Epik Excessive’s Tablo Opens Up About Cyber Bullying and the Group’s New Album

Epik Excessive frontman Tablo was topic to intense cyberbullying from 2010 to 2012, and he is now opening up in regards to the expertise. The 41-year-old star was attacked by an antifan group known as TaJinYo for causes starting from his immigration to Canada (exempting him from Korea’s two-year necessary navy responsibility) to his incomes a bachelor’s and grasp’s diploma from Stanford College in lower than 4 years. Talking of the expertise, Tablo instructed Teen Vogue, “The one silver lining I may think about was that hopefully by way of this, there would at the least be some consciousness. And as soon as I proved myself as truthful and did not succumb to this and kill myself, hopefully individuals would see that it is attainable to defeat this. However this was faux information earlier than Pretend Information. . . . Nothing has modified.” Eight individuals had been sentenced to jail and probation for his or her involvement.

The cyberbullying additionally affected his household, together with his father, who died in 2012. Tablo channeled that loss and cyberbullying’s have an effect on on his psychological well being of their new album, “Epik Excessive Is Right here: Half 2,” launched on Feb. 14. “I had been engaged on it for a short while, however I stored placing it off, as a result of it is just a bit too private. . . . I wished it to not be simply my story, however to be a narrative for anyone who . . . has misplaced a member of the family. I really did not wish to launch this track [at first],” he mentioned of the ballad “Household Portrait.”

“I at all times have this looming thought in my thoughts that it may very well be the final album, proper? And if it’ll be our final album, I wished this to exist on the report,” Tablo mentioned. As for the way forward for Epik Excessive, he mentioned, “[DJ] Tukutz has at all times mentioned 10 studio albums is an efficient physique of labor and something past that looks as if you are overstaying your welcome, and for the primary time in my life, I agree.” Nevertheless, he is not ruling something out. “It’s fairly attainable that we simply say this after which the album does very well and we’re like, ‘On to the following album, child!'”