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Of all the BTS members, Suga is probably the one who is most familiar with the daunting feeling that comes before dropping a solo project — but he’d never released something the size and scale of D-DAY before.
The 30-year-old rapper/producer/songwriter born Min Yunki has two full-length mixtapes using his alter ego Agust D — his 2016 debut, named after his second alias, and 2020’s D-2, both which established him as a ferociously introspective artist. Through his emotionally wrenching raps, he’s also emerged as a bold K-pop star, unafraid to share his reflections on mental health and inner struggles.
But last summer, BTS announced that they would be focusing on solo projects instead of group albums. Suga was already in the midst of working on the final installment of his planned Agust D trilogy, and he realized that the whole world would be paying extra close attention to what was supposed to be his side project. Suddenly, he felt pressure to stay true to his raw, explosive rap persona as Agust D while still living up to the name of Suga, the BTS member who speaks at the U.N. and the White House and collaborates with pop giants like PSY, Halsey, and Coldplay.
“Since I had to finalize the trilogy, I wanted to push Agust D by any means,” he tells Rolling Stone on a Zoom call from the HYBE office in Seoul. “Yet in reality, in terms of marketing, Suga has more presence. There was a heavy pressure to synchronize Agust D and Suga, and it took a toll on finishing the album.”
In his solo work and across more than 100 songs that he’s helped write for BTS, Suga has always worked to reconcile different identities and competing desires, wrestling between striving for success yet rebuking material desires, aspiring for honesty yet fearing overexposure, and wanting to meet expectations of the public yet feeling being misunderstood by critics. But on his new album D-DAY, which arrived on April 21 alongside a behind-the-scenes companion documentary, Suga: Road to D-DAY, streaming on Disney+, he reveals that he’s learned how to conquer these inner conflicts. On the opening title track, he declares that he’s forging a new future, defined only by himself. “Comparing yourself to those floundering in life, inferiority, and self-loathing / Starting today, aim your gun at these things,” he raps.
Across the 10-track project that blends hard-hitting drill beats, affecting R&B, and angsty emo rap, he unleashes philosophical verses that unpack his personal traumas, love and loss, the impossibilities of living under late capitalism and, as always, the hypocrisies of his haters — now with a wisdom that comes with self-knowledge. If 2016’s Agust D represents a Suga who used rap as an outlet for his intense emotions, and 2020’s D-2 captured a version of him learning to accept himself despite uncertainty, then D-DAY is the sound of a musician who finally understands who he is, comfortably moving through life’s chaos and changes.
Throughout D-DAY, Suga reflects on the idea of “liberation,” rapping about his search for freedom from the structures of the world and his own anxious thoughts. Yet the album posits that music, and the emotional process of making it, might be a form of freedom in itself. On the single “Haegeum,” a Korean word for “lifting a ban” that is also the name of a Korean traditional string instrument, he makes incisive cultural commentary about digital overconsumption. “Everyone’s been blinded by envy and jealousy / Without realizing that they’re putting shackles on each other / Don’t get swept away by this tsunami of info,” he spits. But when he pleads for everyone to “get on” the track’s grimy drill beat in the hook, it’s as if he’s urging listeners to live in the present by losing themself in the raucous music.
Suga also proposes liberating yourself from regrets of the past on “Amygdala,” a mournful rap song inspired by the part of your brain that stores fragmented memories of traumatic events. The verses see him making his most personal admissions yet, as he raps about the hardest parts of his life in a frantic string of visions: His mom’s heart surgery she underwent soon after he was born, the motorbike accident he endured as a teenage delivery worker, and “the call I got during work about dad’s liver cancer.” Yet making the song, and taking out those “unpleasant memories” to reorganize them again, facilitated the process of healing, he says in Road to D-DAY. “It’s part of the treatment to bring back bad memories from your past and learn to control those memories,” he explains in the film.
Growing up in Daegu, South Korea, Suga taught himself how to rap and produce long before he dreamed of becoming a K-pop idol. As a teen, he would practice sampling by making beats from the instrumental scores of Ryuichi Sakamoto, the famed composer and Yellow Magic Orchestra member who died in March at the age of 71. D-DAY marks a full-circle moment for Suga, who was able to meet and collaborate with his music hero on the album cut “Snooze,” which also features Korean indie rock singer Woosung of The Rose.
Road to D-DAY captures Suga and Sakamoto’s first meeting, in which they discuss their motivations for music-making and take turns playing each other Sakamoto’s “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” on the piano. The delicate piano chords of that classic song and Sakamoto’s string scoring style were Suga’s inspirations while making “Snooze,” a moving trip-hop song that is dedicated to all the emerging artists who were inspired to create because of BTS, he tells Sakamoto in the documentary. “I wanted this song to give them some strength. ‘I know it’s hard, but it’ll be okay […] I’ll catch you if you’re afraid to fall,’” he explains. It’s a masterful example of Suga’s ability to offer words of solace to his listeners, as he does on “Life Goes On,” BTS’ Billboard No. 1 hit song that he reinterprets into alternative hip-hop on D-DAY.
Suga joined Big Hit Entertainment in 2010 under the belief that he wouldn’t have to learn complex choreography. Now, through his years in BTS, he’s become a well-rounded performer, able to pull off slick dance moves, unleash fiery raps, and also play some guitar, which he’s been learning in recent years. Though he’s the first BTS member to embark on a headlining solo tour, which will kick off April 26 in North America, before heading to Asia this summer, he’s humble almost to a fault when discussing his goals for the stage. “I am just a rapper,” he says. “I worried a lot about what’s the best way for me to express myself. But I am not that terrible at playing guitar, so if I showed that to people I thought maybe they would like it.”
Ahead of the album and tour, Suga spoke to Rolling Stone about collaborating with IU and J-Hope, his production philosophy, and whether the Agust D moniker will live on.
Continue reading the full interview...
