Zhang's Blog

What's better than starting off Mother's Day with the most ephemeral, yet unfulfilling solo J-hope has ever produced? "MAMA" belongs to one of the most sensational K-pop eras the genre has thus far illustrated – it's full of complex wordplay and references along with obscure motifs that have us perplexed to excruciating levels. The track itself, "MAMA", is one of several other solos from WINGS. While the other's solos contemplated on messages like finding one's first love, and struggling to love yourself, J-hope decided to talk about his appreciation towards his mother and the story of following his dream. What was particularly special about this track was how carefully elaborated he was able to describe his journey, and how he was able to get fans to reflect on the message J-hope was trying to portray, and lastly, how he successfully captivated us while doing so. "MAMA" depicts the story of a very caring mother who sacrifice

Sitting up straighter at his desk, Kim Namjoon attentively listened to the questions being asked and carefully thought before answering. This young man is a teacher’s dream — so polite, handsome, and smart! But when he's not in the classroom, or a student, he is the leader of popular K-pop band BTS — and a rapper who specializes in expressing himself with meaning. Rap Monster has been featured in Gaeko's track "Elephant". In the trivvy, and pretty easygoing song, Rap Mon speaks along with Gaeko of passion and desire — this tells us that he doesn't separate with his rapping/songwriter role within BTS. Gaeko is a pretty acclaimed rapper and producer, so seeing that Rap Monster is having ties with Gaeko and many other big endorsement producers, I can tell he's not your typical idol rapper. Not only does Rap Monster have linkages within the South Korean entertainment industry, but he also has ties with an American hip-hop producer and rapper:

When I first heard BTS, I was not as convinced that they were worth my time and interest. I thought of them as your typical boy band: shallow, unfriendly, and completely unworthy of my time when it came to music quality. Turns out I was under the quintessential influence from my mother country, the US, which had taught me that all boy bands were deemed with the same sound and concept. Perhaps their musical compositions just hadn't caught my eye yet, or I was distracted by the fact their style seemed to differ from many artists I heard in the west. However, without question, I was patently missing something there, because it got me curious as I was watching American Hustle Life when Bangtan was being mentored by legends in the rap/hip-hop world — my initial thought was that they must've been very talented in order for such people to engage with them — nevertheless even teach them. It was surely captivating and definitely played with my mind, but it just wasn

The west often asserts that they have an open ear for great music, but patently, you can find that they have a tendency to omit foreign music. Sure, we have Shakira, from the hearts of Colombia, or the notorious Avicii who just so happens to be Swedish. However, they all speak/sing in English, thus tuning out all signs of foriegn music. * Colombia In short, it seems like our monolinguistic gravitation leads up to the fact that many foreign artists are failing in becoming popular because it seems utterly impossible to become famous by singing songs in their native language. But then, we have BTS, a 7 member boy K-pop group that doesn’t sing in English, never have promoted their music outside Asia, and didn’t have a viral music video like Psy did with “Gangnam Style”. It is easy to say that BTS, who are not only breaking social norms in their home country, South Korea, but are also suppressing the west's traditional monolingualism ignorance within music. K-p

Every single time BTS makes a comeback, us ARMYs are once again put up to test. Theories, analyses, and countless hours are being put into serious contemplation. However, after a couple hours or so of the release, some ARMYs have been able to fully grasp the anatomy of the comeback, thus the piles and piles of theories/analyses we see today. What is truly so breathtaking is to know that none of these theories/analyses are the exact same. All of them have different aspects and perspectives on the same comeback, but under no circumstances will you find any identical theories/analyses. You can compare them with snowflakes. It's highly unlikely that you will find a snowflake that is exactly alike with another. That is the beauty of snowflakes. The snowflake may have been born or released from the same cloud, but their different journeys towards the ground allows the snowflake to differ in size/shape, thus giving each one of them a unique identity. In contr