musician, as an artist you really have to grind and with any kind of grind, it’s really difficult. You just have to learn to adjust. Like, ‘Oh, Plan A didn’t work? Okay, I got Plan B. Oh, Plan B didn’t work? I got Plan C.’

“You’ve got to continue the adjustment,” Paul says, “keep it moving, you know. The moment you stop is when you just lose that whole momentum. Just going back to that childhood again, it just taught me a really strong work ethic. I’ve always had determination to try to make friends like everybody else, and I think because I moved around I guess I had that glimmer of hope like, ‘Hey, maybe this one’s permanent this time.’ You know? So I would really cherish those friendships.”

Random Connections

The first part of Paul’s story is simple enough. From Korea to Jersey. However, things start to get interesting when he goes into his middle and high school years.

“I grew up in Jersey for a little bit, but then what’s crazy is, I moved to Kentucky.” At this point, we just have to stop the conversation. He explains he grew up in a little town outside of Ft. Knox called Radcliff. I know the city well. I have so much family in Kentucky, it’s practically a second home to me. How small is this world we’ve thrown ourselves in?

“And it’s crazy because we’re talking about Korean music,” Paul says with a heavy dose of awe coloring his voice. “It’s mind-blowing how life works. In Radcliff, because my dad’s church was really small, he let me go to a church next door. This church was a mixed church, like Puerto Rican, black, white, you know, some islanders. We lived near an army base, so it was actually pretty diverse. I got exposed to gospel at a really young age. I think that was my first real exposure to music. Like don’t get me wrong, before that I did listen to music. But when you’re a kid you’re not really conscious of things, or at least I wasn’t. I think the only [artists] I really remember was like, don’t judge me,” Paul says after a beat, “Smash Mouth and the Spice Girls.”

We share a laugh. But I honestly can’t even pretend to judge anyone who has a history with the Spice Girls. I still rep the fearsome fivesome and nothing in this world could stop me.

“But that was like my first exposure to music ever,” he continues. “Then once you start developing more, and you realize, oh, this is actually music. This is an artist, and this is what they do. Around early middle school is when I went to this church in Kentucky and I listened to people like Tye Tribbet, Kirk Franklin, Donnie McClurkin. Gospel was really surrounding my ears. I fell in love with Kirk Franklin’s album, the one with the song ‘Imagine Me‘ (Hero). I fell in love with that whole album.”

Paul’s Art Imitates Life

“Then ironically I started doing poetry. I started getting into spoken word. They used to have these little coffee houses or these little events at my church. So I started with spoken word and I would perform in front of people. My first time doing it, I was like, ‘Dang, I’m actually okay at this.’ Then just naturally it would form into rap because at that time I listened to, mind you I grew up in the church, so I was surrounded by a lot of Christian-oriented music. When I got into hip hop it was like Lacrae, Da’T.R.U.T.H., people like that of that genre.

“Then slowly but surely, I started doing spoken word, and it just naturally turned into rap. This was like sophomore year of high school. I must’ve been 15 or 16 when I first started doing my spoken word. After that, as I started to get a response I was like, ‘Dang, I really wanna do this.’ I started writing more, writing more, and I started writing over a beat. Then naturally I just started getting really into rap, like rhyme schemes and everything. Junior or senior year I went to talent shows, and I won talent shows, and I started performing in front of bigger crowds, and I started getting more confident as a musician, as a young artist.”

Paul Finds His Heritage

“But it’s crazy because I didn’t know much about my own heritage,” Paul admits. “Like I didn’t know much about my own culture. I didn’t have a lot of Korean friends growing up in Kentucky. Then, and I don’t know how it happened, but you know the artist by the name of MC Mong?” he asks. “He’s like a little bit older artist. I don’t know how it happened, but I just stumbled upon his music one day, and I was shocked. Like I didn’t even know there was such a thing as Korean hip hop. I spoke Korean with my parents. But I had no idea my language could be in hip hop.

