No matter what job or industry you're in, life is hard, but we're all going through a difficult time and the best thing we can do is pick each other up and move on together.
Eric Nam
I think one thing I wish would be a little different, and it'll take time, is yes BLACKPINK, BTS, these teams are taking over the world and they're everywhere, but I think at a certain point we need to really push for other artists as well, and really help bring them up further, for this to be a sustainable industry, a sustainable genre.
My parents, or Asian parents in general, they're like, 'You should be a doctor, a lawyer, or a banker' - all that's laid out. As a kid that's what I bought into, which is why I ended up going the corporate route initially.
Even if you look at 'American Idol,' or 'X-Factor,' or 'The Voice' or anything, it was always difficult to see an Asian or an Asian-American make it to a certain point.
One of my first interviews was Robert Downey Jr. for 'Iron Man.'
I want to position myself as a great singer/songwriter in Korea, then jump off that into different markets. South-east Asia, China, Japan - I've done nothing even though I speak four languages - English, Korean, Spanish, and a little bit of Mandarin.
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.
I think there are probably ghosts in the world. I have not seen one but I feel like I felt the presence of one. In Korea there's been a superstition that ghosts love music, so they're always in a studio or a dance-training place.
I feel like people have stereotypes and notions about Latin America that aren't necessarily accurate or aren't particularly positive. For me, Latin America is a place that I personally really love and enjoy visiting and going to, and I wanted to be able to show it in a light that was very different to an Asian, Korean viewer.
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.
I had accepted a position as a business analyst at Deloitte Consulting in New York. But before I went into that workforce, I decided to take a year off and went to India to do a social enterprise fellowship. It wasn't the best fit, but that was where a TV show in Korea found me and invited me to first come perform.
When you first make money, you're just excited that you have it and just buy things on a whim. You don't really think about the implications that taxes have, because when you owe money, all of a sudden all of the money in your account - it's gone!
It's easy to talk about how great love is or how you feel heartbroken after a breakup, but it's not as easy to talk about the process of going through the end of a relationship.
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 know people love Supreme. I never got on the wagon.
I'm grateful that the public think of me as a sweet guy, but there are times when I get worried that my behavior would disappoint the public. I'd like to show them that there are different sides of me.
No matter what you do, you should enjoy it. You should really find passion in it.
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.
Living in Korea was a big adjustment because a coffee is going to be a little more pricey than what it is in the States. Wages aren't as high either.
Coming to Korea and becoming a singer, I always had two big goals personally. One was to be able to make it at some point so that I could do good things - I was always raised with an interest in social impact, philanthropy. The other thing was to be able to take my music and do it on a global scale.
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.
I was criticized a lot when I was singing in Korean. The producers and people from my agency would point out my accent and tones, and would tell me I sound too American to fit the local market.
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.
In Korea, I'm not a K-pop artist, I'm just an artist.
Sunbae-hoobae seniority is a very tricky, weird kind of thing.
I think K-Pop is something that sucks people in because it's open. I can do pop, EDM, rock, R&B and it doesn't matter, K-Pop embraces them all.
When I first toured North America, everyone was saying that it was working because there is such as a solid Korean fan base here. The truth is, that is less than five per cent of the audience, which is mixed of all backgrounds.
I thought it would be so cool to be a musician, but I always thought it was impossible, because I would never be accepted in mainstream media. The fact that I'm able to tour North America and around the world is an incredible blessing, and I am thankful every time I do it.
In the States I might be an Asian face, look different from everyone else in TV and in music, but in Korea I look like everybody else, in Asia I look like everybody else.
I'm just looking for that one song that I know everybody's going to be like, 'Damn, that's a good song.'
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.
So the first thing I do when I get out of bed, I will check my phone real quick because I live in Korea, but my stuff is split between L.A. and Korea.
When people outside Korea think of 'K-pop,' most of them expect 'idols' with several members in a group, dancing in sync.
When I go to Korea and they say, 'Sing like a Korean person,' I can't do it. I didn't grow up with that sound.
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.'
On any collaboration, you want to respect your music and the other's music.
From a strictly business perspective, it's like, 'Even if you leave Eric alone, he'll do stuff. He puts his own album together, he gets his own gigs, he does everything on TV. Let him be, he's fine.'
You know, we never grew up with Asian American role models in the entertainment industry, unfortunately. I'd never seen an Asian face singing on TV.
I was part of the Atlanta Boy Choir probably like fourth and fifth grade. I personally didn't enjoy the type of music that we were doing. I was more into like whatever was on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon.
I love BTS, they're my friends.
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.
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.
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.
