#I asked him what edm artists he likes and he couldn’t name any and the. doubled down on the ‘no you’re holding out on me you def like rock’

[raeathnos]

.

[ikleesfiction]

I'm a fucking alcoholic (with a sweet tooth)

Fandom : Chicago PD TV Word count : 1,623 words Pairing : Jay Halstead x reader Author's note : This is the third one shot of "Will you follow through if I fall for you" fic continuation. It would be better if you read it first. But if you don't, here's the quick summary. Warning : It's fluff. I hope it doesn't end up too cringy?

Disclaimer

◢◤

It is a cold Friday in Chicago. You would say it is super cold since you worked in the warm weather of Los Angeles last week. Jay is coming over to your place after work. Now both of you are snuggling on the couch, watching movies on TV.

"I cannot watch this part," You hide your face in Jay's chest, preparing for the frightening scene. The darkness in the room increases the tension.

"What are you talking about? This is not even a horror movie," Jay looks down at you, bemused.

"Say you! Watching Tom Cruise blowing up a Gallardo distressed me. My soul is crying. It is a nightmare!"

You move out from Jay's embrace to point out the screen where Maggie Q said it is such a nice car. "Yes, it is! Don't do it, Zhen," yell you at the TV.

However, The Lamborghini on screen still went kaboom and was engulfed in fire. "Oh, no!" You put your hand on your heart, feeling devastated.

Jay grins at your silliness, "I'm sorry for your loss," He rubs your back, offering his condolences. However, his smile turns flirty. "If there's anything I can do to ease your pain..."

You play along with his idea. "Hmm, is that so?" Your hands wrap around Jay, pulling him closer. Your nose is tracing his neck, up to his jaw, his cheek. Your lips softly grace his skin, make their way closer to his. Jay wasted no time to kiss you and keep kissing you.

You don't know how long it goes, and you don't care to know. Until Jay moves back abruptly, tilting his head away from you, "Your pho..."

Your lips cut his words as you get on his lap. Jay puts his hands on your waist to stop you, halfheartedly, "Babe, your phone is ringing,"

Your hands curl behind his neck. "Let it ring." You whisper to his ear. Jay shudders when he feels your breath on his neck. Your mouth soon follows to make a mark on the same point. Jay tries to hold himself back from reciprocating the gesture.

Unlike Jay and his work, you got no obligation to pick up your phone. No life or death depends on you tonight. But the phone keeps shrieking. It started to annoy you because Jay stops participating in this make-out session.

"Might be important," This is one of the rare times you want to curse Jay's occupation.

"I assure you it won't be," You try to get Jay back in the game.

"Well, at least you can tell them to call you back later," Jay lands a soft kiss on your forehead. With a loud sigh, you move away from Jay's lap to pick up your phone.

Seeing the caller ID frustrates you even further. "You are interrupting our date night," is the first thing you say to your best friend, Alex, when you receive the call and put it on speaker.

"Hi, Jay!" Alex chirps his greeting, ignoring your complaint.

Jay greets back with a chuckle, "Hey, man. Nice to hear from you," He takes the remote to pause the movie, where Tom Cruise is gunning a Mercedes CLK down the road.

"No, it's not." You grumble under your breath. "What's up? Did you just come up with a song idea that would make Bruno Mars wished he wrote it?"

As a fellow songwriter/producer, you understand that song inspiration could come anytime. But it would still piss you off if Alex insists on working for it tonight.

"Not yet. But we do have a potential project for you,"

"Couldn't it wait until next week?" You moan your refusal. "Jay and I got plans for the weekend,"

"Of course. As long as you promise to pick up your phone when Angelique calls. I know you have been dodging her." Alex chides you.

Huffing your aversion, you lay your head on Jay's lap. In reflex, he plays with your hair. "Who's Angelique? A new talent?" Jay never heard that name before. He is pretty sure that he knows everybody at Pyramid, Alex's record label in Amsterdam where you work for.

Alex starts to explain, "She is a singer. Been around for a while,"

"Country singer, turned bubblegum pop singer, and now I guess she wants to try dance music as well?" You elaborate to Jay and asking Alex at the same time. You have written and produced songs from various genres, but your notable works so far are mostly EDM.

"Maybe," Alex answers casually.

"Angelique..." Jay ponders for a moment before lighting up, "Oh! Is she the one whose songs you keep skipping whenever they pop up, babe?"

Your best friend lets out a big laugh from the other side of the phone. "Angelique wants Y/N to produce her next album, but all of a sudden Y/N here cannot find the receive button on her phone," Alex emphasizes his sarcasm.

"I took yours, didn't I?"

However, Alex begins his interrogation. "Why are you avoiding her calls anyway?"

"I don't wanna work with her," You know you sound petulant.

"Come on, Y/N, it would be great! Angelique's third album sold triple more than her second. Her last single went neck to neck with Taylor Swift's song. Now, she is gonna let you work on her fourth album! Other producers would kill for this opportunity," Alex tries to reason.

Jay whistles, being impressed by the story.

"Well, my boyfriend here is a cop. I don't wanna get involved in any criminal activity," You are intentionally being obtuse. "If it were so great, why don't you do it? You're the one who still works on stage."

"You know people talked about how you could be the next Max Martin, right? Made sense that she asked for you," Alex states. "Angelique doesn't need another artist to perform with her. She needs someone who writes and produces good stuff."

"Every producer could be the next Max Martin if they work hard," You shrug the notion.

Jay looks confused with all these new names. "And Max Martin is...?"

"We are never ever ever getting back together?" Alex starts singing a couple bars to show Jay some examples of Max Martin's works.

"Uh..." Jay doesn't show any recognition.

"ou make me feel like I'm living a teenage dream?" Alex sings another song. Your best friend is nothing but persistent.

"Uhm.." And yet, Jay is still clueless.

"Jay is not keeping up with pop music for the last decade, Lex," You joke to your best friend. "Try some songs from the Backstreet Boys,"

"Hey!" Jay protests. "I know your songs," He smirks at you in full smug. "Especially the ones that were written about me."

You laugh at his adorable and sexy smirk. Sitting up from Jay's lap, you kiss the smug out of him.

"Guys, I'm still here." The flat tone of Alex on the phone stops Jay from taking the kiss further.

You peck a corner of Jay's lips one more time. "Your own fault. Who told you to call during our date night anyway?"

"Since I'm not there to poke and pinch you, I hope Jay could help me convince you to take this project." Your best friend is shameless.

"Is Angelique not a good person or something?" Jay tries to understand the situation. He knows you are a hard worker. It is rare for you to run off from a big project like this. "She ought to be a good singer, right? With all of that achievements,"

You cross your arms and glare at your boyfriend, "It is a prerogative to hate your best friend's exes, no?"

Jay frowns, "Wait, Angelique is Alex's ex?"

"Oh, come on!" groans Alex. "It was years ago!"

"You know how the saying goes. Quote-unquote, "You are my friend. She is your ex. You get to forgive and move on. I get to hold a grudge until I die”

"That was kinda harsh," Jay comments.

"Your best friend still hates me until now, Jay." You roll your eyes at your boyfriend.

"Mouse doesn't hate you. I even haven't got a chance to tell him about you since he's been deployed," Jay raises his eyebrows.

"She meant your work partner," Alex answers Jay for you.

Jay frowns deeper, "Hailey doesn't hate you."

"Wanna bet on that?" You challenge him.

Alex prevents the couple from bickering further, "Guys, listen! Angelique and I broke up amicably. There were no hard feelings between us now,"

"Excuse you!" You exclaim. "I still remember those dark days. You cried over so many Tequila bottles. And those boxes of chocolate!! Why did we have to consume that much chocolate over a breakup?? My waistline did not come back to its original measurement for three months!!"

Jay lets out an amused snort.

"Oh, you don't get to talk, man!" Alex hits the couple back. "Your temporary breakup also forced me to replenish my Jenever stocks! I got bakeries phone numbers on speed dial for chocolate cake emergencies!"

Jay puts his hands up in surrender. "Okay, okay. You guys continue to discuss business," He stands up from the couch. "I'm gonna go warm up some pie," Jay gestures to the kitchen area. "Alex, it's nice to catch up with you. Hope the next time we talk, it would be more social and less about business,"

"And you, love, try to listen to what Alex offers first before you cut him off," Jay bends down to kiss your lips teasingly. "Please don't pull out any bottles with more than 40% alcohol content. I need you sober for our plans tonight." He winks at you before moving to the kitchen, leaving you to deal with your pushy best friend alone.

+x Taglist +x

@lorenakaspersen @life-treatments @itsdesiree86

Foot Note: - Tom Cruise and Maggie Q blew up a Lamborghini Gallardo in Mission: Impossible III (2006). All of the MI movies are classics in my household. - Max Martin is a Swedish record producer, songwriter. You might not know his name, but I'm sure you know his songs. In reference to this fic, he co-wrote and co-produced Taylor Swift's "We are never ever ever getting back together", co-wrote Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream", co-wrote and co-produced some of Backstreet Boys' biggest hits. - "You are my friend. She is your ex. You get to forgive and move on. I get to hold a grudge until I die" line is taken from Henrietta Wilson on 9-1-1 TV Series S02E04 "Stuck". I thought it was hilarious. The line became the reason for this particular fic's existence.

I'm sorry for the long note. Thank you for reading this fic and the note. You are so welcome to reply, ask or tag me. We can talk about music, series or Jesse Lee Soffer's abs. :p

[imaginesandinserts]

Irreverent Drabbles: A Very Derek Christmas

Title: Irreverent Drabbles: A Very Derek Christmas Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Reader Rating: G Words: 2514

Irreverent Series Masterlist

ONLY READ THIS IF YOU’VE ALREADY READ THROUGH PART 39 OF THE MAIN IRREVERENT SERIES

"You're coming home with me for Christmas."

You look up at Derek as the two of you walk out to the parking garage. It was the week before the whole team would be off for the holidays and it marked the first without Emily. The realization that it was only the first of many more Christmases and birthdays without her was more than you were willing to deal with, so you pushed it to the back, hoping to simply forget about it.

"I have plans," you tell him, hoping he won't see through your lie. You had plans - if plans included sitting at home by yourself and drinking.

"Cancel them. I already booked your ticket."

Arguing with him would be pointless. Instead you roll your eyes with a smile and thank him.

You had a feeling he felt it was his job now, with both Emily and Hotch gone, to make sure you were alright. Like some sort of divine calling from Emily up above. Below? Who knows really, though you'd like to think she's in heaven. If there was a heaven.

*------------*

Fran Morgan had raised three kids almost entirely on her own. All of her children had turned out good, and both of her daughters were married. Now, if only Derek could find a nice girl to settle down with, she could feel like her job was done.

He'd called and told her he was bringing a friend home for Christmas - a female friend. She didn't like that he just called her a friend. Her son should know better than to think he could sneak one by his mother. Derek had never brought a girl home before and now he was bringing one to meet the whole family for the holidays. She wasn't born yesterday.

*------------*

The Morgan family was warm, welcoming, and just what you needed that year. Something to help you forget how shitty life had been lately. A reminder that good things like family and fun and heart were still concepts in the world. Maybe not your world. But other people's, and well, that was something at least.

You and Derek were both conscious of the implication of him bringing a girl home for the holidays. He'd already warned you that his mother would think that the two of you were together and would do her best to worm it out of you. There wasn't anything to worm out, but you both knew that from the outside looking in, your relationship was…odd to say the least.

Derek was every bit the man his mother had raised him to be, especially around you. He made an effort to hold doors open and walk on the outside of the sidewalk and had a hand on your lower back if it was just the two of you. The thing was, none of this was new or a direct product of Emily dying. The two of you had always had an easy and natural chemistry. It was just more of it now that neither of you had anyone else to have this with.

You'd both expected some amount of weirdness after that one time you'd made out on his couch. And yet, nothing changed. He still trained with you. The two of you still shared a bed when you could, because sleeping next to someone was simply nicer. Neither one of you was dating someone so it wasn't wrong or anything, though you still made an effort to make sure neither Reid nor Rossi caught on to the bed sharing.

In Derek's childhood home, his mother led you to the room his sisters grew up in while Derek took his old bedroom. Mrs. Morgan - or as she'd asked that you call her, Fran - intimidated you. She had a look in her eye that told you she saw way more than she let on and that made you a little uneasy despite her kindness and warmth.

*------------*

You were pretty, exactly Derek's type, his sisters had remarked. Fran and both her daughters were on edge, waiting to catch the two of you in a moment that betrayed what they all suspected - that Derek Morgan had brought home a girl that mattered. The three of them watched you like hawks, comparing notes on any little thing they caught.

Desiree had seen her brother bring you a mug of hot chocolate, filled to the brim with marshmallows, because apparently that's how you liked it. She'd stood in the kitchen, pretending to make herself some tea as she watched Derek hand you the mug and tease you about the number of marshmallows you'd demanded. There was a look in your eyes, a sparkle that she recognized from when she'd first fallen in love with Keith. The sparkle he would get in his eyes when she said something that made him fall just a little more in love with her. That sparkle meant something.

Sarah noted that Derek laughed more with you. Her brother was always a fun guy but with you it was like his normally buoyant personality got a boost. He was showing off for you, trying to make you laugh, he was trying and the Derek they knew didn't try for any girl. Girls tried for him. The two of you had taken it upon yourself to finish decorating the tree for their Ma and Derek had watched as you struggled to reach the very top of the tree to put the star on it. Instead of doing it for you, he'd lifted you up, hands wrapped around your waist, as if you weighed nothing and helped you put it on the top yourself. That look in his eyes - that look of pure adoration - that look meant something. How could it possibly not?

