K-Pop News: J-Hope Drops First Solo Album 'Hope World' and First Music Video for Single 'Daydream'
J-Hope of Bangtan Boys (BTS) releases his first solo music video for his new single "Daydream," and the fans can't handle it.
BTS has been enjoying worldwide fame in the past few months after it first performed at the American Music Awards. While the boy band currently does not have any new promotion as a group, its third rapper and lead dancer is going solo in the meantime.
J-Hope recently released his seven-track mixtape, which has been quietly working on in the past year. "The team always comes first, so I focused on our projects as BTS and tried to make time in the hotel room, on the airplane, and whenever I could find a few minutes," he said in an interview with Time Magazine.
The new album, "Hope World," was digitally released without much promotion on Thursday, March 1. It does not need marketing anyway. BTS' loyal fan base, called ARMY, did all the promotion after the album reveal.
Fans took to downloading the album in every possible way, making sure J-Hope made it to all the charts. According to his agency BigHIt Entertainment, the album charted on iTunes in 60 countries just hours after its release.
The ARMY also knows how to strategize. "Hope World" was released in the U.S. on Thursday, the last day the chart tallies rankings for music download. Knowing this, BTS fans around the world alerted each other on social media not to download the mixtape just yet and wait until the midnight of Friday, when Billboard's seven-day cycle begins.
BigHit dropped the music video for his first solo single "Daydream" also last Thursday. According to J-Hope, the track symbolizes all the dreams lined up in his head but could not do because of his top celebrity status.
"I wanted to show that behind this public figure is an ordinary guy named Jung Ho-seok," he said of the vibrant single. "I thought expressing this topic in the wrong way might make it way too heavy, so I wanted to put it to something bouncy and fun."
The music video was of course a big hit with fans, who have viewed it at least 15 million times in the past two days.
