Interview: K-RAP Heaveyweights, Lil Cherry and Goldbuuda.

With the K-Music Festival bringing another wave of boundary-pushing Korean sounds to London, I caught up with Lil Cherry and Goldbudda ahead of their opening performance at EartH on 28 September. The genre-blurring duo have been carving out their own space with a sound that moves effortlessly between hip-hop, electronic textures and leftfield experimentation. As they prepare to kick off the festival, we spoke about their creative chemistry, the energy they’re bringing to the stage, and what audiences can expect from their London set.

Q. What have you both been up to?

Lil C & Buuda: We’ve been moving nonstop. New music, new visuals, shows, traveling, meeting new people — a lot has been happening at once.

“DRESS2KILL” represents where some of our energy is right now. We’ve been experimenting more and allowing ourselves to go into places that might not immediately sound or look like what people expect from Lil Cherry and GOLDBUUDA.

Buuda: For me personally, I’ve also been producing, directing, working with new artists and building SAUCE 1UP. Cherry has been developing her own ideas and experiences too, so whenever we come back together, we both bring something new to the table.

I think we’re at a point where we understand our identity better than ever, which actually gives us more freedom to play with it.

Lil Cherry: Yes, it’s definitely a new era for both of us. Buuda released his album LEVEL UP OR SHUT UP with POPXICK, his fellow member of SAUCE1UP, and I launched a new crew called OVARY. It’s a space where I’ll be incubating new talents from all over the world, and we’ve already launched OVARY’s first artist, GINJA!

As a solo artist, I also signed with a new team, PMG Korea. This year, I’m really branching out and categorizing what’s important to me and where I want to put my energy.

On September 23, Buuda and I also have a new song coming out called “YUMMY 88.” I know I have so much on my plate, but all is well with me. There are so many doors I’ve opened up in ’26, and just wait till you see what’s coming up, baby.

Q. Looking back at the journey.

Buuda: From the beginning, we always called our world “Far East Disney.”

A caricature of Mulan, Mickey Mouse drawn with an Asian ink brush, even changing my name from Jito Mo to GOLDBUUDA — they were all different expressions of the same idea.

We grew up loving and appreciating hip-hop, but we wanted to find our own original way of speaking that language from an Asian perspective. We never wanted to simply recreate what already existed. We wanted to take the culture we loved and mix it with our own references, humor, visuals and identity until it became something that could only come from us.

Songs like “MUKKBANG” and “1000 Words” were some of the first moments where we realized people actually understood what we were trying to create. From there, the visuals, fashion, characters and performances naturally became just as important as the music itself.

There wasn’t really one moment where we thought, “We made it.” It was more like watching this strange little universe slowly become real.

Looking back now, I think the biggest defining moment was realizing that people weren’t just listening to the songs — they were recognizing the world around them.

Lil Cherry: To add to that, it’s always when I get to meet the fans in person. Interacting online is special, sure, but it can feel a little disconnected. It’s really something else—and so much warmer—when I see them in person, especially when they’re chanting all the lyrics to our songs.

I love taking pictures with them, talking to them, getting to know them and their names. Those moments make everything feel real to me. It reminds me that the world we’ve been building through the music actually exists outside of us and means something to other people too.

Q. Your influences

Buuda: Our influences have always been all over the place.

Hip-hop is obviously the foundation, especially the energy we got from Southern music — Miami bass, crunk, trap — but we were also heavily influenced by internet culture, video games, animation, fashion and things that weren’t necessarily considered hip-hop.

Growing up in Miami had a huge impact on me. That Southern energy — bass, repetition, attitude, making something feel almost ridiculous but still hard — never really left me.

These days, though, inspiration doesn’t always come from another musician. Sometimes a random image, an old Korean commercial, a video game character, a weird YouTube video, a traditional sound, or somebody on the internet with 500 followers can inspire us more than a major artist.

Ultimately, the artists we respect most are people who create their own language. When you hear or see something and immediately know who made it without seeing the name, that’s inspiring to us.

Lil Cherry: Right now, I really love Theodora, Rema, Slayyyter, The Odyssey soundtrack by Ludwig Göransson, Erykah Badu, Rocket Rese, fakemink, and Kevin Gates. It’s a pretty wide range, but I think that reflects where my head is creatively right now. For me, the inspo does not have to be musicians only. I get inspired by a lot of comedians as well because I believe that their comedy is the highest form of art that brings joy to people. I really love Chelcie Lynn, Theo Von, Bobby Lee.

Q. Back to London

Lil C & Buuda: London feels special because people there seem very open to things that don’t fit perfectly into one category.

At SXSW London, we felt that curiosity from the crowd. They didn’t need to understand every Korean lyric or every reference first. If the energy was right, they were willing to enter the world with us.

London also has this history of taking different cultures and sounds and mutating them into something new — punk, grime, jungle, garage, fashion. There’s a rebellious energy in the city that we naturally connect with.

Every city reacts differently. Some crowds watch first and react later, while others go crazy immediately. In London, it felt like people were studying what was happening and turning up at the same time.

We like that combination.

Q. What can fans expect?

Lil C & Buuda: Controlled chaos.

We want the live show to feel like more than just playing our songs one after another. For that moment, we want people to feel like they’ve entered our universe.

There will definitely be music people recognize, but we’re also bringing some newer energy and different elements into the performance. We’ve been thinking a lot about dynamics — when to make something aggressive, when to make it strange, when to leave space, and when to completely lose control.

Being on a lineup with ADG7 and Chang Kiha makes it even more interesting because everyone represents a completely different interpretation of Korean music and culture.

We love that. There shouldn’t be one definition of what “Korean music” is supposed to sound like.

Our job that night is simply to show our corner of it.

Far East Disney in London.

We’re also planning a few special performances with ADG7. I’ll be hopping on one of their tracks, and they’ll be hopping on one of ours, so we’ll be mixing and fusing our situations together.

We think it’s going to be a once-in-a-lifetime type of collaboration. We come from very different musical worlds, which is exactly why I’m excited about seeing what happens when those worlds collide onstage.

6. What’s next?

Buuda: For years, we were focused on figuring out how to make something ours. Now we’re more interested in finding territory we haven’t touched before. What new sound, image or feeling can we discover? What happens if we challenge the identity we spent years building instead of protecting it?

For me, SAUCE 1UP is becoming part of that next chapter too. I want to build a space where new artists, producers, directors and creative kids can collide and create their own worlds. I don’t want everything to always stop at Lil Cherry and GOLDBUUDA.

Cherry and I still have a lot coming together as well — new music, collaborations, visuals, shows and more traveling.

But I don’t want to reveal everything yet.

The exciting part is that even we don’t completely know what the next chapter looks like.

We’re not trying to repeat the world we already built.

We’re trying to find the next one.

Lil Cherry: One of my catchphrases for life is, “Less is more, but more is more.”

As Lil Cherry and Goldbudda get ready to take the stage at EartH on 28 September, (book here) their appearance promises to set the tone for a K-Music Festival that continues to spotlight the breadth and creativity of Korea’s contemporary music scene. From their instinctive collaboration to their fearless approach to sound, the duo are bringing something distinctly their own to London. For those heading down, expect an opening set that’s as unpredictable, playful and genre-fluid as the artists themselves.

Book here to see Lil Cherry and Goldbuuda at EartH
Written by DJ Sam Soju
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