Update: Upon publication of this article a representative for Peggy Gou provided the following statement to Big Shot: “Daniel’s post includes numerous false and defamatory statements, and its intent is purely to shame and inflame hatred against Peggy based on a personal grievance. The post has been reported to Facebook for harassment and hate speech.”
Berlin-based DJ/producer Daniel Wang has taken to Facebook to post a scathing diatribe of fellow artist Peggy Gou.
In Wang’s lengthy post, he recalls meeting Gou several years ago when they lived one floor apart in the same building. After various trials and tribulations, he says the two are no longer on speaking terms.
In the post, Wang wrote, “She and I stopped speaking about 2 years ago, right before her big record release which made her a star. And that’s when everyone started telling me their stories too.”
Gou, whose House In This Ho Edit of Cardi B’s “WAP” dropped today, has yet to issue a response.
Here’s Wang’s post in its unedited entirety:
● This strange year is coming to an end. And two best things to happen in 2020 are: Donald Trump got voted out of the White House, and Peggy Gou moved out of my building. ●
🙁 No, this is not a joke. 🙁
I’m finally going public (and not on a DJ page for only 50 people to read). I’ve written this on my computer over and over, and in my head for 2 or 3 years or more… i need to do this for my mental health. Sorry, but i need to say this, at last.
Like a poor dolphin with a metal spike stuck in its fin, I’ve been traumatised by knowing this awful human being. She was my neighbour, and she moved out 3 months ago. Some parts of the world think she is a talented, attractive, fashionable DJ. This is the biggest, saddest marketing scam ever. Lots of us in Berlin know the truth, but no one had the guts (or authority) to speak up. They’re afraid people will call them a racist, a sexist, bitter or jealous. I finally found the courage to say this today – and lord knows i have nothing against Asians, nor do i have anything against women. And i have nothing to be bitter about, because I have 20 years of a joyful DJ career behind me already. And this is not about musical taste or talent.. you can play the most stupid grunge rock or techno trance, you can be a Chopin genius.. but whatever it is – if you do it for fun and friendship, then I’d never find fault with that.
It’s the most bizarre coincidence in the world that Peggy Gou and Daniel Wang lived for 3 or 4 years separated by only one floor, before and after she became very famous. I truly wish I never got stuck in this situation… it’s time to tell the truth, while the landlord is still renovating the apartment which she left – he was in a rage when he found what condition she had left it in.
Truth is, Peggy Gou (real name: Min-jin Kim) is one of the most crude, tacky, greedy, narcissistic, abusive, troubling persons I’ve ever met in my whole life. I mean this 100%. See, EVERYONE in Berlin knew that we were neighbors, so they told me everything about every encounter with her. I’ve been burdened with every anecdote since about 2017!!
I don’t even know how to begin.
I tried my best to be nice to her at first.. ignoring the outfits of Escada mixed with Supreme on top of Hilfiger (anything with a pricey label!), the bad makeup and overpowering perfume (red alerts for mental illness, hello?), i installed all her bookshelves and shoe shelves (about 600 pairs?), hung up her lamps and paintings. I even had her keys and received packages for her (which ended in her viciously screaming at me because i had left a huge Vuitton package in her hallway while she was in Bali and ignored my messages). We were two Asian immigrants in the same building, how could we not try to make a connection?
But i always felt that something was wrong. I’m trembling and i want to vomit as i finally write this on my Samsung phone. I can’t make a timeline of all the incidents, but she and i stopped speaking about 2 years ago, right before her big record release which made her a star. And that’s when everyone started telling me their stories too.
You see, the guy who put out her first record is an old friend of mine (and is also regularly a dj at Berghain). She started badmouthing him in an interview. (He says he could tell me who really produced her releases; i haven’t verified that!) His wife had also been her friend and lent her 2 quite expensive Eames chairs; Peggy then refused to return them, claiming she sold them by accident. “But she’s rich, she doesn’t need to steal anything, does she?” I’ve heard skeptics say. Hmmm… kleptocracy doesn’t follow that logic.
Most telling of all: Peggy tried working for a while at the record shop of another friend whom we all know. (I don’t want to name names, but i can if i have to.) This owner came to me puzzled and angry: you know her? She refused to sort records or help customers. Instead she would come wearing designer outfits and take pictures of herself among the record bins to upload to Instagram! And when the shop owner said that she should do work, her reply was “but that would get my clothes dirty”. (!!!) But there’s more: at the end of the day, the rare vinyl gems which other employees had dug up would go missing. Peggy had taken them, “bought” them or put them in her own bag.
