Jay Park on Tour
As the first Asian-American artist to sign with Jay-Z's Roc Nation, Jay Park seems to be everywhere: Guesting on all kinds of tracks, writing songs for artists, dropping albums at a breakneck pace, running two labels and starring on multiple TV shows. He's a genuine phenomenon in South Korea, where his b-boy persona and canny mix of K-pop and hip-hop has hit a lucrative sweet spot. As an artist, he refuses to be pigeonholed; his music has all the frothy, hook-heavy perfection of the best K-pop, but his swagger and honesty (and tattoos) make him a bit of a bad boy in that squeaky-clean music universe. A terrific dancer, Park has performed extensively throughout Asia over the years, but he undertook his first world tour as a solo artist in 2019, with the SEXY 4EVA World Tour.
Jay Park in Concert
Jay grew up in Seattle, where he fell in love with hip-hop and R&B as a kid. He cites Usher as one of his major inspirations — no surprise for a kid who was a b-boy and dancer with Seattle's Art of Movement crew. In 2004, his mother, noticing that he was much more focused on music than school, encouraged him to head to Korea to audition for the K-pop powerhouse JYP Entertainment. JYP liked what they saw and trained him for four years. By then, Park had become fairly bilingual in English and Korean, and in 2009 he took over the helm of the boy band 2PM. A year later he was forced to leave the band, but he wasted no time, uploading a cover of B.o.B.'s "Nothin' on You" (with his own lyrics) that went viral on YouTube virtually overnight. Fans in Korea were clamoring for his return, and film roles in Hype Nation and 2011's Mr. Idol led to a new chapter as a solo artist. Park began releasing EPs, and by 2012 he was writing songs for artists including U-Kiss, Tiny-G and Younha. He also released his first full-length album, New Breed, that year. He's appeared on shows including Asia's Got Talent and Saturday Night Live Korea. He was the Korean Hip-Hop Awards Artist of the Year in 2017 and 2018, and he's won a slew of Korean Music Awards as well. He's also the CEO of not one but two labels: AOMG and H1GHR Music. In 2019 he dropped his fifth full-length, The Road Less Traveled.
