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Suga: Road To D-Day is a road movie on a global scale. The film’s journey involves more than one international flight and is composed of multiple shorter trips that took place during the last few years. Still, it qualifies as a road movie because it’s a journey—a musical journey during which BTS member Min Yoong-ki, aka Suga and AgustD, discovers new perspectives and inspiration. The Disney+ documentary follows Suga as he works on his album D-Day.
For the last decade Suga has contributed his talents to the extraordinary success enjoyed by k-pop group BTS. He loves k-pop, he says in the documentary. He loves BTS and he’s proud of what they accomplished. But Suga is also a rapper, songwriter and producer, who has always created his own music and he wants to continue doing so. The trappings of success are great, but ultimately nothing is as satisfying as making new music.
Along with his intense, energy-consuming BTS schedule, Suga has continued to create his own music. He wrote all of the songs for Agust D, which he released in 2016. It reached number three on Billboard's World Albums Chart. In 2020, he released D-2 which rose to number 11 on the US Billboard 200 and number seven on the UK Albums Chart. In 2022 he wrote, produced and appeared in the hit song That That with k-pop singer and rapper Psy. Billboard called the song one of the 25 Best K-Pop Songs of 2022.
According to the Korean Music Copyrighting Association, Suga has songwriting and production credits on over 100 songs, but that doesn’t mean writing D-Day was an easy process or that he doesn’t occasionally need to recharge and refocus.
Suga: Road To D-Day documents the struggles Suga faced during the process of creating D-Day. He loves the process of making music, but he also entertains doubts and worries that, as his 20s end, he might run out of song-inspiring dreams. Working alone and with others, he’s sometimes so frustrated by the process that he considers giving up on music. Music is consumed so fast, he says in the film. Yet the creative process can take so long.
Fortunately, his musical journey inspires him. The documentary takes him from Las Vegas to Malibu to San Francisco to Tokyo and back to Korea, not necessarily in that order. On his musical road trip he visits DJ and music producer Steve Aoki, singer and songwriter Halsey, songwriter and record producer Anderson.Paak and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.
The documentary Suga: Road to D-Day debuts the same day as the album D-Day and the music video for the single Haegeum, which is named after a traditional Korean string instrument. The music video for Haegeum is a gorgeously filmed short film of its own, with both the song and the video reminiscent of Suga’s previous hit Daechwita. In the Haegeum video one of Suga’s characters sports the same scar that one of his characters had in Daechwita and, as in that music video, there’s a battle between different versions of himself.
The D-Day album features collaborations with BTS’ bandmate J-Hope, Woosung of The Rose and Sakamoto. Suga released the first D-Day single, People Pt. 2, featuring IU, on April 7. People Pt.2 swept the No. 1 spot on the Digital Song Sales chart, World Digital Song Sales chart and Rap Digital Song Sales chart during the week ending April 22. Suga and IU previously worked together on her 2020 single Eight, which Suga co-wrote, produced and is featured on.
Suga: Road to D-Day allows viewers a look into the long—and often difficult—but ultimately rewarding process of making music.
Suga: Road to D-Day is available to stream on Weverse and Disney Plus.
