Psy Gentleman: rapper releases new single after Gangnam Style dance craze

Psy is introducing his new single, Gentleman, after he sparked an international dance craze with the release of his hit Gangnam Style last year.

Gentleman, with a techno beat, was full of puns in Korean and contained the lines “I am a party mafia!” and the refrain, “I am a mother father gentleman”.

The 35-year-old South Korean rapper hinted in an interview last week that Gentleman also features a dance routine – hinting that it is based on traditional Korean moves.

Speaking on South Korean television last week, Psy said: “All Koreans know this dance but other countries haven’t seen it.”

Psy will perform Gentleman in public for the first time on Saturday at a concert at Seoul’s World Cup stadium.

The rapper has asked fans to wear white to Saturday’s event and his stylist told Reuters last month that the concept for the new song would again be a formal suit with “an unexpected twist of fun”.

In Gangnam Style, written as a commentary on materialism in the wealthy Seoul suburb of Gangnam, Psy was decked out in sunglasses, a white dress shirt, bow tie and tuxedo jackets.

Gangnam Style racked up 3.59 million digital sales last year in the US and Canada, according to Nielsen SoundScan and Nielsen BDS, putting it ninth in the best-selling list.

The video for Gangnam Style also became the most watched item on YouTube with more than 1.5 billion hits.

Gangnam Style catapulted Psy to global fame after a rocky career in the music business over the past decade.

Psy, whose real name is Park Jae-sang, graduated from the Berklee College of Music in the US and made his debut in 2001 with the album PSY from the Psycho World.

The rapper ran into trouble with the authorities for “inappropriate” content in the lead song on that album, which was seen as sexually suggestive. He was also charged with possession of marijuana in 2002. Since then he has released five more albums.

Psy’s brash style – at a concert last year he parodied Lady Gaga, complete with fake breasts that he set on fire – stands in stark contrast to the squeaky clean singers that dominate K-pop which is finding an increasingly large international audience.