"Rocketeer" by Far East Movement ft. Ryan Tedder, Wednesday, June 2, 2021

In 2010, Far East Movement was the first Asian-American group to top the Billboard Hot 100 with the dance/hip-hop hit "Like a G6," a fun track about getting so drunk in the club that you feel like a private plane. The group's follow up hit, "Rocketeer" stuck with the flying theme. "Rocketeer" peaked at number  7 both on the Top 40 radio charts and the Hot 100, and the group hasn't released music topping their success. However, the 2010 success of FEM brought light to a hip-hop scene many Americans didn't even know existed. Far East Movement's rise to the top of the Hot 100 was a culmination of the career they built in LA's Koreatown and the Asian-American music scene, collaborations in various areas of the music industry, and the luck of being in the middle of dance/EDM Hip-hop when the wave swept.

WITH YOU RIGHT HERE, I'M A ROCKETEER. LET'S FLY. This song picks me up out of a slump. It's be nine years since I came to Korea, and in December, it will be 10 years since I graduated college. Before I graduated from university, the world seemed full of opportunities. There was a world out there to see. Having grown up playing Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego as one of the only computer games I was allowed to play, I dreamed of the world that I could fly away to and experience. I envied people in movies for whom travel was a normal thing. For my family, vacation was a trip to visit my grandparents in Florida or a trip to the beach. When I had the opportunity to go to Yap it reignited the Carmen Sandiego travel bug, and going to Korea was a continuation of that bug. But I quickly learned that trans-Pacific flights were not going to be a frequent thing. I never saw myself staying in Korea as long as I have, but until 2019, I really found fulfillment in my work and the years just passed.

GOT A JETPACK WITH YOUR NAME ON IT. Teaching in the pandemic has me really fatigued. It doesn't help that vacation was screwed up last year to interfere with my recovery. Working more hours with fewer teachers has me switching from my normal problem-solving self to a much more cynical shadow of my former self. I used to look at teaching at my school as puzzle to solve. It was fun trying to figure out which strategies would be most helpful to the student. It was stressful to figure out how to work around the obstacles and obstructions from supervisors. But I was always able to do it. But in the COVID world, I'm not feeling like doing my best. I've become so burnt out, but a few weeks ago I was inspired to take some time off for my master's degree. It's what I had wanted to do for some time when I had paid off my student loans. Thanks to a federal pause on interest, a steady job, and a pretty boring lifestyle, I'm almost paid up. It may be soon time to pursue a future. This is both exciting and terrifying. The sky's the limit, but where should I take the jetpack? And more importantly, is it safe to fly?

https://genius.com/Far-east-movement-rocketeer-lyrics