“So when I heard that I was like, ‘Holy crap! What is this?!’ And this must have been the middle of my senior year. So I started to listen to nothing but MC Mong. I was so ignorant to Epik High or all these other better rappers. But like for me MC Mong was all I had. So I started getting into it. I started listening to him every day. Then all of a sudden around the end of my senior year I actually wrote my first 16 to 18 bars in Korean, nothing but Korean rap. And it sounded pretty good. I was like, ‘Okay, this is pretty good. Not bad, not bad. I think I can go somewhere with this.’ But I didn’t know anything else. So I just left it at that.”

Of course, as he continued to explore his love of hip hop, he’d dive into deeper influences. “In high school I got into Eminem. Then I really started to listen to American hip hop. Even in Kentucky, I didn’t only listen to Christian music. I listened to Lil Wayne, other southern rappers like T.I., Mike Jones, you know. I did have somewhat outside hip-hop influences.”

He pauses. Even over the phone I can tell that his entire mood shifts. It’s the type of swing in tone and emotion that happens when most artists of color talk about their heritage. About discovering the beauty of where they come from. “As I got into Korean music, oh my goodness!” Paul says on a deep sigh. “Korean artists are just so talented. I don’t know, it’s just something about Korean artists. Like DEAN, Crush, Zion.T, ZICO!” Again, that shift in tone, from awe to adoration and legitimate admiration. “I think I like ZICO a lot because he’s so… He has such a different color about him. I would definitely say ZICO had a lot of influence.”

On My Own

It’s a blessing to have music in the midst of a lot of craziness. Paul’s no stranger to the abrupt changes life throws your way. 

“I grew up with no citizenship or nothing. I did have citizenship, but my visa had expired when I was a young kid. And growing up illegally, I didn’t come into the States illegally, but I entered into the States. Then my visa expired, and it just became like that. And so as I grew up I didn’t know I was illegal until all my friends started getting driver’s licenses and permits and all that and they were able to get a job. I asked my dad like, ‘Why can’t I get a driver’s license?’ And he broke it down to me, and I was like, ‘What the hell!’ It was a pretty big shock, but it didn’t really hit me until after I graduated or like after 16.

“So I decided to move out,” Paul reveals. “Me and my parents talked about it. I had an uncle who lived in Jersey but worked in New York. So he was able to provide me with a job. He took me in. I moved to Jersey right after high school. And that’s when I first understood Korean music, my senior year. Now I’m going to Jersey. I was working full-time. Mind you, I’ve never had a job before. I’m 18, my first job is with my uncle, and they always say, don’t work with family. We definitely bumped heads a lot. I can’t say it was all his fault. Some parts were my fault too.”

For Paul, Music Is Always There

In the midst of it all, though, music was the never-ending constant in Paul’s life.

“Within that time when I was working with my uncle, I kept writing. I kept writing lyrics. Most of them were in English, but that Korean side of me, that Korean-language rap was still hidden inside. So I would write nonstop everywhere I would go. You know, my uncle discouraged me to chase my dreams. Because he lived a hard life too, so he was like, ‘What are you doing, man? You got money. Don’t be making that music.’ At such a young age, being exposed to a lot of money, he discouraged me and I just didn’t pursue music.

“I left it on the back burner for a little bit.” Paul’s voice holds the weight of someone remembering the loss of a dream. “I toyed with music a little bit here and there, but I just was so consumed with life issues. Living on my own, I was going to school part-time, working full-time, and that drained the crap out of me. I was tired all the time. So after two years, I was like, you know what? I can’t do this anymore. I’m not happy. I’m not feeling healthy. I love you, uncle, but I gotta bounce. I wanna do my own thing, I wanna work on my own. 

“Mind you, I’m like 20 now. But then my dad’s friend, who’s also a pastor, he called me from Queens, New York, and basically he wanted me to stay with him. I stayed with him, and then I ended up living with him, and that’s how I ended up in Queens. Then from there, just same old, same old. I started working and going to school. But it was very difficult because all that time throughout those years I was living on my own.

The Summer of 2016

“About 2016, the summer of 2016, one of my hyungs, he always knew I had a passion for music but I never chased it. I was almost done with school, and that’s when he called me. One summer night in June or July of 2016. This hyung used to work at Goldman Sachs. He was making six figures. He gave that all up to pursue film. He’s able to sustain himself through that.

