[Weekly Idol] Jay Park

There’s been a number of Korean idol comebacks that have caught our attention recently, but one in particular has been chosen to be featured in our weekly idol segment, as you could already tell from the title! Honestly, I don’t normally stray away from the K-pop idols’ music that I listen to, but sometimes I do like to give different groups or soloists a try!

It was the YouTube channel 1theK that directed me towards Jay Park’s recent catchy song – ‘Mommae’. But that’s not where his success story begins, Jay Park (birth name: Park Jaebeom – born on 25th April 1987) was born and raised in Seattle, Washington, U.S. He showed early potential by his keen interest in dancing and music and even pushed his studies to one side in order to concentrate on his dancing talent which only grew as time went on. It was only until 2004 when he was encouraged to audition for ‘JYP Entertainment’ when his career would eventually take off.

After years of training to prepare for his debut in the group ‘2pm’ in which he took the position as the leader, they finally came into the spotlight with their debut song ’10 out of 10′ in 2008. However, despite the two years of success with 2pm, a scandal was emerged from Jay Park’s online comments that had effectively thrown a cureball at his K-pop career, thus seemingly damaging it beyond repair as he was removed from the group ‘2pm’. Although the circumstances were severe and was enough to ruin an artist’s reputation, Jay Park did not remain in exile as in 2010, he made his reappearance into the music industry by posting covers onto YouTube where he seemed to regain his reputation back.

He found himself being accepted back as he signed with SidusHQ and redeemed himself by gaining more success than he could have possibly imagined, which led an impressive amount of collaborations with a number of leading artists in the Korean music industry. With hard work and determination, it could be said that he gained his place where he is today, all the awards he had been given and the recognition from both South Korea and on a international basis.

Jay Park co-founded his own company in 2013 which was launched as ‘AOMG’, an independent Korean which houses artists like Loco, Gray, Ugly Duck and more! ‘AOMG’ had their first US Concert Tour in 2014 showing the kinds of support they have gained although being an independent company. This year in 2015 shows to be an exciting time for Jay Park with promoting his English song ‘Sex Trip’ along with additional song releases such as recent hit ‘Mommae’ and not to forget his upcoming position as a judge in the popular hip-hop show ‘Show Me The Money 4’