Fran had kept an eye on both of your bedroom doors at night, knowing her son wouldn't be able to resist sneaking over to sleep next to his girlfriend. Yet, as far as she could tell, the two of you stayed in your own rooms the entire night. Maybe he was just being respectful because it was his Ma's house. Yeah, maybe.

Desiree had been the one to put mistletoe up around the entire house. Then all three Morgan ladies waited, and waited, and waited. Until finally, the two of you happened to walk under the piece of mistletoe dangling above the entrance to the kitchen. You laughed, the barest of color in your cheeks as you went up on your toes and quickly kissed Derek's cheek. He didn't lean in. He didn't make it linger. It was over in the blink of an eye. All three of them looked at one another, completely confused. Well now what? What would it take to get you two to admit it?

*------------*

"You wanna go out for a bit?" Derek had asked you.

The two of you had been in Chicago for two days, most of which were spent participating in good old fashioned American Christmas traditions. His family had made it really easy for you to forget about your work and Emily and Doyle for a bit. It was a welcome respite.

Derek led you out through the garage, where you nearly stumbled and fell, dragging a tarp down with you. You'd uncovered an old motorcycle that looked like it hadn't been touched in years.

Derek laughs, helping you up. "I didn't know we still had that."

"Is it yours?" you asked, appraising it with some interest. You recognized it as an old 1980s Katana.

"It was my dad's," he explains. "I rode it around town as soon as I was big enough, though my Ma hated it. She was always worried I'd hurt myself."

You chuckle. You could see a younger, more rebellious version of Derek, sneaking out with the bike to pick up a girl.

Derek notes your curiosity. "Do you ride?"

"Yeah. It was really more Julian's thing," you tell him, your hands brushing over the handles. "But I asked my friend to teach me after Julian died. I had his old bike shipped over and rode it all through training."

Derek listens with interest. You didn't talk much about your brother and it was new to see you have some positive familial relationships. "This the same friend from New York that you…," he trails off, but you know what he means.

You smile, feeling a small pang in your chest. "His name's John," you explain, your voice soft. "I haven't seen him in a while. Not since my first Christmas with the Bureau."

Derek doesn't push. If you wanted to tell him more, you would. He can't help but think that John sounds like a cool dude. Your voice got all soft and fluttery when you talked about him. Completely different from when you talk about your ex, Matthew. He wonders if that's all he was - a friend.

The implication that you haven't slept with anyone since your first Christmas with the Bureau isn't lost on him. He couldn't imagine having gone that long without.

*------------*

Christmas morning, Desiree and Sarah arrive with both of their families and the Morgan home is filled with children and laughter and happiness. Derek is a good uncle, you note. He rough houses with the boys and will let the girls paint his nails and play tea party with them. The two of you while away an hour, pretending to drink tea and speaking in exaggerated British accents.

The family exchanges presents. You'd gotten something for all of the kids when you and Derek had gone out. You're not expecting anything, yet Fran hands you two wrapped packages. The first is from the entire Morgan family. Your first night there, they'd all been over for dinner and Fran had made sure to get a photo of everyone sitting around the table. You'd been sat next to Derek and you were both smiling, his hand around the back of your chair. Fran had framed it for you along with an invitation to come back anytime.

"Fran, thank you so much," your voice broke just a bit. Instead of saying anything else and embarrassing yourself, you chose to just hug her and allow her to wrap her arms around you. You understood where Derek got his incredible hugging ability from.

"Oh honey, we mean it. Anytime," she says, patting your cheek softly.

You open the next gift from Derek to reveal a vinyl record of an EDM artist both you and Emily had raved about and would constantly play in the plane when given the chance. You look up at Derek, unsure of what to say, so the only thing that comes out is, "You got me a vinyl EDM record?"

He laughs. "It's a vinyl record because you're bougie now you can have your ratchet music playing from that fancy record player."

You feel your eyes well up just slightly. He'd remembered the artist, he'd obviously gone through the effort of having a custom vinyl record made. And it was Emily's favorite too.

You blink back your tears. Not in front of people. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Now let's see what you got me," he says with an exaggerated wink, eliciting a laugh from you.

Derek opens his present to unveil an autographed rookie card to one Walter Payton, legendary running back to the Chicago Bears. You watch in glee as his eyes bug out.

He looks up at you in shock. "How…?"

You smirk, knowing that it was the perfect present.

*------------*

Later that afternoon, you're helping Fran in the kitchen with the gingerbread cookies which Derek and his brothers-in-law are entertaining the kids in the living room. Desiree and Sarah had gone out to grab some stuff from the store for their mother. The news is playing in the background as you and Fran use the cookie cutters to cut out the gingerbread men for the kids to decorate.

Fran is telling you about how, when Derek was younger, he used to sneak spoons of sugar before dinner and then get stomach aches to skip out on school the next day. She can hear you chuckling as your head is bent over the cookie dough. However, the next second she can feel you tense. She looks up to see you frozen, cookie cutter in hand, eyes trained intensely on the TV in the living room. She watches as you and her son exchange a look and you excuse yourself from the kitchen.

You were gone for around twenty minutes and when you returned, your phone was ever present in your hand. You tried to act as though nothing had happened, but she didn't need to be a profiler like her son to know that something had changed.

You faked your way through dinner, before excusing yourself to go to bed early. Fran pulled her son aside and asked what the matter was. She sees his eyes dart to your bedroom door, behind which you'd disappeared moments before.

"The news earlier today, there was a bomb that went off in Pakistan. We've got someone there," he explains. "Someone important."

That look in her son's eyes - the look that she as his mother could read like the back of her hand. That guilty look that tells her that something wasn't quite right, something wasn't quite perfect about the two of you together. In that moment, Fran Morgan realizes, you and her son - it was nothing more than a pipe dream. Oh you mattered, you definitely mattered. But there was someone out there that mattered a little more than her son ever would to you.

She pats Derek's cheek and he leans into the comfort of his mother's touch. Kissing his Ma on the cheek, he walks down the hallway, and for the first time that entire week, she sees him slip inside your room.

*------------*

Derek had seen the raw fear in your eyes as you both caught the news regarding the bomb in Pakistan. You'd excused yourself and made a call to Penelope, asking her to keep you informed on any casualties or injuries. Anything at all.

Derek enters your room that night and sees you in bed with the phone next to your pillow. Your eyes are closed but he knows you're not asleep. He doesn't go to your bed. Instead he sits in the armchair by the window, turned towards you. Going to lay by you now felt wrong somehow. Because Derek. Derek knew even if you didn't.

Sometime around three in the morning, your phone buzzes and there is a message from Penelope. You blink and squint to read the screen in the dark room. Derek has been sitting in that chair for hours, the two of you pretending to sleep though neither one could.

Your voice is heavy as you speak. "He reported for duty this morning," you tell him.

Derek nods wordlessly before standing to go back to his own room.

[woundedheartwithin]

Today’s (modern day AU) aesthetic: Taka is definitely the friend that says he listens to everything and actually means it. Need someone to go to a concert with? Taka’s down. Have a new artist you wanna share? Taka wants to hear it. New favorite song? Guess what, Taka is stoked, crank that bitch. Jin loves Journey? Sweet, so does Taka. Ryuzo’s into Limp Bizkit? Hell yeah, Taka has all their albums and the live dvd. He has a book so full of ticket stubs that he ran out of pages and had to start just stuffing them in there. The book’s, like, six times the width it’s supposed to be, and shit falls out of it when you open it. Tour tees out the ass, that’s basically all his wardrobe is. If he’s wearing a band tee and someone asks him to name three songs, he can pop off ten without even pausing to think about it regardless of what shirt he’s wearing. Classical, opera, big band, rap, R&B, jazz, rock, pop, heavy metal, ska, world, experimental, edm, a capella, you name it he likes it

But no one expects to get into his car and hear fucking Cannibal Corpse come pouring out of the speakers. NO ONE expects sweet, innocent Taka’s favorite playlist to have Infant Annihilator, The Black Dahlia Murder, Black Tongue, Children of Bodom, Marduk, and Job For A Cowboy on it. He’s a hardcore metalhead at his core and he will choose metal over any other genre if pressed. Deeply enjoys everything from post-hardcore to death to black metal, but is 100000000% a deathcore kid. This boy cut his teeth on Despised Icon and Carnifex. Met Phil Bozeman at a White Chapel show when he was in high school and couldn’t fucking speak. Literally bawled his eyes out when Mitch Lucker died. You bet your ass he has a Tee Hee shirt, and he does not care that no one else gets the joke.

He goes to every local show and knows literally everyone in the local metal scene, which is wild to all his friends. They’re with him at a show and he’s just got people walking up to him and greeting him like he’s their best friend, and they’re just like ??? And he’s not any different either, he’s still just sweet shy Taka, and everyone’s like, “yeah this guy’s the best!”

Plays the drums and is definitely good enough to be in a band, but when his friends tell him that he just blushes and says, “oh no, I couldn’t do that.” Yuna’s secretly glad he feels that way because she’s worried he’d cave to peer pressure and get roped into doing drugs, even though she knows he’s straight edge and committed to it.

[kookiesangels]

[PT-56]—Jikook Social Media AU—Focus (On Me!) 💫—[END]

Jimin Park, or Jimin, is a star.

Jimin’s a star tailored to wow the crowd, to make people scream with his body rolls and send chills down the spines of listeners whenever he hit a high note just right. He was fine-tuned in his smiles, mannerisms, facial expressions and words, making him the perfect being in the eyes of the easily fooled.

He’s experienced, in other words, with the stage and with his fame. Jimin debuted at only seventeen with a cute song about love, moving up the ladder as he went from teeny-bopper love songs to seductively murmuring about how he liked it in bed, who he liked in bed and what they could do to get in his bed. It didn’t help that it didn’t matter who was in the bed, since Jimin was a firm believer in objective-love/attraction, meaning that if he thought they were cute, Jimin would want them within a heartbeat.

Jimin was known as the soft-sexy pop-star across the world, though where he was stationed in California is where it went on the most. He was used to girls and guys alike asking him for a picture whenever he turned a corner, used to the screams once they realized who was looking at the hoodies in the Men’s section of H&M or looking at the chokers in the female portion in Forever 21. He especially loved the moments shows would ask him to surprise fans, making sure to look his best whenever someone from his fandom would burst into tears at the sight of him, going as far as to even hugging them warmly and giving them personal gifts.

Jimin loved his fans a bit too much, like his manager Sungjae would claim. He called bullshit because they weren’t only his fans! No, his fans were more like Jimin’s friends, much like someone Jimin would go to advice to. He actively communicated with them on Twitter through tweet threads, did weekly Instagram lives and posts. Taehyung had put the battery in his back after he ended up meeting one of his closest friends to this day (a nice Korean girl named Jisoo) through the internet when she had originally been a fan of the actor. Jimin couldn’t help it if his fans were like the home he’s always wanted—safe, secure, loving.

His fans gave him everything he could ever want, even without Jimin asking for it. If they saw Jimin at a regular spot, they would kindly interrupt him to hand him a gift—”I s-saw you post about these chokers!”, “You l-like green so...”—or gently ask him to keep his health as his main priority. After the whole issue with Jaebum, it seemed that his fans began to show even more love than before whenever they spotted him outside, giving him caring smiles and teddy-bears before his bodyguard could usher him away.

Jimin didn’t know how other artist could act so cold to his fans because he absolutely adored his. They gave him a sense of comfort, like he’d said before, they made him feel at home, happy, carefree, secure.

All something that fame did not include in its package. No, with fame came trouble, secrets, and things that could ruin you within seconds if it was viewed the wrong way. Jimin should know, because not even a month ago, he’d been in said predicament where he could’ve had his years of hard work flushed down the toilet as if it were nothing, also risking the chance of losing Jungkook.

Ah, Jungkook.

Sitting in his seat at the Billboard Music Awards, Jimin had expected to be sitting next to his boyfriend instead of his manager, Sungjae, his bodyguard right beside him. It had upset Jimin to no end when he heard that Jungkook couldn’t make it tonight, spiraling him into a depressive state at the hair salon where his stylist frantically tried to stop his tears for a good hour before they finished up.

Originally, Jimin had been looking forward to seeing Jungkook so much that he had considered not going to the award show without him. He’d put a good fight, crossing his arms and locking himself inside of his home with his entire management team standing outside anxiously, his dog Honolulu keeping him company as he went on his “strike”.

“No!” Jimin huffed when Sungjae pleaded with him, wanting the door to open, “I don’t wanna go without Jungkookie—I already spoke to you about this, Sungjae!”

Taehyung had been blowing up his cellphone during his strike, asking him to get his act together more than once because his best friend was hosting the show and had been looking forward to announcing Jimin’s wins for the night, but that didn’t get the blonde to budge at all. He’d been sitting there for nearly an hour, pouting and looking through his pictures with Jungkook before he got a call from a private number, Jimin answering the call with precaution at the “No Caller ID”.

“Hello?” He exhaled with his small hand running over his cat Chowder’s fur, biting his lip when the animal nuzzled her head into Jimin’s palm. There was a faint shuffling over the line before he actually heard a voice, the rumble crackling through his iPhone receiver making Jimin’s eyes water instantly.

“Baby,” Jungkook had started, a sigh forming around his tongue. Jimin knew better, he could practically hear the fond smile in Jungkook’s voice and he had half a mind to ask what was so damn funny, “Baby, can you please let your team inside? Please? I might not be there but I want to be able to watch you on whatever rerun I can find, love,”

Jimin gulped, “I-I miss you,” He whispered into the line, feeling terribly lonely in his all too big house. His pets no longer did it for him when it came to good company, the blonde craving the touch and the soothing words of his boyfriend, Jimin going as far as to wearing the hoodie he’d taken from Jungkook nearly everyday since he’d been gone.

