In July of this year, 34-year-old South Korean rapper, Park Jae Sang, more commonly known as Psy, made an explosive comeback with his song “Gangnam Style.” This comeback was a bit different from those of most artists, as he wrote the song, choreographed the dance, and directed the music video.  Since he was so involved in the production of his song and video, he was able to incorporate his views on materialism. The video has received attention from CNN, ABC News and popular singers like T-Pain and Katy Perry. He also got calls from Justin Bieber’s manager and is planning on doing a collaboration.

“Gangnam Style” has received more than 660 million hits since its release, which is extremely impressive for a K-pop video.  Psy’s goal wasn’t to make it into the American market. In fact, he didn’t even think about international audiences; he just hoped it would do well on the Korean charts. However, his video had great success internationally, mainly because the song was in the genre known as electro-pop, which is the most popular music genre in North America and Europe. Making the song sound catchy and addictive didn’t hurt its sales either. It also had an easy and silly dance, which is shown multiple times in the colorful and funny music video.

The song at first sounds like your typical pop song–a guy who just wants a classy girl.  But if you delve deeper, you’ll hear more. The main message of his song is to criticize those who care too much about how much money they have. In fact, Psy pokes at Korean culture as a whole, and implies that both women and men spend pointless amounts of money each year.

At one point in the video Psy stops filming and says, “human society is so hollow. Every frame by frame I felt pathetic.” In the end, Psy’s main goal was to shed some light on the economic irritations in his country. The result though, was much more than he expected. When he appeared on the Today Show, Psy said, “I uploaded this video only for Korean viewers in the YouTube. Somehow, within sixty days, I’m here!”