Hope World

The record

Hope World is the first record j-hope released under his own name, out on 2 March 2018 with seven tracks. The music video for ‘Daydream (백일몽)’ went up on the HYBE LABELS channel on 1 March 2018, the day before.

IZM treated the record as a mixtape. Its closing track, ‘Blue Side (Outro)’, came out again three years later as a single of its own, Blue Side, on 2 March 2021.

Reviews

IZM’s Kim Do-heon reviewed the record at release. Opening on the title track’s lyric, he wrote that a mixtape that sets out on brisk electro funk of that kind holds no burden and no greed, but a plainness and a good beginning.

Writing about its range, the same review said that an album taking in trap beats, future bass, EDM, funk and wonky carries on the world BTS had been widening, and that the strongly genre-marked shape of the group’s early years still sits faintly in a few tracks, among them ‘Base Line’ and ‘항상 (HANGSANG)’.

Among the tracks

IZM marked two songs as its picks: the opening ‘Hope World’ and ‘Daydream (백일몽)’. Kim Do-heon wrote that ‘Daydream (백일몽)’, which unfolds his expectations for the future he has been drawing and a modest state of mind, is with the opener the single that most defines j-hope. He read the song as holding a languid rap that sets out its ideals quietly, standing against the brightness of the opener’s hook, and so showing an attitude both serious and pliable.

Of ‘Airplane’, the same review noted that the voices of the other BTS members can be heard on it, and read it as a track about how he grew and what he means to do next. Supreme Boi features on ‘항상 (HANGSANG)’.