DARK&WILD

The record

DARK&WILD is BTS’s first full-length album, released on 20 August 2014 with fourteen tracks. The title track is ‘Danger’. BIGHIT MUSIC’s album introduction on Bugs calls it the group’s first full-length record, arriving one year and two months after the debut, and says it sets out the group’s musical direction by carrying a great many tracks built on the genre habits of hip-hop — Southern and West Coast, boom bap and trap. The same text presents the record as the story that follows the confession shouted on the title track of Skool Luv Affair: love that does not go the way it was meant to.

Reviews

weiv put the record first among four new releases in ‘weekly weiv’ on 28 August 2014. Choi Seong-uk gave it 8/10 and wrote that it “has the look of a record thought hard about, one that means to be a finished hip-hop album without letting go of what reaches a wide audience”, closing that “the album holds together as a whole”. Block gave it 7/10 and wrote that “for a full-length album put out this quickly, the sense that they have grown in craft is one that makes you sit up”.

Idology (아이돌로지) carried the record the same day, in its 1st Listen for the middle of August 2014. Yu Je-sang wrote that these songs “are enjoyable the way a game is, and make you look forward to the next stage the way a game does”, and closed by calling it “a good album whose richness, in how many songs there are and in how good they are, will level them up”.

Among the tracks

‘Danger’ is the song with a music video here, and the official channel’s upload is dated 19 August 2014, the day before release. The album introduction describes it as hybrid hip-hop joining a club-tune groove of the early 2000s to punk-rock guitar, played by Grecco Buratto, the guitarist in Shakira’s live band, and recorded in the United States.

‘Let Me Know’ is the track the same text names as Suga’s own song, from the vocal direction through to the production. ‘Look Here’ is introduced as a song made with Jinbo and the beatmaker 250, and ‘War of Hormone’ carries scratching by DJ Snatch, from the crew Rap Monster worked with in his underground days. ‘2nd Grade’ is the group’s first attempt at electro trap according to the introduction, and its lyric calls the members, then in their second year, second-graders of the pop industry.

Numbers

The label’s own distribution metadata prints the record as DARK&WILD, dated 20 August 2014. The English song titles come from the same place: ‘호르몬 전쟁’ is War of Hormone, ‘힙합성애자’ is Hip Hop Phile, ‘핸드폰 좀 꺼줄래’ is Could You Turn off Your Cell Phone, ‘이불킥’ is Embarrassed, ‘여기 봐’ is Look Here, ‘2학년’ is 2nd Grade and ‘그게 말이 돼?’ is Do You Think It Makes Sense?. The Idology column that carried the record covers new releases from 11 to 20 August 2014, and sixteen acts’ records in all.

What came after

What followed the first full-length album was 화양연화 pt.1 (The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Pt. 1), the opening of the sequence about youth that runs on through 화양연화 pt.2 (The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Part 2) and 화양연화 Young Forever (The Most Beautiful Moment in Life: Young Forever).