D-DAY

The record

D-DAY is the full-length album SUGA released under the name Agust D on 21 April 2023. It carries ten tracks and is led by ‘Haegeum’, and the album introduction on Bugs names ‘People Pt.2’, with IU, as its pre-release. The same text says the record completes a trilogy that runs from Agust D through D-2, holds ten hip-hop songs and takes liberation as its subject.

IZM’s Lee Hong-hyeon wrote that SUGA had put out two mixtapes before this and that D-DAY is his first full-length album. Rolling Stone’s Maura Johnston placed it the same way, as the third Agust D release, and wrote that “the first to be classified as a proper album, D-DAY is a tight 10-track collection that lyrically and musically probes the concept of freedom — what it means, whether it’s a blessing or a curse”.

Reviews

IZM’s Lee Hong-hyeon wrote that “the writing is full, with keen study of hip-hop and a contemporary ear added to it”. He wrote that “the tracks, running from the drill of the moment through easy R&B to weighty boom bap, all guarantee a finish above a certain line”, and of the lyrics that “like the sharp question of the deep, sunken boom-bap track ‘Polar Night’, his conscious streak is keen, but it comes from a kindness that does not claw at anyone”. His review closes: “Attempts and results only he could arrive at — like ‘Snooze’, where he worked with the late Japanese film-music master Ryuichi Sakamoto to finish an old-fashioned beat — mark out the singular place he stands in on today’s K-pop scene.”

Idology (아이돌로지) carried Erin’s piece in ‘Monthly’, its round-up of that month’s releases. She wrote that this last part of the trilogy keeps its continuity with what came before through the title track ‘Haegeum’, while as a whole it carries far more ease than its predecessor, and that “on ‘People Pt.2’, ‘Life goes on’ and ‘Snooze’ he is calm, as though patting himself on the back”. She read the record as a log of how thought and attitude change with time, holding that shift of gaze plainly.

NME’s Rhian Daly gave the record five stars out of five. She wrote that “the backbone of ‘D-DAY’ is the idea of liberation, and this record finds him largely moving on from those old, barbed emotions, setting himself free and stepping fully into the role of a wise social commentator and — at times — protector”. Her review closes: “A rich and varied album that courses from atmospheric instrumentals (‘Interlude : Dawn’) to the smooth groove of ‘SDL’, on ‘D-DAY’ Agust D is an unstoppable, thought-provoking force, wrapping up his trilogy in peak form.”

Billboard placed the record eighth on its 25 best K-pop albums of 2023. The entry, signed J.B., says that “in the third project under his Agust D moniker, Suga delves into his most personal reflections on record, exploring loneliness, freedom and letting go of the past”.

Among the tracks

The music video for the title track ‘Haegeum’ was uploaded to the HYBE LABELS channel on the day of release. IZM’s Lee wrote that the song “carries on the afterimage of ‘Daechwita’, using the traditional Korean instrument the haegeum while preaching about freedom and licence — a song of 해금 (haegeum), the undoing of the social chains and constraints that bind people”. Johnston wrote: “Take the double-entendre title of the thundering ‘Haegeum,’ which wraps around a drone from the two-stringed traditional Korean instrument of the same name.” NME’s Daly noted that the title refers both to the string instrument that weaves through the track and to the Korean word for liberation.

Every one of the five outlets stops at ‘Snooze’. Johnston wrote that “the smoldering ‘Snooze’ has a simple yet affecting piano line by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto at its heart, and the contrast of Agust D’s intensity with the soothing chorus intoned by WOOSUNG gives it extra gravity”. Idology’s Erin wrote that “‘Snooze’ is where his change shows most of all: from a single-minded attitude fixed on his own goal, he turns his eyes outward, looks back at other people and carries a message of encouragement”.

Of ‘SDL’, Johnston wrote that it “is a sun-dappled Song of the Summer candidate, its guitar filigrees and snatches of organ evoking long days with not a lot on the agenda”. Of ‘HUH?!’, which features j-hope, the same review says the darkly hued aesthetics of trap-pop and emo-rap power it along with ‘AMYGDALA’.

What came after

The first two parts of the Agust D trilogy are Agust D of 16 August 2016 and D-2 of 22 May 2020.