“But his point was, ‘Look, dude, I know you’re in school. I know your major’s applied math and you’re trying to do actuary and all that. But can you really do that for the rest of your life?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know, man.’ I was really unsure. He was like, ‘What’s the one thing you cannot NOT do? You just have to do?’ And it was so easy. It was easy. It was music. And I told him that.

“It’s crazy because around that time I started itching. Started itching. Show Me The Money was getting really big. People left and right would talk to me like, ‘Oh, this guy raps in Korean. He’s so good!’ Blah, blah, blah. Me, knowing I have the skill, it kind of hit my pride. Like, ‘Wait, I could do that too! Why can’t I do that?’ So slowly every night, literally, I could not go to sleep. I would just picture myself performing. On top of that I get that phone call from my hyung. I would say that was the difference maker and I just decided to put out more music. Mind you, I didn’t do it full-time yet because I was still in school.

“So 2016 summer, that’s when my mind was made,” Paul says. “I finally graduated December 2018. And 2019 was really the year for me to really pursue music head-on. So that’s where I’m at right now.”

Paul’s story is absolutely amazing. It seems almost too grand, too full of everything to really be true! He agrees.

“The story just seems so unreal. And 2019 was probably my biggest year because I did technically start making music in 2018, but it wasn’t on a consistent basis. You know school is hard. My degree was really difficult, you know, applied math. It was so hard for me. And honestly I did it for my parents. I wanted to give them a degree because they always wanted me to go to college. And I graduated late, too, because I was always working, you know. But after 2019 started, I started really grinding, going out, reaching out to people, doing shows, making videos. And sooner or later, I saw that people really gravitate to my music, you know.”

Owning My Heritage

This idea of “authenticity” in hip hop is arguably the most debated. Particularly when it comes to non-black or Latinx MCs. Even more so in the last decade with Asian artists being more active in the genre. Paul has a story people can relate to. A tale of struggle and triumph that’s as old as hip hop itself. After all, it comes from youth. It’s a genre born from struggle. Most specifically, young folk who live through pain, struggle, being put down, their neighborhoods constantly infiltrated with elements that seek to destroy their ambition, their energy.

In this era where the notion of immigration and the human rights of those who have to prove they belong in a country built heavily on both forced occupation and exploitation, a story like Paul’s definitely tracks with the historical significance of hip hop at its roots.

“I faced a lot of racism. When I was living in Kentucky, this was around the Virginia Tech incident. There was that Korean guy who shot up all those people, then killed himself. I was actually talking to a friend about going to church. And two of my friends got into a fight, and back in high school everyone’s like, ‘Oh shoot, a fight!’ Everyone’s going towards the fight. So I had gone towards the fight, and by the time I got there the fight was over. Then this white lady was just accusing me of punching someone in the face. I told her, ‘No, I didn’t do anything like that.’ I ended up getting arrested. 

“It just really hit me hard because I didn’t do anything wrong. Eventually everything got dropped, but just going through that… I’m sure other people have it worse as well, but for me, from my vantage point, I was always the only Asian out of a majority white. Especially in the south you kind of stick out like a sore thumb. And it’s very conservative there. The last time I visited my family in Kentucky, I saw a friggin’ confederate flag! It’s crazy! 

“I’ve always had a jaded perspective. Because you have Korean, you have kimchi when you’re a little kid and your mom packs you rice and seaweed and kimchi. And all the other kids are like, ‘Eww, what the heck is that?’ It’s like a direct shame type of feeling. You feel like your race and your culture and what you embody is not worth a lot. People are shaming it. I grew up with a lot of that. It definitely made me feel a type of way. But thank God I had a lot of friends, I had a lot of friends. And most of them, very few white friends, a lot of Spanish, black, a few other Asians. But they really held me down. That was good because we all need community.”

“DACA”

“After I got out of high school and I started living on my own,” Paul says, “my brother lived with me for a little bit. I would say I was about 21, 22. My brother got deported. That was one of the hardest times of my life because I literally quit… I remember all I did was work. I worked at a dry cleaners for six days a week. And I would try to work to save up money for the lawyer fees because we had to get a lawyer.

