Back in 2016, the world got a taste of Agust D, the alter ego of Min Yoongi, a.k.a. Suga of BTS. With his first mixtape—properly named Agust D—he dove into the topics of fame and mental health. Now the year is 2020, and Agust D has made a triumphant return to the music world with D-2.
Agust D Returns
As stated at the beginning, Suga’s second mixtape marks the return of his alter ego, Agust D. When he dropped his first mixtape, he gave fans a peek into his feelings and used his tracks to separate himself from “Suga of BTS” for a little while. With this persona, Suga is allowed to be more open and honest with his words and thoughts. He gives a chance to understand his perspective of life and lets listeners know that everything will be okay eventually.
Agust D served as a way for Suga to be more open and honest than ever before; he hit back at those who he said wanted to see him fail, but also revealed that he struggled with his mental health when coming to terms with being an idol in the mainstream industry.
With D-2, he lets us see what’s going on in his head at the current moment. In these new songs, he reflects on life as an idol, how he feels at this point in time, and reflects on moving away from his past regrets.
The lead single, “Daechwita,” describes his rise to fame, once again calling out the haters who thought he wouldn’t make it big. The song’s accompanying music video also depicts the topic of power; it shows Suga and a group of friends rallying together to take down a corrupt king.
Suga also collaborated with several artists for songs on the 10-track mixtape, including MAX (“Burn It”), Kim Jong-wan from K-Rock group Nell (“Dear my friend”) and fellow BTS rapper RM (“Strange”).
Suga and Big Hit Teased Fans About This Comeback
For the last week or so, hints about D-2 dropping hit the internet pretty much out of nowhere. And being that I have Big Hit Entertainment’s notifications on over on Twitter, I’m notified pretty quickly if something happens.
On May 16, the company’s official Twitter account tweeted a blurry photo with the caption “D-7,” and only that. Since there was no other context, everyone was confused to say the least.
Some speculated that it could have been a countdown for BTS’s annual Festa anniversary event.
However, when it comes to their Festa events, the announcements come from the @bts_bighit account, so it couldn’t have been Festa.
Others also thought that the countdown was for a new, solo mixtape from one of the group’s members, but the only question remaining was which one would it be?
As the countdown went on and became clearer, speculations narrowed it down to three members: Suga, V and Jungkook. Each of them teased releasing some sort of solo work in the future, which made the countdown mystery even harder to solve.
Suga recently talked about his second mixtape while live-streaming a few days ago, but said it was not completed. On the other hand, J-Hope made a similar statement two weeks before his mixtape Hope World released back in 2018, so I knew not to trust him 100 percent.
D-2 Turns Into D-Day
You would think that with Thursday being D-2 of the countdown, it would make sense for whatever was dropping to be released on Saturday, right? Well, not necessarily.
D-2 dropped at 2AM PST on Friday morning, which surprised many, but it was exactly what Suga wanted to do. In an interview with Billboard, he explained that he came up with the idea to do the promotions himself. He did not want to just name the work Agust D 2, nor release it on a set release day, but wanted to “surprise the people who were waiting for it to drop on D-DAY.”
I feel like his way of going about the release of his mixtape definitely kept fans on their toes since no one knew what would happen. At the same time, it was also a nice gift to receive while BTS’s tour remains postponed for the time being.
So thank you Suga for, once again, allowing us into the world and mind of Agust D. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to listen to D-2 on repeat for the rest of the weekend.
Check out the music video for “Daechwita” below!
