mino for esquire, november 2019

2019. 10. 25. 09:45

" the beautiful poem of song min ho, the energy bottled in <cross> "

< Fulfilling a dream may not be a final stop, but rather the start of something else. Song Min Ho still has many things he wants to do, and many things he wants to show. So he reads poetry, and he writes raps. That’s how he begins.>

 

esquire. As I watched your photoshoot, I noticed that you had an energy that can only be owned by someone who performs on stage. It’s as though you make people focus by sucking in all the air in the room as soon as the shoot begins. It felt like you became the main character, and displayed a kind of confidence that can only be exuded by someone on stage.

mino. It makes me feel really good to hear that. (Laughs) I mean at the end of the day, I have a job where I display my talents on a stage, so even when I’m in the studio I’m used to moving around freely. Actually, back when I was a rookie, I would freeze up during photoshoots because I was so nervous, or I would think too much so I would strain my body, but now I think I know how to give my body up to the atmosphere. If you think about it and pose, you have no choice but to be unnatural. If I just remember the mood and focus on the situation at hand, I think I end up coming up with poses and gazes that I never even thought about.

 

esq. WINNER’s new mini-album is set to be released on October 23rd. What kind of meaning does [<CROSS>] hold?

mn. There are several different meanings. First, one of the visual concepts that we had was a prism. We felt that the way the light which stems from the prism splits off into different lines and displays a multitude of colors really fit with this album. Then, to express that meaning in a more complicated way, the poster had four rays of light, and four hands of the members. And with the title track of the album, as well as the other songs, there’s a crossover of a variety of different genres, so we wanted it to hold that kind of meaning too.

 

esq. Including the mini-album you guys released this past May, it seems like the songs WINNER releases tend to be bright and cheerful. But looking at the poster for this upcoming release and its overall mood, I can sense a slightly different vibe, something more serious.

mn. We had a heavier concept with a clear message in mind from the very beginning stages of the album preparation. Of course, I don’t mean throwing out a message from us that not only the fans but the general public, wouldn’t look forward to. I mean more in terms of musical detail, and in trying new things with our voices or instrument sources in order to show a different side of us than what our previous music has shown. In that sense, I think there will be a lot of fun in listening to the album.  

 

esq. Every time you’ve released an album, the title track has hit #1 on all kinds of music charts. This is obviously a happy situation, but you must also worry and be wary about charting #1 whenever you’re about to release new music.

mn. Honestly, it’s true, it’s pressuring every time. I worry about this whenever we announce a new song. Of course, hitting #1 is such an amazing thing, something to be thankful for. But it also doesn’t mean that songs that don’t hit #1 are any less of a good song. I don’t believe that it can be possible to measure the value of a song based on rankings and rankings alone. But I do see hitting #1 as a sign that we have satisfied a larger number of people and continue to have the possibility of doing so, and in that respect, I think it’s a good thing. Lately, ballad tracks have been putting up a good fight on the charts, but at the same time, we’re not a group that usually sings ballads. So we had to put a lot of thought into what kind of album to create and how to maintain that WINNER-like color while satisfying the general public. Either way, from our perspective, we believe that we’ve created a satisfying album. So if anything, we have a bigger wish than ever for many people to listen to the album and enjoy it.

 

esq. It seems like you put in quite a significant amount of time working on music every day.

mn. It’s hard to say how many hours on average I work on music every day, but if I have the time, I stay in the studio out of a sense of obligation. I had a separate workspace, but now I’ve turned a room in the house into a studio. I do proper recordings at the [company] studio, but the overall sketch of a song happens [at home]. Eventually, on days where I had nothing in particular to do, I would go into that room as soon as I opened my eyes, or listened to some music, or would just try to do something. If I feel unsatisfied with the music I’m working on, I try to read, I look stuff up — whatever it may be, I just tend to stay in my studio.

 

esq. Do you tend to lend a lot of your opinions on matters besides the music, such as concepts and cover arts?

mn. I do get very involved, and the other WINNER members and I usually participate in the meetings with the general staff too. Because in the end, it’s our album, it’s our face, and it’s our career. So ultimately, it’s also important that we like it. The members all have a talent in sensibility, so searching for the best is a process that’s a lot of fun in itself. And when we receive good results, it feels all the more fulfilling.

 

esq. Besides other songs, what inspires you when you’re working on music?

mn. To be honest, I’m not really the type to enjoy reading. My life consists of a lot of different schedules and requires splitting up the time, so if I try to read a work of fiction, I find myself constantly getting cut off and losing the flow. I also have a tendency to get confused by the story or the characters, so they don’t read very well for me and I don’t find myself reaching for them very often. But I love books of poetry. From the perspective of someone who writes rap verses that center around a message, I feel that the implied expressions of poetry are a lot of fun.