Every few weeks or months came more news. Peggy likes to say that she was the first Korean to rock Berghain. I bumped into the booker there after her gig, and he said to me with a wry, incredulous laugh: “Peggy Gou was nothing like what we had expected. We will certainly never book her again.” That was that.
I came home late one Saturday night and saw a tiny young Korean woman dragging a massive load of Ikea boxes down our street. I mean, it was the kind of weight that a tiny woman shouldn’t be carrying alone. I felt horrible for her. I offered to help, then i realized what was going on.. “Don’t help me, it’s ok!” she said. At that moment, Peggy walked past us up the stairway carrying a light Gucci shopping bag. Then, right before 10pm, they started hammering the new shelf together. I saw at least 3 different women (?) help her over just a few months..
Then one day, the old man from the 7th floor who loves the Rolling Stones came to me in a rage: “Daniel, are you her friend? Peggy was insulting and swearing at me! She let the front door slam in our faces. I said, in Germany, when you see your neighbors coming, you hold the door open for them…”
Oh, and i got to know the head of her former promotiom team. He’s a sweet German guy. He said to me, the whole team basically walked out on her. He had never met someone so greedy, he said, who tells lies at every turn, who would do anything for money or publicity. In fact, he said: you know, this is really grim, but it felt exactly like working for Donald Trump. Lying, stealing, anything for more attention and money. To add to all this, Peggy’s former agent was apparently so badly abused and harrassed by Peggy that she had to undergo psychotherapy. I fully understand why.
If anyone saw the Instagram posts from “Business Techno”: after Corona hit, Peggy became a “nightlife ambassador” for Jägermeister, and promptly chose to donate €100,000 to the club in Glasgow whose owner produces Peggy’s own merchandise line. Isn’t that simply corruption? (She retracted the donation when the connection surfaced.)
But the creepiest thing is seeing her dj at “plague raves” late summer this year in Puglia, Sardinia, Mykonos. Covid infection rates shot up massively in those regions after those events. (Many public health officials there are also at fault.) Oh, and that Saudi Arabia festival gig (not an entirely negative development in itself) where she said, upon being questioned about women’s rights there… that she simply doesn’t care.
I just can’t go on reciting these stories about Peggy Gou.. they’re endless. But the Trump comments always stuck with me. Because outside of a few “capitals” like Berlin or London, the perception of what is a “Dj” clearly has been completely skewed by social media. And some people are snakes and rats in real life, but social media ADORES them.
It’s because we are in this “attention economy” where reality is replaced by Smartphone images, and – you all know this – only a pathological narcissist needs to constantly project a false image of power, success, wealth. I don’t mean cuddly pets or selfies with family and real friends. I mean Peggy writing eulogies after the deaths of DJs Mike Huckaby and Andrew Weatherall about them saying how much they admire HER as a dj. That’s MENTALLY ILL. She was instantly posting selfies and videos with me too when she first me. It creeped me out.
I could keep on writing, but I won’t. Suddenly, tonight, i just had to get this out of my system. Half an hour later, I’m still in shock but I’m glad – it feels like buckets of pus flowing out of an ugly wound… By the way, please don’t think i have no compassion. I spent nights talking with Peggy and almost cried with her sometimes. I even went with her once to the hospital. When i saw the Korean hit movie “Parasite”, I thought “wow… that’s her world. The superficiality, the cluelessness.” She is a troubled soul, but no one should be given a license to be so abusive, mendacious, and destroy the sanity and sense of decency of everyone around her. Especially not because she is a “woman of colour” (there’s that identity politics topic which everyone is so afraid to touch!) – I’m pretty sure that Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman belong in a VERY DIFFERENT category of “WOC” from this profoundly rotten parasitic Ivanka from Seoul.
Golly, I’m so glad I finally said this.
Please feel free to share, to screenshot… I stand by every word here. You might have formed your opinions from seeing her interviews and videos (which are staged, obviously), but I, and so many of us here, knew the real Peggy Gou from the very start. And I hope Berlin (now my hometown of almost 18 years) stays real and sees through this kind of nonsense.
And I hope that, in 2021 and beyond, we treasure real music-lovers and dancers who do it for all the right reasons – for sheer joy, spirit, community… and not for the money, the cocaine, the attention, and spitting on your neighbors and all the people in the nightlife business who built this crazy thing up from dreams and ideals in the first place. (Unedited, now i copy this into my Facebook and… post.)