권지용 (KWON JI YONG)권지용권지용
G-Dragon's mini album of 8 June 2017, whose offline edition came on a USB stick rather than a CD. IZM, Idology, weiv and The Singles Jukebox all wrote about it.
Kwon Ji Yong is G-Dragon’s second mini album, released on 8 June 2017 and titled with his legal name. The title track is ‘무제(無題) (Untitled, 2014)’, and the record was his first solo release since the album Coup d’Etat of 2013.
YG Entertainment’s album introduction says the record opens his thirtieth year and turns from the showy G-Dragon toward the voice of Kwon Ji-yong. The Kyunghyang Shinmun reported that the offline edition came on a USB stick rather than a CD, and Star News that Gaon Chart decided to count it on its digital and download charts rather than its album chart.
IZM took the record in its issue for June 2017, in a review by Hyun Min-hyung. He opened with a sentence about what the album strips away: “It clears off the showy dress of ‘G-Dragon’ and lays bare what the person Kwon Ji-yong is carrying inside.” Of the brand name the first track puts forward he wrote that “through the symbol ‘peace minus one’, which turns his slightly crooked attitude — different from the orthodox way of the mainstream — straight into a formula, he appeals for his own identity. An amusing metaphor.” Of ‘BULLSHIT’ that follows it, he wrote that the song folds in a sound already familiar online as a comic effect and likens the singer’s own position to a dog’s.
Idology, the Korean webzine on idol pop whose writers sign their own notes, took the record in ‘1st Listen’, its short-notice column, in the instalment for the first days of June 2017. Mimyo wrote that the wit particular to G-Dragon is not pushed to the front as it once was but is steeped through the record, which leaves the impression of a man being what he has always been rather than of a desperate bid. “In the middle of it,” Mimyo went on, “what draws attention is the dramatic, heavy, cool feeling that ‘무제’ shows,” and added that the song strikes him as “some point where both G-Dragon’s mischief and his feeling can shine.”
weiv’s Ku-won Jung chose ‘BULLSHIT’ — one of the record’s two poles — for the site’s Weekly Choice column on 17 June 2017. “What you feel inside lyrics that actively invite confusion,” he wrote, “is the conviction that the territory his unique vocal can express has reached a certain height.” He went on: “Every feeling G-Dragon has ever reached with his voice alone — swag, humour, cynicism, madness — romps freely inside ‘BULLSHIT’ and at the same time holds the others up.”
‘무제(無題) (Untitled, 2014)’, the title track, is a ballad of piano and voice and nothing else. IZM ran it separately as five writers’ short notes, and among them Kim Ban-ya wrote that “he lays his heart out so densely that even the piano’s afterglow is full of it.” The same outlet chose the song again for its October 2024 feature 2010년 이후, 우리에게 감동을 준 K팝 트랙, where Son Gi-ho wrote: “With the drum beat and the electronics gone and only a piano accompaniment left standing there, the murmured melody is, like the album title Kwon Ji Yong, the man himself standing before the music without a grain of pretence.”
The Singles Jukebox — where a panel of British and American music writers each file a note of their own on one single — covered the song on 27 June 2017. Alex Clifton wrote: “It’s just piano and vocals, and yet that’s all we need. G-Dragon’s vocals are delicate, begging for forgiveness while knowing it may be too late to save a relationship; his longing aches as he sings.”
Of the closing track ‘OUTRO. 신곡(神曲) (Divina Commedia)’, IZM’s Hyun Min-hyung wrote that “what puts the full stop on the metaphor is the last track.” Having taken Dante’s classic for its title, he wrote, G-Dragon samples Daft Punk’s ‘Veridis Quo’ to match it in musical bearing. In the tracklist at the foot of the same piece the two songs he marked as recommended are ‘Intro. 권지용’ and this one.
Circle Chart placed all five of the record’s songs inside the top 16 of its Digital Chart for week 23 of 2017 (4 to 10 June), the week of release: ‘무제(無題)’ at number one, ‘SUPER STAR’ at number four, ‘BULLSHIT’ at number six, ‘INTRO. 권지용’ at number 15 and ‘OUTRO. 신곡(神曲)’ at number 16. ‘무제(無題)’ was at number two the following week and number three the week after that.
The offline edition came on a USB stick, and Star News reported on 19 June 2017 that Gaon Chart had confirmed it would count the release on its digital and download charts rather than its album chart.
Claims in this story link to official or primary sources.
G-Dragon put out his first record, Heartbreaker, on 18 August 2009, and followed it with the mini album One Of A Kind in 2012, the full-length album COUP D'ETAT in 2013 and the mini album KWON JI YONG in 2017. Here are the four, by date, by format and by what was recorded at the time.