“So ICE was holding him in prison. We had to pay for lawyers, so I’d help out my parents a lot. There was no way. The system was like, they’d locked up my brother for so long, it was either stay in jail for so long or just leave to Korea. He didn’t technically get deported, but he did ‘voluntarily’ depart. But it’s like they kicked him out, you know.”

This, of course, leads to us talking a bit about track “DACA.” It’s one of the most powerful pieces of music that he’s released. Emotional. Raw. Honest. I want to go back a bit to when he recorded the track. The emotions that were going through him when he put form to the thoughts and emotions of that time period in his life.

“What I usually do,” Paul begins, “is I record at home first. And I see how it turns out. And then I make a little demo for it, then go to the studio and record. I remember the environment. I had just moved to my new house. Literally empty room, I set up in a closet, and started recording. But I heard the beat, and the beat was so… I don’t know what other artists tell you, but for me, I have to hear the beat first, and that beat brings up the emotions. So when I heard that beat, it immediately brought emotions of anger and sadness.

“Those were the emotions that really brought out of me. As soon as I heard that, the first thing I could think of was, ‘They don’t really want me here.’ Right? That just embodied I’d been struggling with my whole life. They don’t really want me here, you know. But I don’t know… I feel like, that song ‘DACA’ I’m going to redo it. Because me as an artist, it’s not up to par with where I want it to be. But in terms of the lyrics? Man, that was my heart and soul, you know?”

This isn’t an exaggeration on his part. He put his entire gut into that song.

“I did,” he agrees emphatically. “Because I was mad. The fact that Trump became president! I was pissed about that. Because another thing is after Trump became president people around my school, and mind you, I went to Queen’s College, people around my school were racially slurring all my brown friends. And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s how it is? Now that we’ve got a racist president, you’re showing your true colors now, huh?’ And stuff like that, it really irked me. I’m sorry to sound angry. But I just hate racist people. And I hope I’m not turning like that because I keep pointing back at them. But it’s so difficult when you’ve been victimized for so long. “

You could feel the rage in your chest. It grabbed me from the first line. So much so I had to rewind it about three times because the passion on that track was astounding.

“I say a lot of things in there,” Paul continues. “There’s a line where I say, ‘My father told me from a young age to never fully trust a white person.’ He dead-ass told me that. So many times he would fight with white people. One time we were going to church. I was a little kid. We were at a stop sign, and this car drives past us, and he yelled out, ‘Chink!’ and threw up the middle finger. Think about that as a kid… I still remember that moment. It’s like, why does my family have to go through that? Why? There’s no reason for that. So that’s what gets me mad. Yo, there’s no reason for you to be like this, yet you are like this.

“So, yeah I have a very, very, very strong taste when it comes to being proud of my heritage,” Paul says. “When I was younger people definitely made me feel stupid about who I am. So now that I’ve finally matured and grown into my full adult mind, you know what? I really wanna push this thing. I love who I am. After discovering more about my culture, I’m like, ‘Damn! I love me!’ You know what I’m saying? Who would not love who they are? There’s a bunch of people in the world who think that. And it’s a shame. But that’s why I wanna represent my people and my culture to the world. And I’m so proud of that.”

Blood Thicker Than Water

Paul’s pride is contagious. Living in a world that constantly informs you that you don’t fit. You don’t belong. Having the wherewithal to demand respect. Demand to be seen and heard. It takes courage to claim “I am.” Even more to do so with a cloud of hatred always trying to dampen your shine. However, Paul’s shine is all-encompassing. It’s in the way he talks. The way he exhales when he speaks about his culture. The inflection in his voice, as if he’s leaning into the words. Listening to him speak, one can’t help but feel that spark of pride for their own heritage and upbringing.

“As long as you’re not white, it’s like we get each other. Not to the same degree, of course. But at the same time, yo, I feel you. We’re a minority. And we’ll always be a minority.”

There’s a shared experience of oppression. Of having to fight for the right to simply be. It’s a point of great interest for me. Paul made a conscious choice to rap in both English and Korean. Many Korean-American artists I know admit to experiencing the disconnect from their ancestral culture and the one they were born in. Some of them do decide to incorporate their roots very directly into their music. For others the choice isn’t that easy.

Who Am I?

