Epik High에픽하이

Epik High (에픽하이) is a South Korean hip-hop trio formed in 2002 in Seoul, made up of the rapper, producer and songwriter Tablo, the rapper and lyricist Mithra Jin, and the DJ and beatmaker DJ Tukutz.¹ They signed with the newly established Woollim Entertainment and released their first album, Map of the Human Soul, in 2003, followed by High Society in 2004. Wikipedia says both sold poorly, and that Swan Songs (2005), which was meant to be their last album, instead became a mainstream hit, its title track "Fly" reaching No. 1 on domestic charts.¹

Their fourth album, Remapping the Human Soul, was released on January 23, 2007. Wikipedia reports it sold 120,301 copies that year, the third best-selling album of 2007 in South Korea, and the group won Album of the Year for it at the 2007 MAMA, as DabPop's archive of MAMA's grand prizes lists.¹² After Mithra Jin and DJ Tukutz finished their military service, the trio signed with YG Entertainment in 2012, the year DabPop's table of YG's debuts lists them under; their label credits on Wikipedia also include their own label, Ours Co.¹³

Wikipedia describes their sound as rooted in boom bap but experimental, with collaborations across R&B, trot, soul and Latin music, and notes that they were among the earliest Korean hip-hop acts to feature singers rather than only rappers. The album Shoebox (2014) was their eighth, and their tenth, Epik High Is Here, came out in two parts, in 2021 and 2022. Its "Born Hater", from Shoebox, features Beenzino, Verbal Jint and the YG artists B.I, Mino and Bobby in the official video on the group's own YouTube channel.¹⁴