BTS‘ J-Hope opens up about his vision for another solo mixtape, dives into his awkward early days in the K-pop supergroup and describes the impact of the nearly three-year COVID-19 lockdown on his psyche in a new digital cover story in Rolling Stone.
With ARMY breathlessly awaiting any word on the follow-up to J-Hope’s 2018 Hope World mixtape, the singer said he’s meticulously working on songs, offering no real timetable other than: when it’s ready. “Right now, the goal is to get inspired and make good music. Nothing is decided yet, so I’m just going to keep working on music,” he said. “I think my style of music will not greatly change, but I think it will be more mature. I will try to contain stories that I really want to tell in the second mixtape.”
He also dove into the fond memories he had of making Hope World, describing it as a “really pure, innocent and beautiful” opportunity to go out on his own. “When I work on music right now, I have an opportunity to go back to those emotions and think, ‘Oh, those were the days,’” he said. “I think it really has a good influence on my music that I work on now. Through the mixtape I learned a lot, and I think it really shaped the direction that I want to go in as an artist, as a musician.”
Like so many of us, J-Hope (born Jung Ho-seok), 27, said the long lockdown has taught him how precious our ordinary lives are, spurring him to think about staying calm and focused during these trying times. “It was a time to reflect on myself a lot,” he told the magazine. “Time goes on and life flows on, and we just have to keep doing music and performances. I just thought that I have to make music that can give consolation and a sense of hope to other people.”
And though ARMY would probably beg to differ, J-Hope — who did not rap when he first joined the group — said he still thinks he has “some shortcomings” and has a “long way to go” in honing his skills and finding his unique style. “But I think I could only come this far thanks to the other members,” he said of his bandmates: V, Jungkook, Suga, Jin, RM and Jimin.
“When I first started training, all the members were rappers in that crew. So when you go into the house, beats were dropping, and everyone was just rapping in freestyle. It was kind of not easy to adapt at first, but I really tried hard to adapt to that new environment. And I think those were good times and good memories, and it was really fun as well.”
The septet present a unified front these days, but J-Hope also looked back on their somewhat “awkward” early period. “We were just really different from the beginning, so it was awkward. It did take time to get used to it. We were living together, but we had to make sure we each had our own personal spaces,” he explained. “Eventually we learned to understand each other, and now we’ve been doing this for so long together that we have this sort of harmony, an understanding of each other that allows us to have the kind of teamwork we have.”
The J-Hope interview is the first of seven digital-only cover stories RS will roll out on the group.
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