“I miss you too,” Jungkook spoke gently, the careful tone making Jimin’s vision blur, “But please, baby, you promised me that you’d be strong—aren’t you going to stay strong for me?”

Jimin felt the stubborn reply claw its way up his throat and he should’ve said no, should’ve kept up his bratty act until he’d be forced out of his house and had to deal with the sour attitude of his staff for the whole night. This was the nice way of doing things, he realized, they had gotten Jungkook to talk to him as a last resort, before they got his CEO to call Jimin with some not so nice words.

“Fine,” Jimin mumbled with a ball clogging his throat, “I’m sorry, Kookie, I just miss you so much—”

“I miss you too,” Jungkook cut him smoothly, voice silky and smooth. It made the tears in Jimin’s eyes fall as if on cue, his resolve weakening just at the mere sound of his boyfriend over the line.

“You can do this, Minnie, I know you can.”

If Jimin wasn’t so in love he wouldn’t have come to this show at all.

Sitting next to Sungjae and his security guard, Junhoe, Jimin looked visibly as the show went on commercial break. He’d already performed as the opening act for the night with one of his new songs about Jungkook, called ‘Brand New’. It was an EDM/Pop track so Jimin’s spirits were lifted as he watched the crowd dance and cheer for him, his stage outfit a causal one compared to the others he had to wear.

He’d performed four times already that night, being nominated for so much giving him such leeway. The first performance had been for Brand New before he won Top Hot 100 Artist, then going on to perform another new song of his called ‘Heavenly’. The song was definitely a sexual one, no doubt, but it was a mushy one as well, one that had Jimin dressed in lace and face coated in glitter, his choreography revolving around a prop bed. The performance he put on was after he won Top Song Sales, the song called ‘Love, Me’ and considerably sadder than the rest of his songs.

The stage had him standing in the center alone, singing the song hauntingly with a loose silk blouse on his body and black leather pants to accompany it, his face done in subtle makeup. The song was his favorite out of all of the ones he’d written for his new album because it was really supposed to be a letter for Jungkook, but turned into a song for the world. It was much heavier than any other song he’d written, including a choir behind to accompany him when his vocals got stronger near the end of the song. By the time he’d been finish, Jimin had let a couple of tears slip out of his eyes, the applause from the crowd defeating as he smiled weakly and got off stage.

His last performance of the night was done before he won Top Selling Album and it was a lighter track than ‘Love, Me’ called ‘Serenity’, where Jimin had the crowd join him for a chant as he stood on the top of a prop convertible, waving his hands back and forth with a small smile on his face. He still missed Jungkook like hell, but being with his fans always managed to lift his moods up a smidgen.

Now that his performances for the night were done, he didn’t really have that smile on anymore.

“Honestly, Jimin,” Sungjae sighed in exasperation at the sight of Jimin frowning, leaning back against his seat with his shoulders drooped, “Can you smile or something? Your fans are watching you, you know.”

“Sungjae, if you don’t leave me alone I swear to god that I’ll haul ass out of here right now,” Jimin growled, arms crossed over his chest. They’d manage to drag him out of his home and stuff him into a red suit that his stylist claimed to bring out his bright out , but they couldn’t force happiness on him no matter how hard they tried.

“You’re being insufferable,” Sungjae groaned, leaning back in his seat. Jimin scoffed and turned his head away, face contorted into a scowl as his blood began to stifle in his veins.

“Good, suffer like I am right now,” He hissed, uncaring of how vile he sounded. Jimin only wanted to go home and wanted to see Jungkook again, he couldn’t care about the awards anymore. Taehyung and Seokjin were hosting but that didn’t make any difference for his practically nonexistent yearn to stay—they were probably exasperated with him too, Jimin being difficult ever since he’d hung up on Jungkook hours ago.

The producer of the show has hobbled up on stage, standing with a clipboard in her arms and glasses on her nose, lips pursed. Jimin had guessed her to being doing the countdown for the cut to return to live television, sitting up and easing his features into indifference.

The woman held out a hand, counting down nasally, “We’re on in five, four, three, two!”

With the place dim once again, Jimin listened to the crowd cheer on cue as Seokjin and Taehyung stood side by side, looking effortlessly gorgeous with their microphones clutched in their hands, smile wide.

“Welcome back to the 2018 Billboard Music Awards!” Taehyung started smoothly, his job as a host coming to him naturally. Besides him was Seokjin, sporting an undercut and a wide grin, looking way too happy at the moment as he spoke in turn.

“We’re your hosts, Taehyung and Seokjin Kim!” The older man said joyfully, his professionalism clear through his cheerful facade. The crowd had Jimin going deaf and annoyed, no matter how much he loved his fans and happy crowds, it just wasnt the right moment for this.

Taehyung smiled before he spoke again, “Before we go on,” Jimin’s best friend hummed, sporting a suit that made him seem almost like a prince, “We want to ask has everyone’s had fun tonight?”

The response from the crowd wasn’t unexpected, but Jimin still winced regardless, wishing that he’d been sensible enough to bring some earplugs for the moments like this. Seokjin chuckled at the enthusiastic response, a gleam in his eye that usually charmed the pants of anyone looking, which was probably all of America at the moment.

“Good, Good—it’s said to say that the show’s nearing its end but we’re getting there folks!” The crowd gave sounds of discontent in harmony and Jimin couldn’t help but sympathize with them, no matter how upset he was. Award shows were great for fans, since they got to see their favorite artists perform, win awards, interact with the crowd and so forth. He felt bad about leaving them especially since he didn’t have any upcoming tours, but he knew that he’d be back to them some day.

Hopefully when Jungkook was back.

“Ah,” Taehyung sighed, a hand on his hip, “It's sad to say goodbye to you guys, so let’s not focus on that now—how about we focus on announcing the winner for Artist of The Year, huh?”

At the mention of the award, Jimin’s stomach churned violently and he sat up, biting down on his lip nervously. Sungjae has patted his knee in comfort, knowing that this award was the one Jimin had been aiming for from the beginning— he had a better chance of winning now that Jaebum had been taken out of the running, but he could never be too sure.

Fate loved fucking with him anyway.

“Alright then,” Taehyung giggled, “Here are your nominees for Artist of The Year!”

Jimin used the break of the nominee announcements to calm himself, wiping his palms on the pants of his suit. He’d already been practicing what to say if he won—“such an honor, love my boyfriend,”—and what to say if he lost—“it was an honor to be nominated, love my boyfriend,”— just in case things went both ways. He hated feeling this nervous about things, but he couldn’t help it ever since the last three months of his life had been so crazy—Jimin had to be ready for the unexpected from now on.

“Don’t be nervous,” His bodyguard, Junhoe hummed, disguised in plain sight as he wore a high-end suit like Jimin. “You’re gonna win this thing, Jimin, I know you are,”

Jimin gave him a nervous tug of his lips, “Thanks, but you never know,” He whispered, looking up at his friends as Sungjae shook his head, a small smile on his face.

Taehyung and Seokjin were now sharing a microphone as the both held an envelope in their joined hands, smiles wide.

“You guys ready?” Seokjin called to the crowd, earning screams in return. Jimin wanted to scream too, but not because he was ready—because he wasn’t ready, and because he felt like tearing out his hair at the moment.

Taehyung grinned, “Okay! The winner for Artist of The Year award is—“

Complete darkness.

That’s what happened next—the entire place was drowned in darkness and Jimin was so lost, already feeling Junhoe hold onto his shoulder in case of a danger threat and Sungjae using his phone as light, like many people were doing.

“What the fuck is happening?” Jimin cussed, his nerves in end and his patience close to running out. There were murmurs of confusion amongst the crowd and Jimin swore that he heard Sungjae laugh at something from beside him, making his eye twitch.

I hate award shows, Jimin thought in boiling anger, I hate them, I hate them, I hate th—

The lights came back on and Taehyung along with Seokjin were gone from the stage.

Instead, Jimin saw Hoseok, Yoongi, and Namjoon standing there in elegant suits and dyed hair, looking calmly collected while Jimin’s brain short circuited.

“Sorry for the interruption,” Yoongi began, the crowd going absolutely wild when he leaned forward to speak into the microphone shyly. Jimin wasn’t understanding it—they were stuck in New York, at the airport; Triptych wasn’t supposed to be here.

Namjoon went next, “We’re just here to announce the last performance of the night,” The tallest among the three smiled, dimples deep and his eyes seemingly searching for something. Jimin had felt his heart stutter when Namjoon kicked his eyes on his, feeling that telltale flutter in his stomach that told him something was up and that said something would make him cry, no doubt.

He hoped to be wrong this once.

“So without further ado,” Hoseok leaned down into the microphone, smiling at the crowd with his eyes glimmering with mirth, “Let us introduce our fellow brother and labelmate,”

Jimin’s breath hitched.

No.

“Jk!”

This isn’t happening.

The lights went dim again and one spotlight shone down on an empty spot on the stage, the sight making Jimin go weak in the knees despite sitting down. He felt his world halt when a familiar track began to play and he heard his voice, his laugh, their words.

“Alright then, I’ll start calling you honey,”

Jimin’s sight blurred.

“Honey,” A smooth, velvety voice rang out, emerging from a dark spot on stage and stepping into the spotlight. A camera had come to film Jimin’s reaction as soon as he covered his mouth, eyes already red from the tears.

Jungkook smiled at him and Jimin felt his world begin again.

“I’m home,”

He won Artist of The Year that night.

And so much more.

fin.

[frickfrackjimin]

Whiskey on Ice

⇻ Meeting Jungkook at an award show after party leaves a bigger impression on you than you wish to admit. 

Pairing: Idol!Jungkook x Idol!reader Genre: Slight smut (Like, if you really, really squint. Basically just my first attempt at trying to write a make out session in detail bc I suck at writing smut :/ lol)  Words: 4.8k Inspired by: “Gorgeous” by Taylor Swift; “Delicate” by Taylor Swift; “Sex” by the 1975  Warnings: Mild language, mentioning of alcohol, mentioning of drugs 

You were drunk. So, so drunk.

The drink in your hand was your fifth of the night, something that your cousin, Aura, ordered for you originally. You had no idea what the contents of the drink were, only that it was bright blue and sweet and that you couldn’t get enough of it.

You were enjoying yourself on the dance floor of the club you were at. The bass was pulsing throughout the building as strobe lights lit up during the build up to the bass drop of the EDM songs playing. You could feel yourself letting loose and enjoying yourself for the first time since your ex-boyfriend,Youngjin, pulled that whole stunt last month. You pushed off every guy that tried to dance on you; Youngjin may have been an asshole, but you were positive you did not want to hook up with a stranger in an attempt to get over him. You didn’t understand how people could go home with someone they just met, and probably don’t even know the name of.

Aura approaches you on the dance floor, saying that she was leaving with someone. You look behind her shoulder at the man standing behind her. Did you know the guy? No. Did she know the guy? Probably not, which worried you. You tried following after her to tell her not to, especially since you did not know your way around that well and your phone was nearing 10%.

By the time you reached the front of the club, Aura and her mystery man were nowhere in sight. You yelled out for her, hoping that by chance she was within ears distance and would return to you. When she did not appear, you could feel the tears pricking at your eyes. Your phone is nearly dead; you have no idea where you are or how you are going to get home. What are you supposed to do?

In your drunken stupor, you felt someone grab your hand and start to pull you down the street.

“You know it’s not safe to be walking around the city this late at night by yourself,” a male voice speaks out. You could not see who he was since he was concealed by a dark hoodie. You felt a scream get caught in your throat but in your shock from the situation, could not seem to let it out.

A few seconds later, you both ended up in a run-down restaurant in the middle of the city.

After slumping down into a booth seat, you looked at your captor sitting across from you. Low and behold, it was Jeon Jungkook, in all his gorgeous glory.

A smug smirk sits on his face, fingers intertwined on the table. A grey beanie adorns his dark head of hair that stops at the nape of his neck. You can vaguely see the loop of his grey earrings peeking out from under his beanie. His hair is longer than you remember it being. Granted, it has been two months since you have last seen him. He has a black facemask pulled below his chin, revealing his face. A risky move, considering the fact that he is out in public in a city where someone could recognize him by his pinky finger.

You feel yourself staring at him. Shaking your head slightly, you break your eye contact and begin to look around the restaurant.

“Where are we?” is all you manage to sputter out.

“Not too far from where I found you,” he responds. A waitress appears at your table, putting down two glasses of water.

“You were at Club Zero?” you ask back. He did not look like he was dressed to go to a club. You took a sip out of the water glass in front of you.

“No, I was on my way home when I saw you. Who is Aura?”

“A stupid girl,” you mutter.

“A friend of yours?” he asks, lifting an eyebrow.

“My cousin. She wanted to take me out, something about drinking away the breakup, or the bad publicity, or whatever the hell people are supposed to do when they get their ass chewed out by their famous ex-boyfriend on social media for the world to see,” you reply sarcastically.

It hits you that this is the first time you have spoken to him face to face. At the after party a few months ago, your interactions were brief, but left a mark on you nonetheless.

➵

You walked into the after party hand in hand with your boyfriend, Youngjin, his hand on the small of your back. The environment screamed an industry after party; a hell of a lot of alcohol, the strong smell of weed and whatever other drugs were being passed around, and a heavy beat playing. You saw a few familiar faces of various singers, producers, and even actors that were given access to the after party.

Youngjin and you approached the bar, him ordering a scotch on the rocks and yourself ordering a cosmopolitan. Even though you had just turned 19, the bartenders around here will start serving you at 16 if you are lucky enough to pass off as older. You never got into the drinking scene until you were around 18 like most people in the normal world; in this industry, however, it was practically unheard of.

“Hey _____! Congrats on your awards!” you hear from behind you. You turned around and greeted the face that met yours; Choonhee, a new breakout artist from this year and one of your closest friends.

