Verbal jint

ABOUT

Kim Jin-tae (Hangul: 김진태; born December 19, 1980), better known by his stage name Verbal Jint (Hangul: 버벌진트), is a South Korean musician, rapper and record producer who is known for his groundbreaking innovations in Korean hip hop rhyme schemes. He established himself as one of South Korea's most popular underground rappers of the 2000s before achieving mainstream success. He is signed to the hip hop record label Brand New Music, under which he runs his own independent label, Otherside.

Before Verbal Jint's official debut in 2001, Korean hip hop lacked a fundamental component of rap, the rhyming. Verbal Jint later said in an interview with the Korea Times, "People who came before us didn't have much interest in rhyming; artists before us were satisfied with talking fast and thinking that it was rapping – and that sold then." Verbal Jint's debut mini-album, Modern Rhymes, introduced new innovations in achieving the grammatical accuracy needed to arrange Korean successfully into rhymes. He was the first to create actual rhyme schemes in Korean and his method is now the standard for Korean rapping within the hip hop scene. The rhyme work and flow of his music have been considered revolutionary within the Korean music industry as they have rapidly changed the construction of Korean hip hop music and thus its style and lyrical qualities.