Suga On The Difference Between Agust D And BTS, And Making Music During Quarantine

BTS rapper Min Yoongi, best known by his stage name Suga, dropped his second mixtape D2 on Friday, a follow up to 2016′s Agust D. He’s called it “a documentation of myself as a 28-year-old.”

Agust D is the alter ego Suga adopts for solo music he releases outside of the K-Pop band.

With D2′s release, BTS’s agency also released the music video for its title song Daechwita, named after a genre of traditional Korean military music that includes wind and percussion instruments.

The video shows Suga as both commoner and king, with cameos by BTS members Jungkook and Jin. 

Ahead of the mixtape’s release, Suga spoke to TIME magazine about the new music and the difference between Agust D and BTS.

“The difference is that there is a lot more that I can openly express and that I can show a more raw side to myself (with Agust D). What’s similar is that both sing of dreams and hope.”

D2, Suga said, was “more that I made the music I wanted to make, rather than fixating on attempting something new.”

The mixtape includes collaborations with artists MAX, NiiHWa, Kim Jong-wan and fellow BTS rapper RM.

On his Apple Music profile, Suga said the album was a result of how he spent time during the quarantine resulting from COVID-19 pandemic.

“This is the output of my time in quarantine. In a way, it was a creative silver lining. It was a time during which I was able to learn, again, the meaning of the phrase ‘due to’.”

Within minutes of its release, Daechwita and Agust D were trending worldwide on Twitter.