“Thanks! You too girlie!” you congratulated back.

“Did you come here with Youngjin?” Choonhee asked.

"Of course-" you start, turning around to show that you indeed, did show up with boyfriend. You furrowed your brows in confusion when he was not standing behind you like he was thirty seconds ago. You looked around before realizing that Youngjin was nowhere close to you. Your eyes skimmed the darkened room before seeing him standing on the second floor talking to some men you didn’t recognize. They were more than likely other artists in his genre you didn’t know or producers. Youngjin was apart of the EDM industry and was always collaborating with people you had never heard of.

“Well, I guess he’s ditched me yet again. The big boys snatched him before I could grab ahold of him,” you chuckled, slightly annoyed.

“He’s always pulling shit like this, why are you still with him again?” Choonhee asked.

“I love him, that’s why,” you retorted.

“Right…” Choonhee replied again.

“Come on, stop with the negativity! Let’s celebrate! We are AWARD WINNERS!” you screamed, grabbing ahold of Choonhee’s wrist and throwing it up in the air with yours. The two of you cheered, grabbing little attention from the people around you since the music drowned out your cheers.

➵

It had been about an hour since Youngjin had ditched you for his little work buddies and honestly, you were having an amazing time! A hella amazing time, if you will!

Maybe it’s the fact that you were on your third cosmo, but all of your shyness that came from talking to strangers had flown out the window. You were approaching nearly everyone and starting a conversation about absolutely anything. Thankfully you were still aware of your surroundings and you were only tipsy so you didn’t make too much a fool out of yourself … you think.

You and Choonhee began to make your way to the second floor, drinks in hand. The VIP sections were located up there and you saw people like EXO, Super Junior, and Twice all popping bottles of champagne in celebration. They should all definitely be celebrating, they all went home with a shit ton of well-deserved awards that night.

You were looking around for Youngjin but instead, your eyes lock on a different pair of eyes. From far away and with the terrible lighting, you couldn't tell what color they were. You don’t immediately recognize who he is, but after seeing the people standing around him, you put together that he’s a member of BTS. You can’t remember which one specifically, maybe V? You honestly can’t remember any of them besides him right now.

Holy shit though, you wish you remembered that one’s name. Point blank, he was gorgeous. Suit pants and dress shirt, no suit jacket though. Loosened tie around his neck; rings on his fingers glistening as he swishes his glass in his hand. His dark brown hair is tousled in a way that makes it look like he just had sex, but is still put together.

You downed the rest of your drink, walking to the mini bar to order another one. You looked back over and saw him still staring at you. When you catch him this time though, he slowly turns away.

“Does you know the name of that guy in BTS over there?” you ask, resting your head in your hand as you wait for your drink.

“Which one?” Choonhee asks.

“The hot one,” you reply.

“You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Okay seriously, the one in the tie with the dark hair. That’s not V is it? He dresses too plain to be V, from what I remember.”

“I think that’s… Jin maybe? Or Jungkook? No, it’s definitely Jungkook,” Choonhee confirms, also slightly tipsy.

“Well, that boy got me jungshook, that’s for sure,” you say, grabbing your drink as it’s handed to you.

“He’s hot as hell.”

Choonhee laughs at your bluntness. “Hey honey, don’t you have a boyfriend that you supposedly love?”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate art when it’s put in front of me,” you smirk. She gives you a worried look. “Oh come on, I’m just kidding. Let’s just go say hi. The worst that could happen is that they ignore our existence completely and I have to hide my face around them for the rest of our careers.”

Choonhee gives you a scared glance before following in step behind you.

Once you were in front of the group, you felt seven pairs of eyes on you and you were suddenly intimidated.

“H-hi,” you stammered before clearing your throat. “You guys are BTS right?”

“Hey, yeah we are. _____, right?” one replied back. His presence gave him the feel of a leader. This one must be RM.

“Yeah I am, and this is my friend Choonhee,” you said, pointing to the girl standing on your left.

“You won best new artist tonight, right?” one asked, looking at Choonhee.

“Yes, I did,” she shyly smiled.

“Congratulations. I love your song, by the way. I’m Taehyung.”

“Thank you, Taehyung,” Choonhee bowed in appreciation of the compliment. “_____ should be getting credit for it as well. She wrote the song, I simply perform it.”

“You wrote that song?” another one asks you. You nod your head in response.

“Your songwriting skill is amazing. You write beautiful lyrics,” He reaches his hand out, “I’m Yoongi.”

Following that, the rest of the members introduced themselves. Of course, once you reached the last member, he simply nodded his head at you. You noticed that in both ears he had small hoop earrings in. You smiled before averting your eyes. Why did he make you so nervous?

Choonhee began conversing with RM and Taehyung about her upcoming music. Jimin, Hoseok, and Yoongi started a conversation with you. From your conversation you could tell that Yoongi was immensely passionate about music.

“So let me put a scenario out there," you started. "I have an idea for a song. Would you be down to work with me on it if I sent you some samples?” you ask him. Drunk you should be allowed out more frequently. You often struggle to find other people to work with because you’re so shy.

“Definitely, I have some beats saved in my studio computer, I could see if one of them would work with the vibe you have in the lyrics,” he replies, grabbing his phone out of his pocket. You exchanged emails and agreed to attempt to work on a song together once your schedules both cleared up.

The three boys fell into another conversation about something involving the award show as your attention fell to the two boys behind you who were avoiding conversation with you. Jin and Jungkook were goofing around with each other, pushing at each other and speaking in weird voices. Why won’t they come over and talk to you? You’re more than capable of talking to them. Maybe Jungkook wasn’t really interested at all?

‘Whatever,’ you thought.

“I’m going to get another drink, anyone care to join?” you asked, addressing the group.

“I’ll come,” Hoseok replied.

You both walked back over to the bar where you decided to switch it up and order a vodka cranberry. You felt the presence of a figure next to you as you waited. When you turned your head to see who it was, you saw it was Jungkook. Getting to see him up close in this light, you realized that he was wearing blue contact lenses.

You turned away, blushing slightly at the eye contact. As the bartender gave you and Hoseok your drinks, you heard him ask Jungkook what he wanted.

“Whiskey on ice,” Jungkook replies. You snicker to yourself. His voice sounds so different than what you expected it to. That also didn’t seem like a drink Jungkook would be drinking. He seemed like more of a sex on the beach kind of guy; you were clearly mistaken.

He places his hands on the edge of the bar, one of them covering your right one that was placed in a similar way. You looked at him, shocked that he was being so bold.

There was no way that was an accident.

He grabs the drink from the bartender before sparing you a glance. He had a look on his face that was hard to decipher. Before you could question him, his hand slid off of yours and he turned to walk away. You shook your head, taking a deep breath before following behind him with Hoseok to rejoin the group.

“Hey _____, isn’t that Youngjin?” Choonhee asked, pointing behind you. You turned around to look, and sure enough, your boyfriend finally decided to show face.

“We should probably get going,” you say.

“It was great getting to meet you guys, we’ll definitely keep in contact,” you smile.

You heard a chorus of “Bye!” and “Nice to meet you!” and “Don’t forget to email me those samples!” from the group as you and Choonhee walked away. Choonhee began to walk down the stairs, but you stopped her, saying that you wanted to grab Youngjin first.

He was standing at a small table overlooking the first floor, another scotch on the rocks still in his hand.

“Hey, where have you been this whole time?” you asked him, putting your hand on his chest.

“Talking to some producers. You know, business talk,” he responds. There was a bit of a condescending tone when he said "business talk," but you chose to ignore it.

“What have you been up to?” he asks instead.

“I met BTS. They’re really cool, actually; I got one of their emails so we can try to collaborate on a song together. How cool is that?” you ask, excited.

“Super cool," he says in a bored tone.

“They were all super nice too. Except for one, Jungkook. He didn’t talk to me the whole time. The only time he said anything near me was when we ordered drinks at the bar. He sounds so different. You’d expect him to have a deeper voice,” you laugh, the alcohol starting to really affect you now.

“Um, _____,” he says, glancing behind you.

You turned around to see Jungkook standing there, looking at you. You can’t decode the look in his eyes, you instantly feel bad though.

That guilt went away when you see him smirk at you, glancing between Youngjin and you before turning and walking away.

“What was that about?” Youngjin asks.

“I’m not sure, let’s go though, it’s getting late,” you reply back, grabbing his hand and walking down the steps and out of the club.

➵

Aside from that basic introduction, no words were actually exchanged between you two. You only snuck glances and he practically held your hand. You would think that you would be a bit more nervous talking to someone that looks as amazing as him; the alcohol must, once again, be giving you the confidence to hold a conversation.

He breathes out a laugh through his nose, rubbing his thumb against his bottom lip. You could feel your mouth go slightly dry at the sight. You took another sip of water before you continued.

“She ditched me for some guy in the club. I don’t venture into the city much aside from going to work. You would think that she would have enough common sense to assume that I don’t know where the fuck I am or how to get home.”

He cocks his head to the side a bit. “Where are you staying? I’ll give you a ride,” he offers.

“No thanks, I’ll just call a cab,” you say, rifling through your purse for your cell phone. Unfortunately, when you retrieve it from the depths of meaningless receipts and gum wrappers, it is dead. You sigh, rubbing your hand down your face, disregarding the fact that you definitely just ruined your makeup. Honestly though, it was probably already ruined from the sweaty nightclub.

You slowly meet Jungkook’s eyes, sparkling with amusement.

“Problem?”  He cheekily asks, peering at you from the top of his water glass as he takes a sip.

“Can you call me a cab?” you ask.

“Now, let’s look at this logically,” he starts. You roll my eyes.

“Why would I, a gentleman, let you, a pretty young woman,” he pauses, glancing up and down my body. You can feel a blush appear on your cheeks.

“Call a cab in the middle of the night, costing you roughly 500,000 won, when I can just give you a ride for free? It will ensure the safety of you and your wallet’s well-being.”

You know he makes a good point. It is not exactly safe for someone to be catching cabs this late at night, and you really don’t feel like spending more money than you already have tonight.

You groan in annoyance. “Fine.”

➵

Twenty minutes and a plate of fries later, you are both approaching a dark van parked outside of the restaurant. Jungkook’s hand is guiding you towards the vehicle, resting on the small of your back. Dangerously close to your ass, you may add.

“This is yours?” you ask, hesitancy in your voice.

“The band uses it. I called my driver to come get us.”

“You woke up your driver in the middle of the night? I told you I could have just taken a cab.”

“He wasn’t asleep, he was dropping the hyungs at the dorms. I wanted fresh air so I decided to take a walk before going back home,” he explains, opening the back door for you.

“You know it’s not safe to be walking around the city this late at night by yourself, Jeon Jungkook,” you tease in reply. He plasters that infamous smirk on his face as you slide in, careful to not let your dress ride up. You didn’t particularly feel like flashing the passerby’s.

“You may be right, ______, but ask yourself this; if I had not taken that walk, where might you be now?” he questions as he hops in the car behind you.

Even though you scoot all the way to the other side of the van, Jungkook sits in the middle, right next to you. His jogger-covered left thigh is touching your bare right one. You are so distracted by the fact that he is sitting so close that you nearly forget to give the driver your address. After he puts it in his GPS, he puts up the divider between the front and back, for privacy, you guessed.

“You live in the suburbs?” Jungkook asks.

“My parents do. I’m staying with them for a while,” you respond, looking out the window.

“Ah, too much drama back in Seoul?” he assumes, throwing his arm around the back of the seat behind you. You are all too aware of the fact that you can practically feel the tips of his fingers on your left shoulder.

“You have no idea,” you utter out. “Everyone thinks I’m some pretentious princess that only dated him for publicity.”

➵

Last month is when shit hit the fan.

You had started to get a bit tired of always being put on the back burner by Youngjin. Even when he was not promoting, he always seemed to be filling his schedule up with other things. Whether it be interviews, rehearsals for a comeback that was still months away, or hanging out with his friends from his label that he sees all of the time anyway. He was constantly blowing you off for any small reason it seemed. When you approached him about it, he got defensive.

“You’re overreacting like a child, as per usual,” he rolled his eyes.

“As per usual? What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you are still immature. You don’t know what it takes to be in this industry and quite frankly, you don’t have it. That’s why you clung to me like glue after the one time I flirted with you all those months ago, to grow your career,” he scoffed.

“What are you talking about? I responded to your flirting because I like you as a person! How dare you think I did this for my career? I am perfectly capable of building a name for myself without you!” you nearly screamed.

“Oh yeah? Prove it,” he sneered.

“Fine. We’re done,” you said adamantly as you grabbed your coat off of the arm of his couch. Walking towards the door, you stop right in front of his face.

“Watch me.”

Turns out, ending things on negative terms with a pissed off ex-boyfriend who has a high status in the media wasn’t the best of your plans.

You may or may not have released a cover of an English song, “Sorry Not Sorry” onto your SoundCloud just days later. Rather than just letting the bit of shade slide, Youngjin decided that he needed to rebuttal.

He did a V Live, indirectly telling the world that someone close to him betrayed him for their own personal gain. It was the biggest load of horseshit you had ever heard, but the fans somehow connected the dots and practically overnight the entirety of your country had seemingly turned on you. That is why you had to move out to the suburbs to live with your parents, and why you had gone into a sort of hiding and social media cleanse.

➵

“I don’t think that’s true,” he says. You can feel his hot breath on the side of your face. You’re too nervous to turn and look at him.

“I think he’s the pretentious one, and he’s an idiot for doing that to you. He wants sympathy for a situation nobody is sure actually happened.”

“Well, at least somebody is on my side,” you whisper, glancing at him for a second before looking down at your lap. You feel his hand that’s not around your shoulders play with the end of your dress.

