J-Hope Talks Balancing Solo Career With BTS and How His Hip-Hop Album Reveals a ‘Darker Side of Me’
variety.comChris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticIf we were going to borrow the terminology of one pop-culture juggernaut, “Star Wars,” for another, BTS, we might call this phase of the career of one of the group’s members “BTS, Episode II: A New J-Hope.” At least, J-Hope himself considers this the beginning of a second chapter in the ensemble’s career as well as a fresh start for his own, as today he releases “Jack in the Box,” the first of in a series of solo albums that each member of BTS is expected to be putting out in the months to come.It makes sense that the artist known offstage as Jung Ho-seok would be the first band member to release a full solo project during what is being characterized as a refueling between group endeavors.
Since he’s known primarily as a rapper, there will necessarily be fewer comparisons drawn between his solo material and pop earworms of BTS’ past like “Dynamite” and “Butter.” But in another sense, there’s risk involved in coming right out with something that bears quite so little similarity to anything that would be described as a BTS signature sound.
The potential reward is certainly worth that risk — the payoff of planting a more significant flag in the ground for South Korean rappers with as impressive and credible a hip-hop album as “Jack in the Box” turns out to be.
A few days before the release of “Jack in the Box” (and just before we’d had a chance to sample the album beyond its first single, “More”), Variety spoke with J-Hope via Zoom — and via a translator — about how he hoped to show off a different side of himself with the new record, which he described as one that “definitely reveals a little darker side of me” than anything he’s produced with BTS to date.
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