 

esq. I’m curious who your favorite poet is.

mn. I actually have many favorite poems, but I’ve been reading a lot of Na Tae Ju’s poems recently. I love the way he makes you open up your mind with his implicit sentences.  

 

esq. Does reading poetry help your process of making rap verses?

mn. Absolutely. I have fun with metaphorical expressions, and that’s what poetry is. I feel incredibly moved when I read a poem that can give me that sense of fun and excitement. It also gives me that much inspiration. Writing rap lyrics is about working to melt a message into a short verse, so the shorter it is, the more difficult it can be. In that sense, I receive a lot of inspiration.

 

esq. I would assume that there’s a difference in the way you write for WINNER versus writing for yourself.

mn. When I’m writing lyrics for a rap as a rapper, of course, I would write a lot about my own story. But when I’m writing lyrics for a song that’s for WINNER as a team, I try to choose words that more people will be able to relate to. You could say that I use expressions that immediately strike you, rather than ones that are twisted around once. And because sometimes, I’m writing not only the lyrics for the rap but for the song itself, there’s a ton of things to consider. There are certain pronunciations that fit with better specific melodies and vocal ranges and in that aspect, it can be incredibly difficult. But as challenging as it may be, when I’ve successfully accomplished it, there’s a sense of euphoria.

 

esq. Last November, you released your first solo album and you worked as Song Min Ho not through WINNER, but on your own. I’ve been told it can feel quite lonely doing solo promotions when you’ve been working as a group.

mn. It’s true. I really felt the vacancy of the members during my solo promotions. It also felt like being alone led me to think too much.

 

esq. I personally really like ‘BOW-WOW’, which features YDG, from your solo album. It was also a pleasant surprise to hear its hook, which reinterprets the chorus of ‘Classroom Idea’ by Seo Taiji and the Boys. I’m curious about what your favorite song is off of the solo album.

mn. I like ‘BOW-WOW’ too. YDG-hyung was also my favorite rapper on the South Korean rap scene, so it was a wish of mine to have him feature in my song, and I was really so happy. And to be honest with you, every single song on the solo album is very dear to me, but the song that had me the most immersed in the lyric-writing process is the last song, ‘ALARM’. I can’t help but like it because it’s a personal song about a rough time in my life. I also worked on ‘LONELY’ for around three years, but I didn’t want to waste it so I switched up the verse and completely arranged it. And I re-recorded it. But I was really satisfied by the outcome because it was trendier than I had initially thought. That’s why I like that one.

 

esq. The worldwide trend with hip-hop albums lately seems to be to mobilize a dazzling group of features, so it was unexpected when you only had featurings on three of the songs.

mn. I didn’t plan it that way. I just sort of started to work on the album, isolated in the studio. I ended up making the verses, the entire flow of the song, and even on the guides, and what I recorded as I was working and improving on these guides naturally ended up becoming the songs. It wasn’t until later on that I thought, ‘Did I not think about the features? Should I have included more?’ But this is my first solo album after all, so I thought to have my voice be heard more would be better.  

 

esq. Did you feel different when you returned to promoting with WINNER after your solo activities concluded?

mn. I felt a lot more responsibility. I also felt the importance of the members, and especially a renewed realization about how precious the fans are. So I think I had an even more grateful heart as I promoted. I’m working hard on having my new solo album show an even bigger self-improvement and progress than before. Our job requires us to swiftly absorb new things, so I suppose when you try to quickly adjust in a musical sense, you become that much more mature.

 

esq. I hear that along with the new album, you will be having two rounds of concerts in Seoul before embarking on an Asian tour. Do you ever experience renewed, yet strange moments of feeling that you’re this person who’s receiving love from so many fans from not just within Korea but all around the world?

mn. To be honest, I don’t feel it on the regular, but I do sometimes have surprising experiences when I go abroad. Or when I upload a photo on social media without thinking too much about it and it becomes a hot topic somewhere overseas — that’s when I feel, all over again, that I’m truly, widely, receiving love. But we’ve always felt apologetic to the fans for not doing too many activities within Korea, so we wanted to promote in Korea all the more. The members are also focusing a lot on this upcoming concert.

 

esq. I would guess that at this point, you must feel a certain kind of familiarity with the stage. But do you still experience any sort of nervousness before you go up, or excitement when you’re on it, or a lingering afterglow once you’ve come down from the stage?

mn. My condition on that day is important. If my condition isn’t good, I drink coffee or an energy drink to forcefully bring myself up. On days when I feel in sync, those are when I have the most fun. It’s sort of like, I’m somewhat tired and not in the best condition, but I feel a flow of endorphins because I’m on the same wavelength as the stage. But of course, there’s no way of knowing when those days are going to come.