Paul admits to having a struggle with identity. Fighting to find himself. “There was a point in college, in early college, I didn’t know who I was. I was struggling with who I was. Like, ‘Dang. I hate being Korean because my Korean people won’t accept me because I can only speak Korean to a certain level and the culture’s so difficult.’ But then a part of me was like, ‘I hate American people because they make fun of the way that I look and because I’m Korean.’ So there’s a point where I was like, ‘Who the hell am I? Am I Korean or am I American?’ And the reality is I’m Korean-American. That’s just who I am. I am a Korean who grew up in the States.”

Of course, our conversation isn’t all hard memories and struggles with identity. In fact, it’s almost uncanny how much we have in common. Paul lived a portion of his life in Radcliff, Kentucky. I have family in various parts of the state, many not far from Radcliff. He has a younger brother two years his junior, as do I. The similarities get so tight he proclaims, “You tryna copy me?” Of course, seeing as I’m older I have to pull rank just to mess with him a bit. “I knew you were gonna say that,” he says with a laugh. “So I have nothing to say to that, so I apologize.”

FOH!

He’s certainly a charming one. Quick with a laugh. However, that doesn’t take away from the fact that his music is incredibly powerful. While he doesn’t get into too much of his older work, there are some songs that bear mention.

With the amount of passion he has, it’s no wonder that he’s been releasing music and videos so hot and heavy lately. He’s like a tiger on a leash. Some faceless trainer in the back trying to contain him as he strains at the collar. He’s got so much inside him that digging into his past discography would do him a disservice. However, we have to touch on the release of his first EP, “FOH” (abbreviated from “Fuck Outta Here”). I’m intrigued to find out exactly what made him choose that title.

“I titled it that because I felt like I grew up… Even though I grew up in gospel and very Christian rap, after high school I went deep, deep, deep into an Eminem phase. I got into music pretty late, I’m not gonna lie. But I just fell in love with pure straight-up hip hop. So even though I have other songs like ‘One More Time,’ all these melodic songs, I wanted people to wake the fuck up. Like, ‘yo, I can sing. But don’t you fucking forget that I can rap too!’ So as my first EP I wanted to make it very hip hop. I don’t know if you could tell, but that whole project is very hip-hop oriented. It’s not… nothing happy about it. Just straight bars. That’s why I titled it ‘Fuck Outta Here.’ Like, ‘Yo, you better than me? Fuck outta here.’”

That’s the kind of swagger and bravado that gets me about this genre. So much pain. So much struggle. But at the end of the day when these kids put these bars down, you have no choice but to shut the hell up. Again, that pride. That confidence. That fearlessness. It’s apparent these are just things that define who Paul is.

Six Degrees of Separation

This personality of his also means it’s easy for him to meet like-minded artists. Especially in the Korean-American rap community. It’s no wonder he’s worked with some of the artists I continue to spotlight: FLANNEL ALBERT, Filthy the Kid, and Yohan Jung.

“Shout out to Phil. He’s such a good guy,” he says before explaining how the two met. “When I was on the brink of, ‘Hey, I’m gonna start doing music,’ I had a friend that also knew Phil. So I knew Phil for a minute, but I just never had a chance to connect with him because we didn’t really have a whole lot in common. It was just we would meet through mutual friends. This mutual friend was a breakdancer, and Phil also used to breakdance.

“But this guy, his name’s Justin, but he was one of my really good friends. I told him, ‘Hey, I really think I’m going to start pursuing music.’ And coincidentally he met with Phil. And he was like, ‘Yo we talked about it, me and Phil. And just keep doing it.’ And I asked him, I was just throwing it out there, ‘Hey, would you be able to get me a feature on one of my tracks or something?’ He said, ‘I tell you what. You put out one song, then after that I’ll feature on it.’ And that’s what really motivated me, and I made my first song. Then my second song featured Phil. So that’s how I met Phil.”

This, of course, extends to wanting to know how he met Albert. Surprisingly it wasn’t through Phil.

“Actually I was just DMing people at the time, and Albert was one of the people that popped up on my Instagram. I hit him up, and we just did a song together.”

My circle of friends who know each other continues to expand the longer I’m allowed to work in this genre.

