Confessions Of A Black Former K-Pop Trainee | ASIAN BOSS

my name is kaya Boyd I'm from Detroit Michigan in the USA and I am an XK pop trainee here is my story [Music] oh hey how's he going yeah a nice video so could you introduce yourself I'm kaya Boyd I am an ex kpop trainee I come from Detroit Michigan and I've been living in Korea for the last four years on and off and ever since I've been here I've been doing like singing and dancing and acting modeling these kinds of things but I started training only a couple of years ago how did you get into kpop in the first place I came across EXO and my friend recommended that I listen to more of their music and more of their videos and different things like that once I heard the language and how beautiful it sounded to me I just was so impressed and so after that I said I needed to like I need to learn what language this is I need to learn how people talk I need to learn how people like sing I just I need to know everything about Korean language so you're from the states yes what were you doing back in the States I was pretty much everything and I say that to say I got it started with dancing singing acting more so singing and acting when I was really young I was a child like maybe 4 when I figured out that I could like sing and actually I enjoyed singing when I got of like legal working age in America I started working with the government nothing too special like a postal service I don't know I woke up one morning and just realize it's not something I want to do it's not I don't want to have a nine-to-five job so I just took a leap of faith and ended up coming to Korea so you used to be a kpop trainee how long did you do that for I worked with them for a year a little little over a year and it was originally on some craigslist posting that said we need people to be reactors for like a YouTube video and I went in to do that just like to give myself exposure maybe a month later after like negotiations these people acts hey can can we represent you can you join our company we want to train you we want to make you somebody for the trainee like do you have to pay money for it or do they pay for everything or how does it work it entirely depends on the companies and how was your case my ex company they actually paid for everything and I heard that that's not usually the case but a lot of these other companies the trainees have to come out of pocket for everything if the k-pop trainee was gonna pay how much do they typically pay thousands of dollars not it's not like some cheap expense it's do you want to try acting when you're an idol at some point well that's gonna be about 3 to maybe 400 US dollars a month if you want to do dancing dance classes every month you need to pay it could it could range from anything from depending on a few cheap classes from like 400 to over a thousand dollars the idol industry is the way that I feel like Korea kind of survives because a lot of people do invest and a lot of young kids get you know interested in like Korean music or just kpop in general and so they want to be an idol because they think it's something that'll be easy and it'll keep their family like set for life financially but they don't realize how difficult it is necessarily when it comes to like training and just dedicating your entire life and sacrificing so much to become a kpop idol though what's the percentage of people who really become a kpop idol from the trainee itself not very many a lot of groups even if they debuted it doesn't mean that's going to give them actual like BTS superstardom success or if they do happen to get picked and chosen for a debut line they could they could be practicing forever and still never debuted so it's it's a risk that you're taking I can see a microphone in your room do you practice a lot at home oh yes I actually have my own kind of home studio and I do a lot of music here so yeah a lot of things get done at my my home so if you could demonstrate your singing skills then yeah awesome yeah definitely Angele nomu Duncan Yuuka so do the my hair - again can do it all with some agasshi hero could it go you don't gone mayhem young and then they dream tasha Kirti Montanan normal keep on John come Nana girl Cochran go cut and a shame Tonga Adam cutting them no cable don't know very good let's talk about a day in life as a kpop trainee could you almost stuff from the morning tonight like how does it go for a typical day it would be wake up in the morning and immediately like you know eat some kind of breakfast before going to meet with my manager and study and we would study Korean non-stop for like five six hours after studying for however many hours we had to go to the gym we had to work out after working out I get to use that time to practice my singing am i dancing and if I had time I can meet with my other trainee friends and we would go out and book dance rooms until the middle of the night if we wanted to after that I'd come home my tutor my manager already let me know how much homework I have I won't stay up majority of the night trying to complete that and so yeah I would be up until five six seven in the morning asleep for a couple of hours and go right back to my schedule so when you're a trainee what kind of rules were there your personal life is not your personal life anymore everything can be monitored they are very serious about who you talk with who you meet with what you do outside of your company time is you can't even click go up to bars or can't go out to clubs this kind of thing I wasn't allowed to have a dating life at all it said like that's no it's just not going to happen terminated if I was to ever like get pregnant terminated that's not to say that you know these idols don't like secretly have like some kind of girlfriends or boyfriends or these kinds of things they pretty much do what they want in secret how many percent do you think they break the rules 90% I'll say well they're humans they you they like they love they date a lot of people say like a slave contract and to some degree I do kind of agree with that what what do you think about those rules in the first place I was more so kind of feeling like I was being controlled obviously it made me feel so alone and I felt so isolated and I hated it what about what to eat how would they control it you don't eat a lot of times that I was