“By the way,” he says in a low voice, his mouth so close to your ear you can feel his lips on your earlobe. “Black lace really suits you.”

Your eyes widen and your heart rate begins to increase as you realize he must have seen your underwear when you got in the car, despite your efforts to make sure that did not happen.

Instead of feeling mortified like you should have, you felt powerful. Maybe it was the alcohol taking affect on you, but your mood went from upset to almost… lustful?

“Does it now?” you questioned back. He hummed in reply and you could not help but let a breath out of your mouth when you feel his teeth graze the cartilage of your ear.

“Sexy,” is all he murmurs. Your thighs involuntarily tightened closer together at the simple word that fell from his lips.

You gazed up at him for a split second, seeing his eyes full of lust.

Next thing you knew, your lips were on his.

His hand on your shoulder moved to behind your neck as your lips hungrily meshed together. Goddamn, his lips are softer than you thought they would be.

There was no questioning whether or not this was right or wrong, no devil on your shoulder telling you that you barely knew the man tangling his tongue with yours. The only thing your mind was telling you right now is that you needed more of Jungkook, and you needed him now.

Your hands slid up his chest, lightly gripping onto his black hoodie. You felt his free hand resting high up on your leg with his thumb rubbing slow circles into your inner thigh. You tried withholding a moan, you really did, but it slipped out anyways. His grip on your leg tightened at the sound. You lightly bit his lower lip in approval before pulling back for air.

Holy shit, he’s an amazing kisser. It has been so long since you’ve kissed someone like that.

Jungkook took that opportunity to move his lips to your neck. He brushed your hair back before letting his tongue trace up from your neck to your earlobe, gently biting down. You could feel your desire for him building by every hot breath in your ear, every movement of his tongue on your neck, every purple mark he left.

You grab the back of his head, gripping onto his brown locks before pulling them away from your neck and reattaching your lips with his. His hand that was on your leg has moved your dress up and dangerously close to the band of your underwear. One more inch and he would probably be able to feel how badly you want him right now.

Instead of letting him get that close, you swing your leg over his until you are straddling him in the backseat. Your hands go up to his chest and your forehead rests on his briefly before you go back to kissing him. You feel his hands tightly grip your hips and in that moment, you wanted your dress off.

A knock on the divider is what pulls you away from each other.

“We’re here Jungkook. Say goodnight,” his driver says from the front seat.

“Let me walk you up,” he insists. From the way he looks at you, you know he’s not giving you an option.

You swing your legs back over to your seat before you adjust your dress and open the door. You wait for Jungkook to follow you. He shuts the car door before signaling “one minute” to the driver. His hand returns to the small of your back just as it did earlier as you approach your parent’s front door.

“Thanks for the ride,” you say nonchalantly.

“Same to you,” he boldly replies. “We should do it again sometime.”

He pulls his phone out of his pocket, holding it out to you. You go to his contacts and put your information in before handing it back to him.

“Well, goodnight,” you state, putting your hand on the doorknob. You begin to turn it before you’re pulled into Jungkook’s chest, hand being ripped away from the door. His lips crash down on yours hard, kissing you for a few seconds before pulling away.

“Goodnight.”

Before you could even open your eyes from the kiss, he is walking away and back towards the van.

Standing there stunned, you take a minute to compose yourself before you reach for the doorknob again.

“Oh, and _____?” you hear him yell.

You peaked over your shoulder at him, standing by the open van door.

“Purple suits you as well,” he smirks, motioning to his neck. Your mouth drops as the reality of his words sink in, and you instinctively reach towards your own neck. A small hiss escapes your mouth when you feel the ache of the numerous marks he littered on your skin. You look back up at him with a small glare, to which he cracks a smile and gets in the back of the van. You watch the vehicle drive down the street, turn left at the intersection, and off into the night.

Walking into the house, you shut the door quietly behind you before leaning against the dark wood. A sigh escaped your lips and the only thing you could think of was how utterly screwed you were.

[joemuggs]

PERCEPTION OF DOORS

Was reminded by a conversation yesterday about the art of the club door person, and dug this out, which I wrote for the Amsterdam Dance Event annual back in 2014. 

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If you want a clear view of how clubland operates, why not ask its guardians? The men and women who stand at the doors – whether to take money, pick and choose who gets in, or act as enforcers of rules – are the first and last people clubbers will see in their night out, and are uniquely placed to assess what makes the clubbers themselves tick. They are the interface between club, clubber and promoter, and able to provide a (more-or-less) sober overview of what goes on. But frequently, too, they are the filter: they are the one person more than anyone whom by their choices, defines the nature of the crowd on a given night. As such, they are not just list-tickers, cash-till operators or hired muscle, but are a vital cog in the club's cultural machine, a part of the club's personality. And plenty of them are as big a music lovers as the promoters or DJs too. So from London to New York, Glasgow to Pretoria to L.A., we present the past, present and future of these essential sentinels and unsung heroes of the night.

BIG FRANK

Big Frank, aka Faafaga Samuelu, is a true Los Angeles legend. The imposing Samoan-American was a school friend of underground hip hop DJ/producer Kevin “Daddy Kev” Moo, and they threw parties together from Junior High onwards (“I was the muscle, he was the brain,” laughs Frank; “a perfect combination”). But Frank was also a hardcore gangbanger in his late 1980s / early 90s adolescence: “I remember him showing me a sawed-off shotgun in 8th grade while we were riding the bus to school,” says Kev, nonchalantly. Frank served serious jail time in the late 90s, but when he came out, Kev was there, happy to team up again.

Kev founded the legendary Low End Theory – hub of the psychedelic, electronic “L.A. beat scene” that spawned artists like Flying Lotus, Gaslamp Killer and co – in 2006, but by 2011 it had become so popular, hosting the likes of Thom York and Erykah Badu, that their host venue's bouncers were shaking down clubbers for bribes to get in. This was the moment when Frank's demeanour, reputation and willingness to turn up with an AR-15 assault rifle came into their own, and perhaps unsurprisingly the previous security stepped aside without any trouble to make way for him to take over on LET's Wednesday nights.

Since then, LET's reputation as a friendly spot has only grown. “Being the familiar face of the club,” says Frank, “is great fun and oftentimes just lots of funny. And if you're coming to us, you'll be more comfortable if you feel like you know the guy at the door – and a cool farewell at the end of the night helps as well!” Now in his 40s, he is happy to be a cool head, mainly in the background: “I have different reasons for being in the scene still,” he says; “What's still there is the love for music, but now my desire to be in the crowd is gone. The times of getting fucked up and bumping rap at a back yard party is long gone. What makes me happy, though, is the presence of the forty-somethings and even older folks that attend our club. It helps me feel like our push to progress the music is appreciated. As if all this time in the scene produced something that my generation can be proud of – not just slangin' and gang bangin'.”

JR

In South Africa, house music means more to people than almost anywhere else on earth. And Tebogo “JR” Modiba knows this more than most – his laid-back House 22 parties in Pretoria are an oasis of sophistication and unity in a society still riven with violence and harsh divisions. He ended up working the door there by default: “House 22 started an purely by-invite-only underground deep house joint,” he explains; “so as the founder, I had to work the door in order to overlook the invitations myself. Over time, we have opened up to the general public, but we still keep a close eye on disruptive elements who might not understand and appreciate the underground deep house culture.”

Like all the best doormen, though, he's not just there to filter people out. “The door is the most important part of the business,” he insists. “That's where punters, especially first timers, should start experiencing what the atmosphere of the club is like. All of that depends on how the doorman welcomes them and treat them.” In fact, his biggest problems are cops (“those fellas have serious anger issues, especially when they see people having fun while they are working – and they're the biggest tax collectors too, [taking money] to allow you to operate without interrupting your business with constant inspections, or to protect your patrons from being harassed”) and the weather. One time the mainly-outdoor House 22 venue was hit by tennis ball-sized hailstones, causing a near stampede for cover, which JR was able to only just keep from becoming mass panic.

All his efforts lead to a club where passion for music rules – and so it should, when JR's own love for house still drives everything. At the drop of a hat, he will reel off favourite DJs' names– Vinny Da Vinci, Christos, Glen Lewis, Jimpster, Atjazz, Ralf Gum, Andre Lodemann, Andy Compton & The Rurals, Lars Behrenroth, and Louie Vega – and those of beloved festivals that inspire him like Sónar, ADE and Southport Weekender. And you just know there's no bullshit when he says: “I don't think I am ready to live without my house music, the club life and the people I have met and we became one house music family. Not any time soon.”

JAY CLOTH

London gay scene institution Duckie is more than just a club – as “Purveyors of Progressive Working Class Entertainment”, its team have created a multi-headed beast with art events, talks and exhibitions worldwide. But Duckie's soul resides in its bacchanals every Saturday night at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, still presided over by the same team that founded it 19 years ago: producer Simon Casson, radically eclectic DJ duo The London Readers Wifes, compere Amy Lamé and “box office artistes” Father Cloth and Jay Cloth. Jay is extraordinarily proud to be on the door - “Duckie is unlike any other London Club and IS gay culture to me,” he says, though cites inspiration from a motley lineage of misfit clubs past like The Bell, Marvellous, Daisy Chain, Lippy and anything involving cabaret monster David Hoyle (née The Divine David).

“I am very proud that Duckie is a very friendly club,” says Jay, “and the team of 'Cloths' that work the door set the tone by being as welcoming as possible to all.” As anyone who's been to the club knows, though, they may be welcoming, but you have to step up to the mark and contribute to the wild energy. Jay will turn away “stag and hen parties, anyone too obviously drunk, too obviously high, anyone rude, anyone wearing fur” and only welcome celebrity guests “as long as they are willing to pay the same as everyone else – we are very egalitarian.” “What makes me really happy,” he says, “is when the mix of people is so extreme I wouldn't want to be anywhere else on earth.” His only fear is that “around 1am some nights when the Wifes announce they are about to play their favourite record of all time, I worry the floor might give in!”

ANGELO FABARA

Anyone who thinks that garish clubwear and superstar DJ culture started with EDM should look back to early 90s New York – which truly was the best of times, and the worst of times. Clubbing was a performance then, with the self-proclaimed Club Kids creating atmospheres so decadent and sights so eye-popping that it could feel like the last days of Rome. The Limelight was the heart of all of this, and bringing some kind of order to the chaos was Angelo Fabara. Angelo was an out-of-towner, drawn as a teenager to NYC's clubs like moth to flame by the “idea of community foremost, but then the escapism it offers to young people to safely experiment with.”

He was soon part of that community. In high school he went to the Limelight every weekend, but after getting into NYU, this quickly switched to going nightly. As a face on the scene, he says, “eventually was asked to promote some nights which led to my being hired as a junior door / guestlist person under the guidance of the more veteran door people at the Limelight. I worked there for about a year and a half after which I worked at Twilo for another year at the height of rave / club music coming to NYC.” New York can be a scary city, and Angelo had to learn fast how to turn away the crazies who might later follow or lay in wait for someone who had offended them: “I worked out I needed to give them a bigger reason they couldn't come in,” he says, “like 'the venue's at capacity', rather than quipping slights at their character which I may have done when I first started.”

As a doorman, though, he didn't just have to keep the badasses out: he had to help create atmosphere. “I let in anyone I knew was a great dancer,” he says, “or had a great look: people who made the dancefloor flourish or were nice eye candy. You also had to educate people who came to the clubs to make an effort because everyone else was taking the time to look impeccably chic or coming up with a look that just added to the design and visual language of the scene at that time. If you were a suit, I wouldn't let you in, if you came as a group of guys I wouldn't let you in, if you didn't look the part you would have a harder time at the door. Much later in life, I compare it to Walt Disney who always started his stories off by making his characters literally step through a door into a fantasy world, transported to another place. I wanted to be that person that showed you through that door.”

The scene famously turned bad. “A lot of people died from drugs,” recalls Angelo sadly. “Heroin became big in the 90s, and Michael Alig murdered his club kid friend Angel, which ended the reign of Peter Gatien's clubs like USA, Palladium, Limelight, Tunnel which were the best clubs in NYC history, places with a creativity you just don't see nowadays.” Angelo stepped away from the scene, moving into culture reporting with Microsoft's 'Sidewalk' site – but he never lost his love for what had first inspired him as a kid. “I still think about how easily I made friends on the dancefloor and how so many of us are still friends today 22 years later.”

BOB WONG

Glasgow is one of the most beloved, yet notorious, clubbing centres of the world, known for the utter lunacy, in both the good and bad senses, of its crowds. So it's nice to know that its scene has a calm centre in the affable and unflappable Bob Wong, the head of security (“I prefer 'doorman' or 'steward' but that confuses people, so I usually end up saying 'bouncer',” he laughs) at the Glasgow School Of Art – a venue that has hosted everything from the most manaical techno to the heaviest dub to avant garde noise events.

Bob is a true lover of and participant in Glasgow's underground scene – indeed, in researching this article, his was the first name mentioned by every Glaswegian we spoke to. “Scots know how to party!” he says simply as explanation of why he loves the scene. “You can't beat seeing likeminded people – people of all ages, race, colour, sexuality, social background etc etc etc – switch off from their daily grind of the working week and completely lose themselves, intoxicated with their poison of choice, in the music they love and really go for it on the dancefloor.”

This no-nonsense attitude and affection for the crowds runs through everything he does. “I, and the rest of my team are there to ensure the punters have a great night, and more importantly a safe one: safe from themselves and each other when they inevitably get carried away.” And to do this he insists on a friendly culture: “I hated working with macho 'bouncers',” he continues, “who could only brag about how many fights they'd won or how many girls they've slept with – so when I finally became head steward, I made a point of having only people with a similar mindset to mine on the team, and it makes a difference to everyone.”