“Especially in the Korean circle. You know one Korean, you pretty much know them all. There’s so many of us!”

We get to another collaborator friend of his, Yohan. “I met Yohan through…” It takes him a moment to get to it. As he said, if you know one, you pretty much know everybody in this little tight-knit group of artists. “We just had a lot of mutual friends. He’s from Jersey too. So we just had a lot of mutual friends. I think I hit him up in DMs. We just ended up talking. I didn’t meet him until last year for the first time. I think I’ve met him like twice: at a YOX concert one time, and I met him because I bought a mic from him. And after that summer he moved out to Cali.”

It makes sense that both Filthy and Yohan found a spot on the FOH EP. Their delivery is more in line with boom-bap, really gulley hip hop. A sound that Paul certainly has an affinity for. “Again, my first EP, I really wanted to be like, ‘Hey, shut the fuck up. I can rap.’”

V1NO

We now get to the moment of his rebirth. From Paul Shin to V1NO.

“Honestly speaking, I felt like I was growing at a pretty decent rate with my art and my artistry. But I felt like ‘Paul Shin’ was kind of limiting me. I mean but if you think about it, ‘Paul Shin.’ You look it up on the internet, how many ‘Paul Shins’ are you gonna find? A lot! I didn’t want that to happen in the future. So I said, ‘You know what? Why don’t I change my name right now when I’m not big yet so people can actually start seeing me as a unique entity, a unique brand?’ So I decided to take V1NO. I’m not gonna lie to you, it was so hard to find a rap name.”

He stops himself mid-sentence. The proverbial “aha moment” where he makes a connection he didn’t even know he was trying to make.

“Oh my goodness! That’s why my name was ‘Paul Shin’ because I couldn’t think of a rap name for so long. I was looking for literally a good six months, and then I gave up. Then all of a sudden, I thought, ‘I really need to rebrand myself.’ And ‘V1NO’ just slips off the tongue so well. Even the meaning behind it. ‘Wine.’ I feel like people are only going to like it more and more as time passes by.”

Indeed. As with a fine wine that ages and only matures and becomes more of a desired commodity. This journey to his rebranding began with the visual release of track “Sooner or Later.”

“It was a very short track. So I knew that if I was going to officially start this thing, it was gonna have to be really short and grab people’s attention. And I think especially in the beginning, with that deep voice, that chopped-and-screwed voice, I think that’s the attention-grabber. The rest just goes off of that. Also the song itself is my first official song. Though, ‘Sooner or Later.’ What a great way to start. I’m not saying that I’m the best, but sooner or later you’re gonna recognize me.”

Runaway

But as we’ve discussed, V1NO has multiple dimensions. We hear it in tracks like his most recent release, “Runaway.” The melodic, dreamier aspect of his musical personality.

“I actually am planning to drop a mini-album on my birthday. My birthday is February 15. I’m actually really busy these days. That song is also going on my mini-album. So this mini-album is a very personal, personal piece of my… As an artist I’m still growing, still looking for my sound. But before I head on to that I want to give the people my truest emotions. And not like I’m ever fake. But there’s a specific direction that I’m heading as an artist, and I believe I have to find that first before I can be as versatile as I want to be. So ‘Runaway’ was just a part of me that I really wanted to express for my mini-album. This compilation is going to really be expressing my emotions. I’m a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve, and I’m pretty expressive with my emotions.

“So ‘Runaway’ was just… It was a song I wrote a couple months ago when I was in a severe depression. It felt like nothing was working. I didn’t have a job at the time, so parents were looking at me like a bum, you know. Like they’re literally looking at me like, ‘What are you doing? Why are you only making music? What’s wrong with you?’ So I just felt no support at all. The only people that I thought would support me weren’t supporting me. But at the same time I understand what they’re saying. But it was just really difficult. And on top of that, there were a lot of deaths around me. It was not a good time in life. I was so focused on my music, I wasn’t taking care of myself too. So just a lot of things piled up.”

