! G-Dragon: " My solo album was a gamble"

Read about how dedicated G-Dragon was to making his solo album truly memorable.
Kwon Ji-Yong’s solo album “Heartbreaker” saw the light of this world on August 18^th 2009, which also happened to be G-Dragon’s birthday. G-Dragon tells Asiae.co.kr that “It [the album] was actually scheduled to be out in April, but I didn’t like it. I didn’t feel like it was a piece of work that I had been looking forward to for ten years; there was just something missing. I didn’t know how long it would be until I would be able to release a solo album again..That one album was a gamble for me.”
During the preparation of his solo album, Big Bang was starting their Japanese promotions. During the months they were active in Japan, it there was nothing on G-Dragon’s schedule for even a single day, he would get on a plane and fly back to Korea to work on his album and then take another flight back to Japan at night. While the other members of Big Bang got the freedom of being able to shop and have fun without having their every move watched and followed, G-Dragon was getting very stressed looking for performance outfits:
“Writing songs, buying performance outfits and being at meetings via webcam… I think my album was the only thing I was thinking about for 24 hours a day. I wanted to make a solo album where I had contributed as much as possible. I wanted people to not just think that this album was ‘produced’ but that ‘Kwon Ji Yong made this”. I even went a little over the top about small things such as font, colour and decoration. I wanted to release an album that would seem more like a wrapped up gift, rather than just a normal, standard CD. I would like to think that people can open the case like a present and anticipate what might be inside, even if it is not expensive. I think the album designers must have thought that I was a big crazy; I would even call in the middle of the night whenever I got a new idea (laughs).”
Needless to say, G-Dragon became totally engrossed in working on his new album, explaining that “Heartbreaker is about being hurt by love. To express that my heart had been crushed, I made all the dancers wear my mask and do difference dances, the idea being that it was to show different emotions coming out of the same face.”
He experienced a lot of differences to when he was making an album with the other members of Big Bang. He had to fill in every aspect himself; this let him mature as an artist and realise just how valuable the other members and their input really were:
“I learnt so much from making my album. I met with a lot of people who specialised in different fields. It was also my turn to play the ‘cutesy’ part that Daesung and Seungri usually take responsibility for. I also had to show a serious side to the 'higher ups' however. Anyhow, I was able to mingle with a lot of different people and learn more interpersonal skills.”
When an artist releases an album, they usually put all their effort into promoting it, wanting it to catch the attention of the public. The promotion of G-Dragon’s album through newspapers and TV stations were minimal however, as YG Entertainment considers performances more important than promotions.
“I was really worried because we had barely promoted. It was about this time that I found out about something called ‘Me2day’. It’s like a blog. President Yang told me, “This is the one way we have chosen to promote. You can do your own promoting.” He’s [YG] is always like that. He’ll open the road for us bit by bit but ultimately we have to find our own way through it.
"Anyway, through Me2day, I started showing fans bit and pieces like an outfit for a music video and a strand of my newly dyed hair. I also wanted to be the first one to show them my music first before any music portal sites, so I even gave them 30 second snippets of a few songs. I kept thinking things like ‘If they check for updates before they go to bed and there has been an update, they’d be happy that they can talk about it the next day at school, right?’ I think it was a heart-fluttering period for both me and the fans.”
Thanks to G-Dragon, Me2day also got a huge boost in popularity. The site that had previously only had tens of thousands of members suddenly had hundreds of thousands. Again, G-Dragon began to garner a huge interest from many people but just as he felt like he was starting to communicate with his fans, he was accused of plagiarism. This was just one day before the release of his album.

Translation credits: sjay.x @ BBVIP.net// Source: asiae.co.kr

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