G-Dragon

Who is G-Dragon?

G-Dragon is the leader and a rapper of BIGBANG, and he writes and produces songs. His solo records come out through Galaxy Corporation, with distribution by the independent label EMPIRE. The songwriting began in his debut year: on the group’s first single in 2006 he composed ‘We Belong Together’ and wrote, composed and arranged ‘This Love’. On the mini album Hot Issue the following November he composed five of the six songs and wrote and produced all of them.

The solo records

His first solo full album, Heartbreaker, came out on 18 August 2009. Its introduction presented him as the writer of ‘Lies’, ‘마지막 인사’, ‘Haru Haru’ and ‘붉은 노을’, and the album won Album of the Year at that year’s MAMA. His first mini album, One Of A Kind (September 2012), won three categories at the Korean Music Awards. Rhythmer’s Kang Il-kwon wrote that “in a local scene where few musicians can take command of an album, this is a very encouraging thing”.

His second full album, COUP D’ETAT, was released in two digital parts in September 2013 and won four awards at that year’s MAMA. The EP KWON JI YONG (8 June 2017) came out on a USB drive, and its title track ‘Untitled, 2014’ reached number one on the Circle Chart digital chart. IZM’s Son Gi-ho described the song as “his true self, standing before the music without a grain of pretence”.

‘POWER’ after seven years, and Übermensch

The single ‘POWER’ (31 October 2024) was his first solo release in more than seven years, since KWON JI YONG, and it won best rap and hip-hop song at the next Korean Music Awards. Three weeks later, on 22 November, he released ‘HOME SWEET HOME’ with Taeyang and Daesung — the first song the three had made together since BIGBANG’s Still Life in April 2022 — and the three shared a stage at the 2024 MAMA AWARDS that month.

Both songs are on his third full album, Übermensch, released on 25 February 2025 — his first full album in about eleven and a half years, since COUP D’ETAT, and named after Friedrich Nietzsche’s idea of the ideal human. The world tour of the same name opened in Goyang in March 2025, visited seventeen cities in twelve countries and, with the Gocheok encore that December, drew 825,000 people.

Away from the stage

From June 2024 to June 2026 he was a visiting professor in KAIST’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. On his appointment he said he wanted “to communicate more closely, through an AI avatar, with fans around the world whom I rarely get to meet”. In April 2025 his voice and ‘HOME SWEET HOME’ were carried into space on a KAIST small satellite. The appointment is covered in this story.

2026

From 6 to 8 February 2026 he held his first solo fan meeting at the KSPO DOME, attended by about 40,000 people over three days. There he announced: “This year BIGBANG makes its 20th-anniversary comeback. As a member and as a fan at the same time, I’m looking forward to it too.” The tour and the fan meeting are in this story, and the run of his first solo records in Heartbreaker to KWON JI YONG. On 19 April, from the Coachella stage, he told the crowd himself: “BIGBANG’s 20th-anniversary world tour begins this August.”