Mental Wellness

“That’s what I love about music.” He wants to make this point particularly clear: “I love music because even if you feel pain, that music is such an outlet. When I was feeling depressed and so angry, and had bad thoughts in my head, I put it in the music and look what came out of it: It manifested ‘Runaway.’ It literally is my heart and soul. I was feeling bad at that moment, and I put it all into music. And now it came out something positive.”

This leads back to a conversation that I’m having more and more with the artists I’m blessed to talk to. The discussion about mental health, particularly in the artist community and those communities of color. Taking care of one’s mental integrity is a hard talk these artists really are desperate to have. V1NO is no exception.

“These past couple months I’ve been more conscious about my personal mental health. You have this goal and this drive and this passion, and you’re happy in the beginning. Like, ‘Yes! I have a dream, a purpose. I wanna do this.’ But then the journey in itself, you get lost in it and you forget why you’re doing it in the first place and you stop being happy. Because one, and this is me personally speaking, I can’t speak for anyone else, I just started not eating well, not eating properly, not getting enough sleep because I’m always in the studio, I’m always thinking, ‘Oh, what’s my next move?’

“I still have a problem with that, just to be honest with you,” he admits. “It’s definitely not as bad, but I still struggle with that because I’m such a driven person, I just… I have to do it. I have to be one step ahead.” Paul says this like the very hands of time are trying to grab at his throat. Like the ticking of the clock is a judgement. “And of course, when I see myself against people like Albert and Joe… They started a little bit earlier and they have a bigger fan base. And it’s okay, because I started a little late. But that drives me even more. Like, ‘No, I gotta keep going. I gotta keep going. I gotta work really hard.’ And yeah, that’s not bad in and of itself, but it can get bad.”

Goals & Everyday Inspiration

Even speaking in terms of Albert and Joe, both have been to Korea for some time at one point or another. As someone who’s privileged to speak to a lot of rappers of the Korean diaspora, I’m always interested if it’s something that’s on their mind. Going back to their ancestral home.

“My goal is to gain fans. I feel like I could get a lot of Korean fans in the States,” he begins. “Because think about it, Dok2 and Jay Park go across the US, and there’s mad people who rock with Korean music. If I could, though, that would be even better to be able to go to Korea.”

This does make one consider what outside of the music pushes him forward. What drives him and influences his life, and thus his music?

“The everyday life thing that influences to make my music are situations for me. Like if I’m having a shitty day I’ll turn it into music. If I’m having a happy day I’ll turn it into music. The second part to that, what influences me overall…” It does take him a moment. But when he latches on, it’s just as with everything else: honest, passionate. “Definitely my circle of friends,” he says. “I do have a lot of friends, but I don’t have a lot of friends friends where I talk to them on a personal basis. My parents, of course, always influence me.”

As our conversation comes to a close, I can honestly say the lines between Paul Shin and his new stage name V1NO blur. He’s passionate, therefore his music is passionate. He’s honest, therefore so is his music. With so much ambition pent up inside him, what’s next?

“I want to put out more visuals. I want to put out more projects. Like I said, I have a mini-album coming out on my birthday. Then I have a summer EP that I’m working on. I also wanna work with other artists. Trying to get my music out there on bigger platforms like HiphopKR, hint hint.” He says it with a wink and a smirk, which inevitably turns into a full-bodied laugh. Like I said before: charming.

“But at the same time,” he says as we calm down, “I know it takes hard work. That’s why I’m doing merch. That’s why I’m doing all these things that I can get exposure from.”

“We’re gonna make it.”

We finally get to our last goodbye. As the story began with Paul Shin, it’s only fitting that it should end with V1NO. He signs off with these final thoughts:

“I just want them to know my music is genuine. I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and say similar things. There’s a common denominator to my fan base. To the people who listen to my songs. Like, ‘Dude, I felt the emotions in your song. Whether it be angry. Whether it be happy.’ I just want to really uplift people. I want them to feel a certain way through my music. I’m a dreamer,” he says. “Even in my boastful songs. In ‘91 and Beyond’ I talk about helping my parents, you know? I just want people to know, life is tough, but we’re gonna make it.

“I’m falling in love with my name more and more,” he continues. “It circles back to my name. Yo, that’s just who I am as an artist. I’m just not good at faking. This is who I am. I wanna share the positive energy with you guys, through my music.”

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