PSY's new single

In the genteel suburb of Gangnam, it is next to impossible to escape the chubby grinning face of Korea's most famous son.

Here he is on a television set in a restaurant, wearing a red dinner jacket, cuddling a packet of Shin Ramen "Black Cup" spicy beef noodles to his face.

On the next poster, he has switched to a green dinner jacket for his £2 million annual contract to advertise South Korea's favourite tipple, Jinro Soju.

Ever since Gangnam Style went viral, with more than 1.5 billion views on YouTube alone, PSY has been tirelessly riding his celebrity.

Today came the next step in his quest for world domination, a sell-out concert to 50,000 odd people in Seoul's World Cup Stadium, and the first performance of his new single, Gentleman.Released over the internet this week, the song, which revolves around the unfathomable chorus "Mother Father Gentleman!" went straight to the top of the charts in Seoul.

It also quickly overshadowed the tensions with North Korea on local news bulletins, although PSY did say he hoped his music would make everyone, even North Koreans, laugh.

To delirious screams, PSY emerged on stage just before 7pm, wearing a black leather matador's jacket with gold sequinned shoulders, and shouting "Go Crazy! Hit it! Bounce! Bounce!"

"It is an honour to have the whole country's attention for my new song," he said. "Lots of people love Gentleman, and honestly I don't care if it doesn't do well - I'm happy listening to the screams of this stadium now."

"You don't want to be in a seat at a PSY concert," said Seung Yeon Chung, a 25-year-old graduate student and Gangnam resident. "You want to feel the energy and dance!"

For months, a special team inside PSY's record label has been carefully crafting his follow up, trying to make a record that would be similar enough to please the hordes who loved Gangnam Style, but sufficiently different to feel fresh to his fan base.

The result has not quite satisfied either camp. "Whatever he did was going to be under huge public scrutiny," said Sung Yoon Park, the owner of the Square Garden Cafe in Seorae Village."But it is true that it sounds the same."

But in Gangnam, PSY's appeal has always rested not just in how his songs sound, but in what dance he would invent to go alongside them.

Tonight, it turned out that dance was a "Korean-style" bum shake that rivals the Macarena.

"On the first listen, it seemed not as cool as Gangnam Style, but with the same sort of repetitive beat. But then I listened to it three or more times, and I am getting a little bit addicted," said Miss Chung.

"The thing about PSY is that he is quite a visual artist. So the dance is important. I started buying his music because it was so different to all the other Korean pop.

"And then I started dancing it in the playground at school. And I am still dancing it now."

Psy’s New Single Is Out!

Talk about a hard act to follow: Korean rapper Psy broke the billion mark on YouTube in 2012 with his viral smash "Gangnam Style." Now, he's finally taken the plunge and introduced his follow-up, a single called "Gentleman" which was released globally Friday.

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Psy's original intent was to debut the song in his native South Korea, and then the rest of the world a day later. But he isn't known as the "King of YouTube" for nothing--the song was leaked and spread faster than one could say "Oppa."Of course, the question on everyone's mind is, does the new tune gallop like "Gangnam"? General consensus around the Web is that Psy hasn't strayed far from what worked (very well) for him. "Gentleman" has a driving beat, a repeated catchphrase ("mother father gentleman"), and Korean words that will doubtlessly have nonspeakers scratching their heads.

Is this repetition of sorts a good thing? Critical reviews are mixed, with the expected cheerful-to-grumpy spectrum . The BBC calls the new tune "formulaic"; while Fuse counters that it's "oh-so-danceable" and MTV raves about its "floor-shattering" drive. The Associated Press optimistically observes that at least the song is "stealing attention from inter-Korean tensions."

Fan reviews were predictably mixed as well, ranging on Twitter from "It's great," "Catchy" and even "Brilliant" to "Ugggh," "Let-down," and "Not really unique."

Those who got their groove on learning Psy's horse dance last year will be happy to know that there's yet another signature dance for "Gentleman," although we'll have to wait one more day for the official video to come out to see that.

"The dance is one known to all Koreans but new to foreigners," Psy explained earlier this month. He'll reportedly unveil the moves during his sold-out concert in Seoul on Saturday.