aei

enthusiast for way too many things; he/they/she; EN/中文/FR👌; art account @aei_imdrawing

[aei @aei_itsme]

jjolee at anyc again... MY FRIEND WILL HELP ME COMPLETE MY HEARTSTEEL PRINT SET. I NEED YONE AND KAYN RAAHHHH PLZ DONT BE SOLD OUT🥺🥺🥺

[Bread 🍞 @IHaveBread_]

Gacha games when you get a good character

[Siru 🌈 Working on comms! @sirukki_art]

Please do not separate! Commission I made of EzKayn 💜💚 #heartsteel #ezkayn

[hehet @yeobermahn]

harus ngerti 3 bhs at least

[aei @aei_itsme]

PLAVE AND MILET COLLAB OH MY GODDDDD

[PLAVE JAPAN OFFICIAL @plave_jp]

PLAVE × milet
JP Digital Single
「Flame (feat. milet)」

Coming Soon

2026.09.03 THU 6PM (JST)

#PLAVE #プレイブ
#Flame #PLAVE_Flame
#milet @milet_music

[aei @aei_itsme]

HOLY SHIT RIOT MUSICVERSE SPOILERS IM AAAHHHHHHHHH

[Smol Jaonee (New acc) @Jao_Nee_Art]

Commission for @Cassicopium_

Thank you so so much 🥺🫶❤️

[aei @aei_itsme]

MARKING MY CALENDAR RN

[ONEUS @official_ONEUS]

2026 ONEUS WORLD TOUR [FULL MOON]
PHASE Ⅱ

🌕 Tour Schedule
🔗 https://t.co/Egm2xX3HOL

#원어스 #ONEUS
#FULL_MOON

[Sam Biddle @samfbiddle]

The death of folk graphic design in favor of AI slop across our country's delis is leading to some incredibly Lovecraftian food horrors

[Dragonla_ @Dragonla_]

Nope! You can’t get sick! 🫵😡🧥😫

[aei @aei_itsme]

well... nevermind💀💀💀

[aei @aei_itsme]

erha adaptation from the LEGEND Ayano Yamane? I might just have to read

[𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒈𝒂𝒏 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒖 🧋² @xcymilkytea]

Mi más honesta reacción cuando vi que la mangaka de 2ha va a ser Ayano Yamane.

Me remontó a mi adolescencia, a mis orígenes 😭😭

[SweETy Art @art_sweety]

Still my favorite fact is that Ezreal doesn't like looking in the mirror.

#LeagueofLegends #League_of_legends #Ezreal

[Esqurell 🍁 @esqurell]

Four years passed already
Meanwhile Rakan is still waiting for his kiss~

Little redraw 🩷

[Unpaid 사서 Moon @Moonismean]

Vernon’s point here is actually much more nuanced than “old K-pop was better” or “K-pop is becoming American.”

K-pop has always been hybrid. Its history is deeply connected to American and European pop, R&B, hip-hop, dance music, and also to the Japanese music industry. Even the formation of what we recognize as modern K-pop in the 1990s happened through taking foreign musical forms and recontextualizing them within Korea’s own language, industry, performance culture and audience.

That’s why the important part of what Vernon is saying is not that K-pop suddenly started borrowing from American pop. It has ALWAYS done that.

The interesting change is how much the distance between the source material and the Korean reinterpretation has narrowed.

Think about the difference between earlier generations and now. A 2nd-gen song could be heavily influenced by an American genre and still sound unmistakably like a Korean production because the influence was being filtered through a very particular Korean arrangement style, vocal structure, songwriting approach, choreography and idol-production system.

Wonder Girls, BIGBANG, 2NE1, Girls’ Generation, etc. were absolutely not “uninfluenced” by Western music. Quite the opposite. But you could often hear the process of localization more clearly.

And that localization was actually one of K-pop’s strengths.

Korea didn’t simply import American pop and reproduce it. Producers took global trends, adapted them to Korean audiences, combined them with Korean industry practices, and eventually developed a system capable of exporting that localized product back into the global market.

That is basically the fascinating paradox of K-pop’s globalization: something can be heavily influenced by global pop while becoming more distinctly Korean through the way those influences are reorganized.

What Vernon is noticing now is almost the reverse side of that process.

The global music industry has become so interconnected that producers, songwriters, choreographers and labels are working across the same international networks, using the same DAWs, sample libraries, trends, genres and songwriting camps, and responding to increasingly similar global market expectations.

So naturally, the “filter” becomes less audible.

It’s not that K-pop stopped being influenced by American pop. It’s that the global pop vocabulary has become so shared that sometimes there is less sonic distance between “K-pop” and “Pop” to begin with.

And honestly, this is why his comment about the 2000s/early 2010s makes sense to me. He isn’t necessarily saying those songs were more original. He’s talking about a period when the process of taking a global influence and turning it into something recognizably K-pop was easier to hear.

That distinction matters.

And honestly, I could yap about this for much longer if anyone is interested 😭 There are some genuinely fascinating articles and discussions on K-pop’s musical hybridity, localization, globalization, and the changing relationship between K-pop and global pop.

The more you look into the history, the more interesting Vernon’s observation becomes.

[aei @aei_itsme]

mamamoo cd eaters certified

[aei @aei_itsme]

sometimes i think about how long ive been on this bird app and realize its not a bird app anymore😔

[La Nymphe Sombre | Comms open ✨ @LaNympheSombre]

Spirit Blossom Yone CMS 🪷🌊✨ Just a swordman relaxing in the soothing water, definitely not being sensual at all 😋

#Yone

[aei @aei_itsme]

what happened to han maru...

[Morgan / JUUNI-P @butchtendo]

@icedoll456 One of my teachers said that when you pay someone like an artist or an accountant to do something for you you're paying them for the time they spent learning how to do it and that really stuck w me