It’s been a long time coming for hip-hop crew Bulhandang. While the crew technically formed last year, the group has been working on its latest album, released June 12, for about three years.

But just sticking together is a feat, considering the group is made up of 21 rappers, DJs and producers ― most of whom have been in Korean hip-hop since its start.

“We’ve known each other for over eight to 15 years,” said rapper MC Meta in an interview with The Korea Herald last week. MC Meta is currently featured on the second season of Mnet’s hip-hop audition show “Show Me the Money.”

Producer Artisan Beats added that the crew is made up of a lot of separate groups, “so it was hard to get everyone together.”

The name of the album, “Julchoong: Vol. 3,” also has special meaning to the crew. In English, it means to break the spear. It is the third in a series the group started in 2002, before the crew officially formed.

“In this Korean underground scene, I mean the early scene, we have some kind of spirit,” MC Meta said. “It means we make music for our satisfaction. But time goes by, and nowadays the so-called underground hip-hop scene has changed ― changed to (become) more commercialized.”

A number of new artists, producers and beat makers, he continued, are using the culture just to make money, something they hate. Rapper P-Type said that besides making money, they should “make a healthy scene.”

“Satisfaction is for two points: for money and our satisfaction, musical satisfaction. But most of the young blood, they forget about it. So we’re going to try to improve our music and our movement, especially (with) the ‘Julchoong’ series,” MC Meta said.

This spirit continues into the music on the album. The crew said that, with hip-hop sounding too similar recently, they wanted to keep their music true to their culture and style ― many of the songs use aspects of traditional Korean culture, including pansori and Korean drums.

“Recent hip-hop artists follow MTV-style. So we wanted to differentiate our style from that. And we wanted to remind the new artists of the original Korean hip-hop style,” said P-Type.

“We keep with tradition and use Korean as much as possible. There are some expressions in Korean that don’t translate into English,” MC Meta added.

MC Meta said the crew used to joke around about creating an organization to help hip-hop artists. They wanted to make a big group so they could do the things they really wanted to do and make a big impact on the music scene. It formed naturally over the years with not one person pushing the idea, but everyone contributing to it.

Lately, he said, K-pop has been at the forefront of the big hallyu movement and people often refer to all Korean music, be it pop, hip-hop or traditional music, as K-pop. But Korean hip-hop has a lot of potential, he added.

“The people doing this music, they are very energetic, very passionate. People know this music has a lot of potential. I wish people will show more interest in Korean hip-hop,” he said.

“Julchoong Vol. 3” is now available on iTunes and other music download sites. The crew is made up of MC Meta, P-Type, Artisan Beats, Optical Eyez XL, RHYME-A-, Minos, Nuck, Naachal, THE Z, DJ Skip, A Jay, KEBEE, SNOW MAN, WIMPY, Chae Young, DJ Pandol, Jay Kay, Sean2Slow, Dae Phal, KEEPROOTS and FASCINATING.

By Emma Kalka (ekalka@heraldcorp.com)