Coachella? -Thanks, Epik High.
Early career hype? -Thanks, BIGBANG.
U.S. market? -Thanks, BTS.
Japanese market? -Thanks, TWICE.
Their biggest hits? -Thanks, Teddy. and YG
So what exactly did BLACKPINK pioneer, aside from attaching themselves to every big name and finishing runner-up in every conversation once you take away the "first female group" card?
Dear whoever you are,
Your "20 years of struggle" doesn't give you the right to disrespect j-hope, especially when you clearly haven't sat with an album as critically acclaimed as “Jack In The Box”. And don't put him in the same sentence as idols from other labels who use company influence to collab with whoever's trending.
j-hope and BTS started from the bottom if you didn’t know that, a struggling company, zero industry privileges, even mocked by parts of the Korean hip-hop scene early on. They didn't get here on luck. They got here on preparation meeting opportunity. Big Hit didn't make BTS, BTS made Big Hit /HYBE what it is today.
Korean music critic Randy Suh put it well in a 2018 piece: "j-hope doesn't really owe the Korean hip hop scene much because it isn't where he got his start. He has since said with confidence that his musical roots are the 1980s and '90s hip hop that he grew up dancing to"
He didn't come up through the underground rap scene, but he spent his late teens studying it and building a flow that's entirely his own. That groundwork is what made him the first South Korean artist to headline a major U.S. festival, not a Big Hit connection, but raw talent. That's also where he met J. Cole in person, told him he was his muse, and exchanged numbers. That friendship started artist to artist, not through some HYBE rep making a call. 🤨
“on the street” with J.Cole is j-hope’s way of paying respect to one his early hip-hop inspirations. He gave Jermaine has more bars in the song, that’s how much he respects him.
j-hope only collaborates with people he genuinely respects. Korean hip-hop legends like Yoon Mirae and Gaeko who joined him on "Neuron" didn't show up because he's popular. They showed up because they believe in his skill, and because he's cited them as inspirations since day one.
Years in the game don't automatically make you more deserving than someone else. Sure, some artists lean hard on their label, can't rap or sing live, and still get everything handed to them. But j-hope has never been one of them.
Twenty years of experience should teach you the difference between resenting someone’s success and understanding it. j-hope’s is the kind you study, not the kind you dismiss.
“it's seven for BTS, this seven is different from that as it represents monday to sunday... so they're completely different” WE GET IT JUNGKOOK SKSJSKK😭