 

esq. I suppose you can say that maintaining a perfect stage, regardless of your condition, is the most professional thing you can do. In that sense, reducing mistakes is key, but it’s even more important to not agonize over them.

mn. I think that it is possible to make mistakes on the stage. But you need experience in order to recover from these slips, and to handle them with sensibility or flexibility. I think, ultimately, it’s a mental battle. I believe that if you’re at a point where, with practice, you’ve memorized the lyrics to a certain extent, you become vulnerable to making a mistake the moment your focus wavers. So in my opinion, focusing as much as you can is the most important thing.

 

esq. Haruki Murakmi once said something along the lines of, “To become a celebrity means to be praised, or to be condemned, for no particular reason.” As a celebrity, as someone who receives loud cheers on stage but also reads the hate-comments directed at them, I wonder how you feel about this quote.

mn. I agree with it, and I think it really hits home. I do believe that the mistakes I make require criticism and self-reflection, but I also sometimes have moments where I feel that I’m receiving an unnecessary amount of hate. But when I feel that it’s a hateful comment that doesn’t have proper reasoning behind it, I tend not to pay any mind, nor do I tend to get hurt over it. Of course, in the beginning, it was difficult; but I think I’ve become a bit more numb to it all. Besides, what matters more than anything else is to give back to the fans who do like me.

 

esq. In that vein, I think it’s a really great thing to have friends like Zico and P.O. — childhood friends who you dreamed with from a young age before progressing and being able to share a lot of different things. Meeting many people and creating new relationships is an exciting endeavor too, but just having someone who knows me well and cares for me is precious in and of itself.

mn. I feel more and more as though I just meet with the people I meet. That’s just how it happens. I used to like meeting new people, but I’m slowly feeling more and more comfortable with not putting myself out there like that. Still, I have a lot of great people around me. I do believe that I’ve been truly blessed with relationships—it’s my good fortune.

 

esq. Having a good person in your life must mean that you are a good person in their life. Good relationships like that, perhaps, can allow you to look back at what kind of person you are.

mn. I often ask my friends what kind of person they think I am. I think I know a lot about the people around me, but there are moments when I feel like I don’t know much about myself.

 

esq. Don’t you feel like you face who you are when you write lyrics or make music?

mn. There was a song that left me with no choice but to delve deeply into who I was. On one hand, I approached myself in an honest way, but on the other hand, I felt confused about whether or not this was truly who I was. It was difficult, but I did end up writing it somehow. Nowadays, when I look deeply into myself to write songs like that, I sometimes feel like I’ve lost my way. I wonder if I’ve kept myself hidden without me even knowing, or I feel skeptical about if I’m living my life wearing a mask, but I think it’s in these kinds of processes where I feel a greater sense of curiosity about myself. I’ve come to realize that I need to look into myself a bit more.

 

esq. You’re shooting today wearing Louis Vuitton. In June of this year, you appeared as a model on the Louis Vuitton men's collection runway in Paris, and this gathered a lot of interest and attention. I bet this was an extremely exciting experience for you too, maybe something you never even thought could happen until you were given the offer.

mn. You’re right, it was something I never thought about. So when I received the request, I was so happy but it was all hard to believe. Even when I was in Paris, the day before the show, I still couldn’t believe it. Even up until the moment I met Virgil Abloh. And when I finally stood on that runway, it was fascinating. It felt like a dream, like I was mindless in this strange kind of fantasy? When I got off the runway I was so dumbfounded, like, Where did I just walk through?’

 

esq. Rather than a stage where you’re performing and being cheered, you were receiving attention on the runway of a fashion show where it is calm and refined. It must’ve felt different.

mn. Yes, it was completely different. I’m used to being focused on so I wasn’t really nervous in that sense, but I had to focus on different things than what I would normally pay attention to before going up on stage. The first being that I’m not the main character, but rather the clothes that are representing the new seasonal concept of the brand. And a model walking on the runway is being photographed from the front, so they need to care about and walk in a way where the clothes will come out well in the picture. I have no experience in that at all, so it was interesting in many different ways, and a point that I really had to pay attention to.  

 

esq. Do you like to actively enjoy new experiences?

mn. I don’t hesitate to experience them. My philosophy is that I must try experiences that will bring excitement. Only when I do that and witness the result do I feel a sense of relief. So if there’s anyone who wants to pursue this job, I want to tell them that whatever it may be, they just need to give it a shot. They must.