suggested to like eat sweet potatoes which which are pretty delicious and they're kind of like a diet food and a lot of the girls I know like not personally but a lot of the training girls do liquid diets so what weight that they say you have to be say if you were maybe like 5 feet and 8 inches then maybe your weight would still probably have to be like the early 100 practically wasting away kind of man with you skin color do you think you know it was like an advantage or more like a disadvantage for you for being in the industry itself both disadvantage because I'm not Korean because I don't look like everyone else and I'm going to be judged on a different level on a different scale than Korean idols and an advantage because I stand out and it's enough to catch people's attention and make people watch and it makes people curious my company I wouldn't say that they really had a problem with my skin color but there were a lot of backhanded comments like compliments I should say like oh you're the prettiest black because blacks aren't typically pretty and other comments that were like oh you're different because you're like skinny and you know black people aren't usually skinny they're fat so good good for you being different black girl like okay do you think they really mean it or do you think it just comes from ignorance so why do you think they say that I I think it does come from ignorance and a lot of people just aren't educated on like my ethnicity and like different ethnicities outside of like could the Korean race the Korean ethnicity did you get any pressure to kind of changed your appearance yes and I would say I didn't really like what I was hearing because before I came to Korea I never thought that there was anything wrong with me I didn't think that there was anything about my appearance that I needed to change until someone from my company told me that my head shape was weird head shape yes like that there was something wrong with my head looks pretty normal to me well they suggested that I could have gotten surgery to fix my head shape what how do you fix a head shape in the first place I'm not sure you mean like the whole like the head like yeah my actual head to be honest were in Korea where plastic surgery is it goes to like so many different like like it knows no boundaries oh and as far as like my nose because it's flat too to some Korean people because a lot of Korean people I don't think it looks flat at all I've been told that it's it's not like the ideal kind of nose so it was suggested to me what's the ideal nose apparently the high nose like having a higher nose with like this bone like being straight did you did you decide to take any of that but I so like you just like dropped it it's like hey I don't want to do this well surgically speaking no because I've never had any surgical procedures I've never ever had surgery but as far as like my nose and like my head and things like that I was considering I was really thinking about it because I felt really insecure and it made me feel like I was ugly how long was your contract for and what was the end goal was it to become a solo singer was it like a k-pop group or what was it so my contract was for five years I was supposed to be like debuted and everything in six months it wasn't just like like I'm just going to be a singer kind of thing immediately but like let me model for brands let me do acting let me do TV things and singing as well so mine was like all rounded but my main focus was seen okay so your contract was five years but what happened right now well I me and the company itself we came to a mutual agreement where we decided to just kind of separate from each other and that had a lot to do with a lot of different factors that played into that but the ending result I wasn't happy and I wasn't getting what I wanted from them I wanted to follow my heart and just debuted but I didn't think that that would happen because of so many disagreements and so many things that had happened between me and my company in general what do you think about the freedom now it feels like a breath of fresh air I I feel really relieved because I'm not working with that company anymore so what is your ultimate goal I want to inspire people and I don't mean to inspire them to just come to Korea and like be a trainee no but I want to inspire a lot of people who have been asking me about the trainee life and wanting to do something in the entertainment business in Korea like don't let the things that I'm saying like discourage you because even though there's like some good things or some bad things there it's not to say that it's not going to be worth it in the end especially if this is something that you want and for me I feel like since this this wasn't my original like plan when I first came to Korea I feel a lot more relieved because I had to you know I got to experience that and I had to in order to realize what more I wanted to do while being in Korea and the Korean entertainment industry and I think that I would love to help more people and just let everyone know like this might seem like it's just impossible but it's not it's definitely not impossible well I wish you good success you know for your future [Music] [Music]

Channel: Asian Boss

Views: 2,756,229

Keywords: kpop, trainee, kpop trainee, pop music, korean music, confessions, insight, story, black, korea, korean, sam okyere, music, singing, dancing, dance, vocal training, training, kpop idol, gym, workout, fitness, talent, entertainment industry, actress, actor, acting, skills, asia, asian boss, stay curious

Id: sj9ZAZwisz4

Length: 13min 51sec (831 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 27 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

yo...what why would you even try? K-pop companies treat other ASIANS like shit why would you be black and try it based off of that alone

[u/lostlittlegurl]

I don't understand this. Kpop is just recycled black american culture? Girl what?

[u/Shower_caps]

Honestly can’t wait till the kpop craze is over, the whole thing is just off and it was a perfectly self sustaining industry when it was contained in Korea anyway.

[u/dramaticeggroll]

I was prepared to judge her, but she had a dream and went after it and I respect that.

[u/digitalplanet_]

Korean pop?

[u/IniMiney]

Ya'll hating, K-pop is my favorite genre. 😂