A mid-tier scandal-prone Korean rapper broke global YouTube records in 2012

Evidence

On July 15, 2012, the middling thirty-four-year-old rapper Psy (Jae-sang Park) uploaded his new video, “Gangnam Style,” to YouTube. Within weeks, it shattered view-count records. Psy had a colorful backstory: The son of a Korean semiconductor manufacturer, he was sent to Boston in 1996 to study English and then business management but instead gravitated toward the Berklee College of Music. Upon returning to Seoul, Psy released a series of albums that Korean authorities labeled obscene. Further scandal erupted when he skipped mandatory military service by claiming special software expertise. By twenty-five, Psy had served a month in jail for marijuana possession, cementing his reputation as the bad boy of Korean pop. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 296

Categorization

• CANDY: Psy’s backstory — obscenity flagged, fake software-expertise conscription dodge, jail for weed — is a light dinner-party fact about the path to global fame.