 

esq. Starting from October 25, <New Journey To The West 7> will be airing. I can only imagine that the <NJTTW> members feel just as close to you as the WINNER members do.

mn. At this point, the members know each other so well, and it feels like we’re a family. It doesn’t feel like we’re filming and working, but more as though we’re going somewhere just to have fun, or to take time to heal.

 

esq. You must have a completely different level of noticeability now than you did when you were just promoting with WINNER. In a more direct sense, for example, people of an older age group recognize you more?

mn. Yes. Before this, it was a younger crowd, teens, and people in their 20s. But after I appeared on <NJTTW>, many elders began to recognize me. If I go to the market, there’s a lot of people who say, “I’ve seen you a lot somewhere… That’s right, with Ho Dong, on that show.” It was nerve-racking to be on the same television program as Ho Dong-hyung or Su Geun-hyung, because I had grown up watching them ever since I was a kid. Ultimately it became a good opportunity for me, one that I can include when I count my opportunities of a lifetime on the fingers of one hand.

 

esq. If anything, you must have a sense of respect for them now knowing that they’ve consistently been on television programs from when you were a kid until today.

mn. Definitely. There are people who you think have better stamina than we do, but they’re actually getting through it with just their mental strength. Like a professional, they never show that they’re tired, and they unyieldingly continue broadcasting. They constantly have to adapt to the flow of the current trend of the moment, and continuously try to improve themselves. That’s so admirable.

 

esq. Through <NJTTW> and <Kang’s Kitchen>, you showed us your incredible drawing skills. I don’t think you separately learned art, though.

mn. I’ve always liked doodling since I was a kid, but when I felt like I had a talent for it, I thought about pursuing it in a genuine way. I felt the fun of it, too. Nowadays, if you don’t know something, you just need to look it up on Youtube. You have to try it out like that to find your style and to learn about a system personalized to you, and there’s a kind of fun in that. Occasionally, I have friends who ask what they need to do if they want to learn how to draw, and I tell them to buy some paint and a canvas and just draw. That’s how you learn.

 

esq. Is there a certain kind of contentment that can only be earned through music, and only earned through drawing?  

mn. They may all be mediums that express who I am, but in my opinion, drawing is the most liberating, freeing way of doing it. I usually like to draw when I feel as though I’m thinking too much or if I want to take a break from my thoughts. It’s a lot of fun—it feels like I’ve stopped thinking and I’m drawing out something like a projection of myself.

 

esq. In a past show you were on, you participated in a live-drawing show with artist Kim Jung Gi to draw the highlights of your life. One of the first things you drew was of you recording a rap verse with your friends from the 6th grade. I guess you dreamed about becoming a rapper from a young age.

mn. I wasn’t at the age where I could flesh out my dreams in detail, but I liked rap ever since I was young. I just wanted to do it. And so I tried to continue to do it. But it’s not like I really knew anything, and I didn’t have any money so I didn’t own any sort of equipment, but I would record it however and listen to it, let my friends listen to it, and progressed from there.

 

esq. That must also be how you lived as a trainee, but in reality, isn’t the trainee period a time of confusion and being in the dark? You can’t guarantee that you will debut. Back then, had you ever pondered about what you would actually do if weren’t able to debut?

mn. I have those thoughts frequently even now. If I wasn’t able to work like this, as WINNER, what would I be doing now instead? If I hadn’t chosen this, what result would I have been met with? Thoughts like that. I think I’ve been having them especially more nowadays. But whatever may have happened, I have a feeling I would be rapping. If you like it you just have to do it, you know? Anyway, I suppose that I’m in a season of getting to know myself more. Couldn’t this turn out to be a time when I’m preparing to grow and go up another level? I can’t help but think this is a really necessary time for me.

 

esq. You’ve fulfilled the dreams you wished to fulfill, and within those dreams, you’ve risen to a place of incredible success where you can be proud of yourself. Couldn’t this be satisfying? Do you continue to have things you wish to actualize?

mn. My dreams turned out better than I had imagined and I’ve become a person who receives a lot of love, but I am not yet satisfied. I have a lot of desires, and I still have many things I want to do. I think I continue to crave because there is just so much I want to show. More than anything else, however, I want to do this for a long time. Be it music or whatever, I want to strike up conversations with people as someone who gives them inspiration.

 

esq. You mentioned that you read a lot of poetry. Would you ever write your own?

mn. I haven’t revealed anything yet, but I am writing, actually. I have some that I’ve already written. There’s a book that helps you approach writing poetry in an easy way, and it’s a lot more fun than I expected.

 

esq. You may appear one day as ‘Song Min Ho, poet’.

mn. Hm, wouldn’t that be incredible if I could? I’m curious too. (Laughs)

 

(link to interview article)

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