Epik High have revealed that their second performance at Coachella “inspired” them to keep making music after they promised themselves they wouldn’t release another album.
In a recent interview with Billboard, frontman Tablo revealed that the group decided “internally” that 2022’s ‘Epik High Is Here 下, Part 2’ would be their last full-length album. “We were like, ‘We’ve made so many albums and I don’t think there’s anything we can really say’,” Tablo explained.
The musician added that he and the other members of the hip-hop trio – DJ Tukutz and Mithra Jin – had made a “collective decision” to continue performing as Epik High, but not release any studio-length albums for the rest of their career. The trio had also assumed their next musical project would be a new single to mark Epik High’s 20th anniversary in the music industry.
But Tablo then revealed that they were moved to make new music after spending a week in Los Angeles, presumably to prepare for Coachella 2022, where they found themselves making music with other musicians during their downtime: “What happened was…damn it, Coachella kind of inspired us again. We were like, ‘Oh my God…'”
He added, “We were in LA for some festival, we just had like a week in LA but only one show so we had all this time. Being who we are, we ended up with a lot of musicians just making music and ended up with a ton of songs.”
The songs they produced during their stay in Los Angeles made it to their latest record, ‘Strawberry’, which was released February 1. Tablo also noted that the release of ‘Strawberry’, which is five songs long, means the group haven’t technically gone back on their word to never release another album.
“We were like, ‘What do we do with these songs? We promised each other that we wouldn’t release an album.’ And then Tukutz was like, ‘This isn’t actually an album if we’re releasing three to five songs. Technically, it’s just a project.’ And I’m like, ‘You’re right. We did say we will never release another studio-length album so we’re not breaking that promise… yet.’”
Epik High’s ‘Strawberry’ dropped last week, a little under a year since the release of 12-track studio album ‘Epik High Is Here 下, Part 2’ in February 2022. ‘Strawberry’ is led by a title track of the same name, and features collaborations with Jackson Wang (‘On My Way’) and MAMAMOO member Hwasa (‘Catch’).