Has he ever been scared, surrounded by punters when they “inevitably get carried away”? “You're probably expecting a mad story here,” he smiles, “about some kinda riot or a scenario where I've been stabbed or shot at – but no... if I ever get into a situation where I'm in a fight where my life is being seriously threatened then I can honestly say I'll have failed at my job. My scariest moments have to be the occasions where drunken punters have thought it was a great idea to slide down the banister of the stairs from the cloakroom on the top floor of the Artschool – a 4 level building – and have fallen over the edge and down between the flights of stairs... Thankfully no-one ever fell past the next floor but, all the same, hearing the thud and seeing them hit the floor you automatically assume the worst when they go limp and unresponsive! Thankfully and surprisingly there have never been any fatalities in my time (don't jinx it Bob haha!), just a few fractured vertebrae...”

[xrobinxdinnerx]

9.3.18

I have this problem where I fall for people/get slightly infatuated by people who I find attractive in the moment and show interest in me. On Sunday, I went to Prysm Nightclub to see Yellow Claw for free because my new friend is a promoter there and put me and friends that are 21+ girls on the guest list. This is the second time I’ve been on this list (before was to see Ludacris a few weeks ago). Anyway, I took Evelyn and her friend Hope to go see Yellow Claw with me. Evelyn loves EDM and this was Hope’s first EDM event, so she was super excited. We somehow got in the line 2 minutes before our guest list spots would have been obsolete (we had to be there before 11:30 pm).. also SHOUTOUT to James because we would’ve never made it there had he not driven us and sped on the highway! So we got in. The bouncers didn’t even check any of our ID’s to make sure we were who we said we were LOL. I was so surprised because this was the first time I wasn’t ID’d for something 18+. But yeah, we got into the club and went to the middle-front because that’s where I always go for events. I ran into my god bro Alex and his friends, which included my friend Jacky. Alex shared his drink with me, which was cool bc I wasn’t about to pay $20 for a Long Island Iced Tea.  So yeah, the opener was pretty good. We danced to him for a little and then people started filing in to see Yellow Claw. Before they went on, I noticed that there was a big *my den* guy that covered my entire view TWO ROWS IN FRONT OF ME. So I made a comment about it to Evelyn and Hope and they laughed because this happens to me all the time at concerts >:( A boy that was right in front of me that had longish curly brown hair beautiful blue eyes turned around was started agreeing with me about how he couldn’t see either because he was shorter than the tall guy as well. After that, he kept checking up one me--making sure that I had enough room to dance/breathe and could be in a window to see the artist. More people started pushing toward the front so his right arm somehow ended up in back of me.. not sure how that happened, but he ended up next to me because of that. We were just dancing next to each other and it was fine, but then he asked me if he could dance with me. Honestly, this was one of the first times that someone asked me so sweetly and so I told him yes because he was sweet and cute. So yeah, we danced together for a while. He stopped and asked if i had a boyfriend because he was worried that a guy was going to come after him and beat him up LOL. After telling him I didn’t have one, he kept dancing behind me and briefly rested his head on my left shoulder (tbh I thought he was going to kiss me), but then he ended up moving his head again. Welp, that ended about halfway through Yellow Claw’s set because his friend asked him when he wanted to leave Prysm. He told his friend that he wasn’t ready yet.. but then about 5 minutes later, his friend aggressively told him that he needed to talk to him. So before walking away, he turned to me and said “I’ll be RIGHT back! Don’t move!” lol I didn’t think much of it because I figured he’d come back, but he didn’t???? My dumb ass didn’t even ask him for his name because I BLANKED ON IT. All I know is kinda what he looks like and that his snapchat name said KG, but I unfortunately didn’t get any of his contact information.  I’ve lowkey been kinda obsessively trying to find him on the EDM Chicago page and whatnot but haven’t been able to. Idk, I guess I’m trying to prove to myself that it actually happened and that I didn’t make up the moments that we shared. Nicki thinks that I may have potentially met the love of my life and messed up by not catching his name.. and tbh it’s very possible. While marriage seems like something that is SO far away for me, I can’t stop feeling like I need to take some steps to find someone to love lolololol. I hope I do someday and don’t end up forever alone.

[thisisnot-chris]

Where Life’s Taken Me

These past few years since my last year of college have been quite the roller-coaster ride. I never imagined it to turn out this way (so far). I look back and remember what I was like in high school; a shy, scared kid who wasn’t sure what to do in life and was afraid of criticism. I see what I’ve become 8 years later; an outgoing, adventure seeking, person who knows what he wants in life and isn’t bound by the fear of other’s opinions. College helped me realize what I wanted to do but part of me still felt held back by other people’s thoughts on what I was trying to do with my life during that time. My choices were too risky; no job security; why wasn’t it something “typical & traditional”. I ended up learning that was not me at all years later, and it wasn’t easy to come to terms with it throughout that time. In fact it all came together in the last 2-3 years. All I had to do was figure out things with myself and who I truly am. Those ideas and thoughts sat dormant in the back of my mind for a very long time but it took some unexpected events to occur which initiated that journey.

It started in December 2015. I was about to start an internship with a local booking agency that specialized in EDM shows; something I was beyond ecstatic about. I love EDM. I love music and everything about it; both artistically and business-wise. I wanted to share the amazing news with a number of my good friends at a Christmas party we had one Saturday nite, about 1 week before Christmas came. The party was a blast so far; drinking games, great music, and so many laughs. I shared the news with everyone there and it felt so satisfying to share a new experience coming my way with the people I cared about. Little did I know… I was about to get some news later on at the party.

I was in the basement and had to go use the bathroom upstairs. I made my way up and stepped into the kitchen where 3 of my friends were talking. One of them said 3 words that changed it all; “Chris is gay”. I uttered something back in confusion and all 3 heads turned towards me with looks on their faces that screamed “OH SHIT!...” One of my other friends pulls me into the living room while I’m still puzzled as all hell and begins to legitimately question if I was or not. I was PISSED, and I’m usually not one to get angry very easily. They had known me all these years and NOW I hear about this?! And the reasons as to why were so stereotypical; I wore pink clothes, I watched what I ate, I didn’t drink much, I talk differently, etc. How the fuck should those label me anything?!?! They started apologizing afterwards and said they shouldn’t have made bold conclusions like that. At that point I should’ve gotten over it. But I didn’t. It bothered me. REALLY badly. And it only worsened in the coming months and years.

Shortly after the new year, my internship didn’t turn into a full-term employment due to the manager’s business needs and schedule. I needed to find work in the time being so I could make money and move out of my family’s house and continue investing in what I wanted to do with music. That time off had that thought keep coming back to me. George Michael once said, “When someone questions your sexuality, you begin to question EVERYTHING!” That’s exactly what happened to me. I never dated a woman in my life; but that shouldn’t have meant anything. I had crushes on girls throughout the years. When I was a much bigger kid in middle and high school, I started wanting to lose weight and exercise. I would compare myself to other attractive and much more fit men, looking at them and saying “God, I really wish I looked like that.” I didn’t think that meant anything either, even though I still had thoughts like that after losing so much weight. I kept pushing it aside during this time. I even joked to myself about it; for some reason, I always remembered this line from a Ron White stand up special where he says “Guys, if you ever have a thought… let it go. Everyone’s a little gay.” That line made me think of the times my friends and I poked fun like that; I didn’t realize I was just fighting myself. That year’s summer and fall began some very serious talks with myself soon on.

During my job search leading into the summer, I had a good friend keep in contact with me over the search and how I was doing. I started hanging out and spending time with him more; video games, watching stand up, random shit, whatever it was. It was great. As it got warmer, I was invited out to bonfires and hung out with a bunch of guys he became acquainted with. I was relatively quiet around them but it was still fun hearing their conversations. I was glad I got to spend time like this with my friend. Then in the middle of July, I finally got a job for the time being at a financial institution. Soon after accepting that position, I was also invited on a camping trip up North with him and his buddies. I ended up arriving on a Friday afternoon at a lake while they were out on a friend’s boat; they were drinking beer, listening to music, games, you name it. I thought it was great he invited me and will always remember my time out there. After a couple hours, they wanted to head back to the campsite they were at but I had no clue where it was. He offered to direct me back. I got back in my car, and then he got in it, sitting in the passenger seat. I drove halfway there until a state patrol officer pulled us over. There was a festival that weekend so he was just checking for drunk drivers but he kept us there for a good 15-20 minutes for whatever reason. We sat there for a while, trying to see what he was doing. But I wasn’t looking at the officer that whole time. I couldn’t help but look at my friend and I didn’t understand why. There he was next to me. Slightly buzzed. Wearing a hat from a foreign country. Shirtless. That was the moment there that something seemed different to me. What the hell was going on???

After that ordeal, we made it to the site and got ready for the festival. It ended up getting rained on and they got a crappy replacement band instead of the one they’ve gotten before. Their specialty ‘Summer Hummer” drinks were cheap though so it was a win in the end. We then headed back and had a fire for a bit til’ the rain got heavier and we all huddled under a canopy. I stayed in one of the guys’ tents that nite but had so much trouble sleeping because I kept thinking about that moment my friend and I got pulled over. Why couldn’t I help but look at him like that?... The next morning, we all packed up to leave but he wanted to stay and hike the area and asked me to. I wanted to say yes but that moment in the car yesterday scared me from doing so. I said I was gonna head back home instead. The questioning continued on the drive home. The nights after when I went to bed. Throughout the day during my new job. We still hung out since that and the questions kept growing on me. Why? Why was I looking at him like that??? Within that next month, what I considered to be the scariest thought I ever had ended up revealing itself to me… I think I was starting to have feelings for him.

That thought began to mess with me even worse than the initial questioning. I never thought things like this before; why now?? The coming September furthered this. There was a nite we went out and one of his friend’s questioned my sexuality. Pissed me off again. But I still had thoughts and they scared me more. I never knew anyone who was gay at this point and I wasn’t sure on my friends and immediate family’s thoughts on homosexuality. Then, one of my current best friends that was rooming with him at the time was planning on moving to California in October. My friend I started to have feelings for… offered me to move in. Living with someone you have feelings for… how the hell could this be a good idea?... My head couldn’t take it anymore. It started to affect me negatively from here on. 

Jumping to October 29th, 2016, around the time my best friend moved to Cali, my “crush” and a couple other people went out to a bar for a Halloween party. On the ride back after the party, there was an argument on who the hottest woman was there. I was asked on my opinion. I never paid attention to any there and lied saying, “the blonde one”. Believe it not, there were no blonde women there that nite… We make it to his house, I use the bathroom, and come out to hear my two friends, one I’ve known since elementary school and the one I had feelings for, uttering to each other if I was gay. I had it at this point. I leaned against some cabinets, slid to the floor, and told them, “Guys… I’m not sure what I am.” I was scared out of my fucking mind. But they were ok with it. They didn’t care. It didn’t make a difference. That was a slight sigh of relief but I was “playing the bi-card” at this time. I could be interested in women too I thought back then. But I had feelings for my friend at this time… a man.

It wasn’t even 2 weeks later that my feelings were bothering me even more so; I felt the need to tell my good friend how I felt. Another friend of ours had a post-Halloween party at his place on November 5th, 2016 (“remember, remember, the 5th of November” has new meaning for me now); it was fun at first but the cops shut it down due to noise complaints. Still bothered, I then texted him at 1:00AM asking him where he was. He was on his way back home. I waited for him til 2:00AM when we arrived back to talk to him. I initially stated I started having feelings for someone we know and didn’t know what to do. He knew I was going to say it was him but kept asking who. I started to hold back myself from saying it was him. I was fucking crying for god sake. But I said it then. I liked him. And I couldn’t take it back. He then said his side of the matter; he appreciated me telling him, was flattered, but did not feel the same back. He did not feel that way about men. It didn’t change anything between us which shocked me. But I still didn’t know what to do. Did I simply just let it go? I unfortunately didn’t and it caused a major problem later on. I had more feelings for him after that talk. It wasn’t right. But I felt I lied to myself if I let it go.

January 2017 came around and I told my best friend in Cali about my questioning; he was ok with it and stated his support. I even told one of my friends that questioned me the nite of that Christmas party. I thought he out of all my friends would have the BIGGEST problem with it; but he didn’t. He hugged me and opened up much more about himself to me than I expected. He even suggested I talk to this woman we knew; little did I know she would end up helping me so much and becoming one of my best friends after we had dinner one nite. Oh, that major problem I mentioned? It began during the end of that month. Some friends and I were over at my “crush’s” place. My feelings were troubling me so much that nite. I ended up being a bit… “upfront” with him later that nite. How stupid could’ve I fucking been...

After that, he didn’t want to talk to me for awhile. He treated me differently. He distanced himself and when I look back on it, I can’t blame him. The feelings diminished away as they should’ve initially. I couldn’t believe I did this to a good friend. I crossed a line. I was not ok with myself. I felt like I was slipping into some phase of depression that screwed up my work performance, affected my job security, and made me feel everything was falling apart. Friends were breaking up and taking sides on different things. My one best friend moved to Cali and I thought I’d never see him again. I ended up telling more people that were close in my life about my questioning, including my parents, and everyone was ok with it. But I still struggled. I began to feel who I was was wrong. Being a man and having feelings for men was wrong.  I was still having AND causing problems. I even caused trust issues with more friends I care so much about and diminished those relationships significantly. I felt that I couldn’t take life anymore… I wanted to give up and leave everything behind… I tried to twice…

…

But I didn’t give up. I kept moving forward in dealing with this and figuring things out. The girl I mentioned who is one of my best friends now? She introduced me to so many new people that shared their experiences and opinions on things I never thought I’d hear about. She invited me to visit so many places that summer of 2017. From Sturgeon Bay, to Milwaukee, to Eagle River, to the Dells, to frickin’ Toronto, Canada for a big convention. I even went to Pasadena, California to visit my best friend that moved there and went to the Warner Bros Studios, downtown LA, and even saw the Hollywood Sign. I saw so much, did so much, and made so many memories. During that time, away from the typical things I dealt with back at home, it gave me answers to so many questions I had. That time even helped one of my other best friends in the area and coming to terms with her sexuality. But it answered one big one and I had an answer for myself soon enough; I am gay.

