Traveling has been a really big part of my upbringing and I've been fortunate enough to travel for different reasons. I'd like to think that it has had an impact on my character and personality, which ultimately affects my music.
I look like a 'Sesame Street' character in real life when I wake up. But not like the cute ones, like kind of like the ones that look a little rough around the edges.
Even throughout college and post-college, I've always been incredibly hyperactive. Even at Boston College, I was involved in so many different organizations and initiatives.
In a way, I'm overly ambitious, selfish in a way. I think because I am so active, I think that's what keeps my brain going and I can bounce things off of each other.
I love BTS, they're my friends.
The coolest thing for me now is when I'm in the States and I meet other Asian-Americans who are like, 'Dude, thank you so much for doing what you do. I love your music, I love whatever. But whatever you do, we're gonna support you because there aren't many Asian faces doing music.'
We recognize that there have been acts in the past that are Asian or Korean who tried to go, 'Hey, I'm a huge star in Korea, I'm a huge star in Asia so you guys need to respect me for being a huge star there.' But I don't know. As much as we may be big, we have to be very humble and start from the ground up in the States.
I think representation is something that's absolutely needed. I felt like with K-pop being so hot, we could leverage that to potentially do something bigger with music in the States that people could latch onto.
Korean, yes, I am now fluent in Korean. I was not always. When I got to Korea, I was constantly put on TV shows not knowing what was going on. So that forced me to learn Korean so I could stop looking like an idiot.
I'm active on social media because that's such a big reason why K-pop and Korean music performs the way it does.
For the first four or five years I was in Korea, I took a lot of direction from my management and label in terms of what people want. I found myself trying to fit into that thing I never felt comfortable with because the critique I got was that I was too American, and too sophisticated and polished in terms of my musicality and it won't sell.
Being a hungry artist, you don't have the luxury of buying whatever you want. There were years of me doing a lot of odd jobs, this and that just to make ends meet.
There was a point when dancing to music became cheesy after the boy band era of NSync and Backstreet Boys, but there were always those who craved that kind of visual satisfaction. K-Pop really filled that void, because it's so geared to spectacle.
People around me tell me that I need a bigger persona and to act a little more A-listy because 'that's where you are but you don't act that way, so people undervalue you.' But that's not me.
A lot of my peers, be seniors or juniors, they'll text me or they'll call me and they'll say, 'Thank you for doing the music that you do because it pushes the genre forward in different ways.' It's a very rewarding thing to hear.
Typically in Korea when I perform I have a full band, a ten-piece band, and that's a completely different monster in itself to prepare and rehearse.
I've always been very passionate about trying to have Asian-Americans or Asian faces be more prominent in mainstream media.
It's so wild to be able to say that I can do shows in front of thousands of people and have them sing my songs in Korean and in English - that is wild to me.
One of my first interviews was Robert Downey Jr. for 'Iron Man.'
It's become hard for me to trust people and though I'm the type to go, 'everybody is born good,' you come to question that.
