Introducing Authentic: The Story of Tablo

Tablo was a Korean hip hop superstar in 2010. Then it all came screeching to a halt, when a rumor on the internet ballooned out of control. From VICE and iHeart Podcast Network, a series that explores why a bizarre conspiracy divided a country and turned into an international obsession. Hosted by Dexter Thomas Jr.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
In two thousand one, a young, energetic, recent college grad
named Tableau returned from the States to South Korea and
helped form the alternative hip hop group Epic High. Tableau
and Epic High rose to international fame, and before long
they helped make hip hop mainstream in Korea. By they

(00:23):
were beating out Jay Z and Kanye on the international
hip hop charts, all while rapping mostly in Korean. And
it was then, right when Tableau in his group were
at the top of their game, when Tableau's Life Out
of Nowhere got Joe to off course, landing him in

(00:43):
the center of a bizarre conspiracy. Rumors had started spreading
on the Internet. People were posting on online message boards
saying that Tableau wasn't who he said he was. He
went to Stanford so he could become an international hip
hop star. You know, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
The accusations started out small, questions about his academic credentials,

(01:06):
doubts about where he went to college, but pretty quickly
they started spiraling out of control. They were like claiming
that I had dribed the FDI and that I had
ties to the Illuminati. What Tableau experience had never really
happened before, not like this and not on this scale.

(01:26):
Black Mirror wasn't out yet, but I felt like this
was some horror sci fi thing where the entire country
I had been living in I had collectively agreed to basically,
mind me, We're gonna look at how a wild but
honestly kind of trivial accusation starts on an anonymous internet forum,

(01:49):
and then follow it as it explodes into a national obsession.
They were trying to attack everybody who was associated with Tableau.
I was about to hang up the last time, and
I hear him yell, will pay you ten tho dollars.
It was like a wildfire. It was insane how fast
it's spread, and an entire country divides itself, but never

(02:13):
once looks away from Vice and I Heeart podcast Network.
Listen to Authentic the Story of Tableau starting February twenty
four on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast both
wherever you get your podcast da