Since then, I’ve continued to meet new people, explore new places, and taken new opportunities that help me reach goals I’ve made for myself and what I want to do in my life. If I never came to terms with myself, I don’t think I would’ve enjoyed life as much as I do now. I never would’ve met so many amazing people. I never would’ve started playing shows again or getting a creative spark for music making again or even starting up a side business. It’s still a bumpy road, but isn’t it for everyone? You got to move forward, challenge yourself, and continue learning. That’s what life seems to be about to me. And I’m glad I see that now.

I’m sure most of the people closest to me have heard this story before so they can figure out who is who, but names shouldn’t be a defining factor here. I wouldn’t be who I am today if it wasn’t for the amazing friends and family I have. My parents; even though some initial concern was shared, their love never changed. My brother; 8 years younger than me and so much more open minded than I ever was when I was his age. My friends I’ve known throughout middle and high school; I’m glad that we still hang out, talk, keep in touch, even with all the problems I caused. My friends I’ve made during and after college; I appreciate everything you guys have shared with me and every chance we get to see each other is something I value highly. My friend who was my “turning point”; I know things can never be the same like before but it’s good to know it’s much better than before. My 3 closest friends; if I never met any of you, I never would’ve came to terms with myself. Now I know who I am. I’m an EDM-loving, music making, goal oriented, cartoon & meme-mimicking, ambitious man that loves taking on a new adventure every chance he can get his hands on and won’t let life’s obstacles hold him back (who happens to be gay). I am who I am and I haven’t felt the need to hide it for the past year now. Thank you all for the impact you’ve made on me.

Let’s see where life takes me next   :)

[shitloadsofwrestling]

Shitloads Of Wrestling Interview: Anthony Toatele [June 12th, 2018]

Straight out of Salt Lake City, Utah, “The Flowin’ Samoan” Anthony Toatele is one of Indiana’s best kept secrets. Trained by Kongo Kong at Bodyslam University, Toatele’s popularity has risen astronomically since his debut five years ago. Along the way, the high-flying technician met his now-wife Kenzi Alexander, and with her by his side, Toatele has proven that he’s a mainstay and will be for years to come. We at SOW got this very cool interview with one of wrestling’s hottest rising stars!

SOW: Every wrestler has their Marvel Origins story on what made them go from being a common man to becoming a professional athlete. Do you remember the moment that you were struck with the idea to buy yourself some boots and tights and become a wrestler?

TOATELE: I was hooked on wrestling as a little kid. Big Hogan and Sting fan, but it was nothing more than a real life cartoon. Fast forward to the age of 12. Summer after 6th grade I’m spending it in SLC with my brother visiting my family. On a Monday night I sat down and came across WWE well F then, RAW. It was the episode where Vince McMahon asked and invited The Rock to come back to television to save the WWF from the WCW/ECW rebellion. I was intrigued, so I decided to tune in the following Monday. Then, he showed up. The Rock graced the little 16 inch TV in my grandparents bedroom and I was hooked! I wanted to be that guy and knew it. I wanted his confidence, his athletic ability, and his swagger. After that, I was all in on everything that I could do to be like The Rock. It was because of him I started playing football. Not well, but I would get better later. I did everything in my middle school years to groom myself to be a pro wrestler. I only did amateur wrestling back then because of guys like Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar. Alas, once I got to high school I figured it was just a silly dream. I watched it, but never considered it. Post-graduation in the year 2007, I had an idea to look into it. I reached out to a school who told me it would cost thousands of dollars for school. I was a broke freshman that couldn’t even make it to my classes so my answer was a quick “Thanks but no thanks”.

Eventually I got back into playing football and decided I wanted to be a professional athlete. I worked my butt off to be the best quarterback I could be. Hard to do for a kid with barely any high school experience and sitting on the couch for 2 years. I did it though getting onto semi-pro teams and indoor football teams throughout the Midwest. Couple years of that though and I realized that I was not getting younger and other players were. I decided to find something better, something more satisfying. My friend and I had been watching wrestling together when we hung out before lifting weights or going to football practice by then. He asked me if I ever considered it as a real thing. I told him not really but I would be willing to. Thanks to Google, I found Bodyslam University and Kongo Kong, with the rest being history.

SOW: When crafting your style, did you have an idea of the kind of wrestler you wanted to become? Perhaps someone you looked up to?

TOATELE: Is it over the top if I say The Rock? When I first started that was the one wrestler I leaned on as far as I style. Eventually though my pallet expanded for more styles and guys to watch and study. CM Punk, Shawn Michaels, Prince Devitt, Dolph Ziggler, and etc were guys I started to really pay attention to. SOW: You've had some very good matches against top quality talent. Are there any matches in particular that stand out as career highlights?

TOATELE: Easy. Billy Gunn and Joey Ryan. Billy was a family friend of my wife’s family. Not to mention, only of the biggest names from the Attitude Era. I wanted to prove to him that I could perform with someone of his caliber. It was the first “big name” I wrestled in front my family and friends in my city.

Joey Ryan is the other one. Joey has this great following and has done wonders to bring eyes to the independent wrestling scene. Similar to Billy, I wanted to show him and the world that I could hang with one of the top guys in wrestling at the time. Still is too!

SOW: As someone who very clearly spends a lot of time in the gym, what kind of music is on your playlist to keep you motivated? Any particular artists or genres?

TOATELE: Ahh man, I hate this question when people ask me…Haha! I’m a big loser when it comes to music in the gym. Most of the time it’s wrestling theme songs. I would say the breakdown is as follows: 55% wrestling themes; 15% Hip-Hop; 15% Hardcore/ Screamo Rock; 10% EDM; 5% sweet movie soundtracks. Artists-wise though, I’ve got Drake, Lil’ Wayne, Limp Bizkit, Public Enemy, Kanye, Metallica, Bring Me The Horizon, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, DJ Khaled, Lil Jon, Outkast, and Imagine Dragons. Yeah that pretty much covers it. Oh wait, and my guys Downstait!

SOW: Correct me if I'm wrong, but professional wrestling introduced you to your wife, Kenzi. How did the two of you meet, and how did it feel to finally pop the question at Indy Pop Con?

TOATELE: You are not! We happened to be training at the same wrestling school. She was already a year in and managing her brother Kharn Alexander. One day in the hot summer of 2013, she happened to show up to a training session. There she was young, innocent, and arm in a sling due to an injury (a torn AC joint and separated collarbone). There I was looking tan, sweaty, and looking I was sculpted out of granite! HAHA! Don’t ask her about that part though, she will disagree. We ended up getting to know each other over the next year or so, and when Kharn decided to leave professional wrestling we decided to partner up. When the stars-aligned and our lives were ready for it, we decided to give dating a try.

Indy Pop Con was an experience! I was a nervous wreck going into that weekend, mainly because I knew what was on the menu Saturday. My flair for the dramatic led me to set up the proposal while we were on stage for a panel. So when it came time, I was sweating bullets. Once I popped the questions though and the waterworks started, I was ecstatic. We were married on August 12, 2017 and we haven’t looked back

SOW: You've had a lot of great matches against talent both local to the area and national. What have been some of your favorite feuds, and what matches do you think were defining in those feuds?

TOATELE: The first feud that really started my career was me and Alexander S. Kirk. He wanted my girl and she didn’t want him…Classic story of a guy just not know when to quit. We had some great matches that ended with an “I Quit” match at the now defunct Strong Style Wrestling.

After that I would have to say the ongoing rivalry/ feud with Jason Saint. It, literally, has been going on for years! It started at World’s Finest Wrestling when he managed Cliff Compton vs myself with Kenzi. Then, it went to NWA – Circle City Wrestling where he managed the monster known as Zodiak. On to FWF, where I took on Adam Bueller. Finally most recently, at Wrestling Theology where I beat his man, Jeremy Hadley, to advance to the semi-finals for the heavyweight championship. Every match, every opponent Jason has put against me really has made me up my game and I think the crowd has always gotten their money’s worth with those matches.

SOW: Say you won $10 million and you were given the opportunity to sign any professional wrestlers to a startup company. What matches would Anthony Toatele book himself in, featuring current stars of today's product?

TOATELE: Ahh…I see what we did here. You want me to do a list ala Cody Rhodes. Ok, let’s do this. Matches I would use my finances to put myself in (talk about heat with some of the boys if I say it like that…):

Adam Cole, Cody Rhodes, Sami Callihan, Shane Mercer, Zachary Wentz, Kevin Owens, Seth Rollins, The Miz, EC3, The Young Bucks, Adam Page, Jay Lethal, Myron Reed, Okada, Jake Something…

I think that is plenty of options! I would want to face guys from all over the world and from different styles and backgrounds. You don’t become the best in the world by staying on your couch.

SOW: Over the course of the next 5 years, ideally, where would you like to see Anthony Toatele and Kenzi? Do you see yourselves becoming prominent features in professional wrestling?

TOATELE: Ideally, I want to be wrestling all over the world. I think that traveling the world and meeting fans from different corners of the planet would be amazing. Depending on how small or big our family will be in 5 years will really dictate Kenzi’s schedule but I can’t imagine having some of the biggest matches in my career without her by my side. So if we have to load up all the kids, by golly we will! Our goal has always been to see how far we can take our careers in the business of professional wrestling. Wrestling is changing and fans want to get to know those involved. I think hopefully in the near future, we will have some projects that will help our fans do that.

SOW: What do you think the number one draw of professional is? What do you think the biggest allure of the sport is that keeps people watching?

TOATELE: I honestly think that draw comes from the story we tell. The same themes that make successful dramas, comedies, romantic stories all of it can be found in professional wrestling under the guise of a physical competition. People can find their own favorites and connect with them.

The biggest allure of the sport is the wrestlers! Where else can you find real-life superheroes or villains combined with movie and TV stars? We as wrestlers are out there to entertain the people, and if we can do that, they will always come back. Not too many other sports give you the ability to see such well-known human themes played out in front of them involving their favorite athletes. You don’t see Tom Brady punching someone in the face for mistakenly thinking he’s coming after Gisselle. SOW: How can your fans keep up with your work on social media?

TOATELE: Easy enough! Twitter is just @anthonytoatele and the same for Instagram. Find me on Facebook and friend me, as well as give my fan page a “like”.

[myprincecandy]

[ENG] ZTAO in L’officiel Hommes China 2017 special edition

MANY POSSIBILITIES: HUANG ZITAO, BREAKING OUT & SHOWING THERE’S MORE THAN ONE SIDE TO HIM

When talking about people in the entertainment industry who are still able to maintain being true to themselves, we believe that the name Huang Zitao pops up immediately. Rather than just attributing it to him being a type AB, why not say that it’s because our “30-year-old! Tao” keeps being a “3-year-old! Tao” at heart. Having so many sides to him allows him to retain more of the potential & possibilities in his character amidst the ever-changing public sentiments

In the 5 years since he became an artist, Huang Zitao is often at the centre of various hot topics. But the public knows and understands very little about how he is really like. Be it the memes, the top searches or being a magnet for negative and hostile attention…..all those are merely a snapshot of his personality taken out of context. We might even say that his character’s been over-simplified. Either he’s the arrogant and blunt 3-year-old!Tao or the considerate and mature 30-year-old!Tao. Rarely is there a chance for him to completely show the side of him that’s paradoxical and not as adorable. The many sides to his personality only truly became more concrete to people, after the aid of the many variety shows and movies. The charm exuded from the variety show, shown as he transitioned from the unruly rookie to becoming the “soldier king” who’s so passionate about the army, provided a whole new perspective of him to viewers. So it turns out that the Huang Zitao of many memes and controversies, is actually very adorable, funny, real & slightly narcissistic. Yet when his teammates are facing hard times, he chooses to quietly support them from behind. This lets many people see the considerate, heart-warming and sensitive side of him. 

ALWAYS EXPLORING NEW SIDES TO HIMSELF

Huang Zitao never seems to run out of things to say when chatting about his days in the army. Because that has left him with too many touching memories. “The last time I cried, it was when I was still in the army. Because I really couldn’t bear to leave my fellow comrades and squad leaders. I feel that if I am not a singer, I would definitely go join the army!” Huang Zitao, who constantly surprises the masses, has attracted more attention through his multifaceted personality.

And this generous display to the outside world, as shown in the variety shows, is still, in the end, a way to attract more people to his infinite potential in music and acting. Huang Zitao says that he won’t be taking part in any reality tv shows for the time being. It is, after all, a means to bring more attention to his works. His focus, from now on, will still be on music and dramatic works. In the music that he’s released this year, he’s used the style of EDM (electronic dance music) to create a new C-POP song “Time”. In terms of fashion, he has tried different possibilities. In the drama “The Brightest star in the Sky”, he’s not only playing the lead and investing in the project. He’s also serving, for the first time, as the drama’s music producer. As he takes on more roles and gets every more enriching exposures to different areas of work, Huang Zitao’s constantly exploring new sides to himself along with everyone. He doesn’t set limits for himself and he doesn’t want to be typecast. The “3-year-old! Tao” is a free spirit, pursuing his true happiness to the end. The “30-year-old! Tao” is determined and responsible, never letting the past trap or stop him, and never fearing the future. After all, the future’s always new and unexpected. There are too few interesting souls out there. So perhaps you should keep an eye and look forward to Huang Zitao. 

BEING HONEST AND FRANK IS NOT A CHARACTER SETTING FOR ME

From being the “honest and frank” boy to the “untamed horse in the military”, if you are still sticking labels on to Huang Zitao, then perhaps you have missed too many interesting sides to him. His participation in the variety shows have gained him loads of attention and fans, but that’s just to help him get people to recognize his infinite potential in music and acting. He’s both “3-year-old! Tao” and “30-year-old! Tao” , maintaining a youthful heart while being very grounded. 

When you enter the words “Huang Zitao” into a search engine, it will show you gazillions of search results, with related searches like “Huang Zitao memes”, “Huang Zitao hats” & “Huang zitao rap”. To people who don’t quite understand him, these few labels form what the public sees of Huang Zitao, a topic generator. After all the debate and controversies, nowadays, the image that Huang Zitao gives to people is more of the forthright, and spontaneous sort. Even though it looks a little like a total reborn/remaking of him to people who don’t know him, all along he’s only just been using his own ways to face the trials and challenges. Despite the fact that planning and pre-setting how his life would pan out would be a steadier choice, he has never intended to live that way. To use his own words, “There’s really no “setting” per se to my character. I’m just being myself. Oftentimes the AB side of me would show itself, and that’s the “3-year-old! Tao” and “30-year-old! Tao” . Sometimes even I don’t know which side would surface.”

The unpredictability of Huang Zitao, is actually a choice to reclaim and live life as true to oneself as possible. In this complicated entertainment industry, and operating outside of those “pre-set answers and moves”, he always sounds true and full of confidence. He attributes all that as part of his style. With him, there’s no “unspoken rules”. The only rule is to be happy. The AB side of him, is something that’s really within all of us. All the self-praise and recognition that we deem as vain, all the weaknesses and wilfulness that we seem to want to hide from others, or the tiny temper tantrums that are not accepted in the adult’s world… Those are things that he “3-year-old! Tao” expresses in its most primitive form. Naturally, that very real and open-mindedness about him, is all the more easily accepted and loved by this world which is governed by too many rules and restrictions. Some people may teach you how to negotiate your way through the world, but Huang Zitao only wishes to say to you, “don’t hold your true self back”.

The genius “3-year-old! Tao”

“Perfect side profile”, “great chest muscles”, “self-proclaimed genius”… Huang Zitao’s praise of himself never fails to ignite waves of searches on weibo. All the “golden quotes” he utters, always becomes the focal point of people’s discussions. This generous praise of himself and the way he lives so feely, has helped Huang Zitao find his own set of “rules of survival in the entertainment world”. That is how Zitao, who knows himself sufficiently well and is sure of the direction he wishes to pursue, has found a more direct way to show his true self and ambition. Not bothering to waste time on explanations but rather, focusing on doing things seriously and letting time prove everything.

After the first incident where he was late to a fashion event, most people felt that he would probably stay away from anything fashion related. A blogger even asked in an interview last year, “Why do you still dare to come, after the backlash that happened after your previous fashion week visit?” Huang Zitao calmly expressed that, “The only thing that incident made him do, was to want to make sure that he will not be late the next time. So, in the fashion events that followed, he would get to the venue 2 hours ahead of time. This has also become a standard for him. Be it filming on set or waiting, he will not attempt to explain too much about the incidents. The correct way to resolve that is by improving himself and showing it through his actions.

That’s how Huang Zitao treats his mistakes, and that’s also how he treats misunderstandings about him. “When other people misunderstand you, they might not listen to any explanations you may offer. But the fact remains and so you must wait, wait for time to prove that you are right.” So at the height of all those controversies, despite how shaken he felt deep inside, he still chose to remain silent. He went to the States to work on his music, choosing to immerse himself entirely in work. Not explaining nor shying away. Letting time wash away the mud, and show how he is truly like. That rare silence is an interesting contrast to how frank he is these days. “Don’t care about those gossip and rumours, but longs for recognition of his works”. That’s the source of everything.  In Huang Zitao’s minds, it seems that there’s always a compass. He knows where he comes from and at the same time, he never forgets, what he needs to do to get to where he wants to be. There will always be obstacles in the way forward, which causes some to waver or become lost. “Your self-confidence is not built on how much recognition others can give you. Rather it’s more of whether you are in control of your self-confidence. What abilities do you possess that gives yourself that confidence? What is it in your that lets others believe in what you tell them? Well, the answer is in your actions.” Huang Zitao has said that in conclusion during several interviews.  All his flamboyance, carefreeness and self-confidence are all built upon this.

He started working and earning money at the age of 15, debuting at 19, and starting out again to focus on his music and acting at 22. Up until today, this is what he has to say “I think it’s my belief and determination that has allowed me to arrive at where I am today. Don’t care about what others say about you, or what they feel that you can’t possibly do. You yourself have to believe that you can do it, and then proceed to achieve it, one step at a time.” As “30-year-old! Tao” said that, all the brashness of youth is gone from him. Each word is uttered like an oath engraved upon his heart.

“30-year-old! Tao” has this to say

“The things that don’t kill us, only makes us stronger.” That’s the promotional slogan of the the drama “The Negotiator”, of which Huang Zitao is the male lead. Huang Zitao, who is really only just starting out in the TV/movie industry, is almost an unstoppable force. From his first major role in the movie “Railroad Tigers”, to the drama “The Negotiators” where he teams up with Yang Mi, he’s releasing 3 movies and 2 dramas in less than a year. Working non-stop, Huang Zitao’s still filming “The brightest star in the sky” now. It seems that a lot of times, he prefers to move and not stop. Practising, absorbing and changing like a workaholic. Because “it’s more enriching to be constantly working”

Huang Zitao, who once said candidly that he doesn’t really watch movies, may be mistaken as one who’s “good at nothing”. As to the public who has doubts about his acting, he has responded with his “being a genius”. But behind all that joking around, is the actual experience he’s accumulated through the constant learning in the various projects he’s taken on. It’s the norm for actors to have to wait in between scenes. Some may choose to chit chat, read a book or even play games. Huang Zitao uses it to learn from the others. Through the director’s discussions with other actors, through observing, taking notes, and going through scenes with every actor, through taking on characters that are closer in various aspects to how he is. Through all that, he’s learning the rules of acting, and has begun to break those rules to mould it in into something that’s his own style. It’s like how he first started composing, making music. There’s always a memo on his musical inspirations in Huang Zitao’s phone. No matter when it is, so long as inspiration comes, he doesn’t want to miss this “luck”. Only when he notes it down or has the melody recorded will he feel at ease. It’s also like his determination in filming action movies. Combing the many years of his training with his acting ability, working hard to release his potential and show what he has learned in the captured scenes. This maybe what constitutes the “genius” in Huang Zitao, that so many co-workers and senior actors see in him.

To himself, he’s very strict. To his co-workers, he’ll try hard to build the rapport. He sets very high goals for himself, but during work, is very humble. His personality is such that he doesn’t want to disappoint the crew’s expectations in him and the efforts they’ve put in. During the filming of “Railroad Tigers”, not even being covered with chicken pox and sub-zero temperatures could keep him from taking part in filming. And it’s all so that he won’t be the cause of delays in the filming schedule. This made Jackie Chan give him high praises. In the beginning stages of filming “Edge of Innocence”, the entire crew had doubts about his acting ability and attitude. But with his insistence on not using doubles in fight scenes, and him continuing without complaint to finish his scenes despite having been accidentally injured by the stunt guys, he ultimately won the recognition of everyone.

In filming “The Negotiator”, Huang Zitao kept more of his time to be alone with the character he plays, “Xie Xiaofei”. This is so that he can examine the similarities and differences between his own growing up experiences with the character’s. The naivete that’s a result of an affluent background with no major setbacks in life, the ambition towards his career and life after growing up, are parts that he can pull readily from his own experiences. At the same time, he’s able to spend more effort in working on the parts which he doesn’t have. He finds his way of portraying the character through acting and discussions. Acting to him is, “all about focus. That and being diligent and getting into the character. The more you can get in character, the more perfectly it is being portrayed. As to my acting skills… well, in the past, all that stuff about being a genius... it’s all joking. I know I still have much room for improvement, and so I’ll learn more things, to change all that’s bad about me. It doesn’t matter if people remembers me or not. What matters is that they remember the character “Xie Xiaofei”.

Q&A

Q: What role do you play in “The Negotiator”? What are the similarities or differences between the role and you?

A: I’m playing “Xie Xiaofei”. He’s someone who changes and grows up a lot in the show. In the beginning, he’s the sort who might not really care about a lot of things. Because life has been smooth-sailing for him. He changed quite a bit after going through a lot, and becomes more mature in his life and career. But I’m quite different from him. I’ve gone to work when I was young and made my debut at a relatively young age. So, my mental state’s probably around 30-40 years old. I do find a lot of what Xie Xiaofei does in the earlier parts of the drama childish. But that confidence and ambition he has towards his career after he matures is still pretty much like me.

Q: What’s the most boring bit about filming that you find, when compare to making music? How do you handle those negative emotions?

A: When I’m writing songs I’m usually alone, so I feel that time passes very quickly. But filming is something done by a lot of people together, so there will be a lot of wait time. Because I’m the sort who will wait by the side if I don’t have any scenes, so that in the event when they do need me, I can go over immediately. As such, there’s quite a bit of time spent just waiting. But actually, it’s still fine, because that is something that you, as an actor, must done.

Q: Between the set and the recording studio, which is the one that makes your “nerves shake”?

A: Right now, actually it’s both. But if I must choose one, it would be the recording studio. But it would be shaking because of excitement

Q: What do you think about the issue of extensive use of green screens/CGI (note: more to save time actors have to spend on set etc.) in the filming of dramas? Are there any “unspoken rules” in the industry that you are not comfortable with?

A: Actually, I do not support the use of that technique. But a lot of times, due to the requirements from the crew, and for post-production, it would be utilised. So, it’s unavoidable in a way I guess. But I don’t know what are “unspoken rules”. In any case, there are none with me.

Q: Do your desires or wants change according to increases in your income?

A: No. All the material stuff around you don’t really matter. What you want to persist and maintain is your pursuit of your dreams and beliefs. That’s the true meaning of life.

Q: Occasionally we see you clocking your hours at the gym through your posts online. When did you started taking note of your health, and started to work out? What plans have you put in place and how do you guarantee that you follow them through?

A: I started working out before the concert tour began this year. Back then it was so that I would have better stamina for the concert. Later on, it was so that I would be in better shape for filming in the new drama. But now working out has become a habit. If I don’t go running and exercising every day, I would feel weird. And I’ve been eating more healthily now.

Q: Would you watch movies to help you improve your acting? Do you watch your own movies? How does it feel to watch yourself on the big screen?

A: I don’t really have much time to rest, so I have had no time to go and watch movies. I can only learn and improve myself in the process of filming. It’s still rather interesting to watch my own movies. Sometimes I can get back into character just by watching it for a short while. By recalling how that character was feeling then, it really makes you feel for him.

-      Source of scans: lunchbox0502

[bthenoise]

Q&A: EDM Extraordinaire Kayzo Details Metalcore Collabs, Shaq Mosh Pits, Skrillex And More

If you’ve been asking yourself why you’re starting to see more and more Warped Tour artists pop up in the EDM scene, you can probably thank electronic artist Kayzo.

Working with the likes of All Time Low, Blessthefall, Memphis May Fire, Our Last Night, Of Mice & Men and more for his new album Unleashed, the up-and-coming producer is slowly but surely bringing his love of pop-punk and metalcore into the world of EDM.

“I started to listen to these songs with these melodies and these harmonies and there was this connection that I felt from that world to the world where I'm currently working,” Kayzo explains. “There was an ‘Aha’ moment or a light bulb and I was like, ‘Wow! This could be really, really interesting bringing my past that I grew up on into the electronic music in my life today.” 

Crediting his Papa Roach remix of “Last Resort” as the launching pad for his EDM-meets-metal idea and the key for working with other well-known artists, Kayzo has now collaborated with big-name acts like Underoath, Sum 41 and the late We Came As Romans vocalist Kyle Pavone.

Getting a chance to talk with the budding EDM superstar, we were able to dive into his thoughts on A Day To Remember and Mashmello working together plus why it took so long for metalcore and EDM to collaborate even though Skrillex (aka Sonny Moore of From First To Last) is one of the biggest DJs in the world.  

To check out our chat with the forward-thinking musician, be sure to look below. Afterward, make sure to grab a copy of Unleashed here.

We recently got to catch your buddy DJ Diesel, aka Shaquille O'Neal, out at Lollapolooza. How did that relationship start between you guys?

KAYZO: He's a really big advocate of innovation within electronic music. I saw him in Miami at Ultra [Music Festival] and from then the friendship started. He's just like a really, really cool guy and he'll come to me and be like, "Can you maybe show me around electronic music?" and he's been doing it for such a long time now actually.

That's pretty cool. So his EDM career is legit?  

Oh, 110%.   

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by KAYZO (@kayzomusic) on Jul 26, 2019 at 2:49pm PDT

That's awesome. And obviously, that video went viral of him moshing. Are mosh pits pretty common at EDM concerts?

Yeah, I would say so. I probably see, especially during my shows, pretty much like three-to-four a night. I’d say they have sort of become a staple in electronic shows and festivals.

Going back to Shaq, that's sort of an interesting transition into your new record Unleashed. Considering he's not someone you'd expect to get into EDM, you're similarly stepping into the metalcore world which some people might not expect to translate into electronic music. What influenced you to pursue artists like Blessthefall, Memphis May Fire and Of Mice & Men?

I was really happy I got a chance to work with those guys on the album. I kinda grew up listening to rock and pop-punk and all that stuff so it wasn't a thing I stumbled upon more or less, it was just kind of what I grew up listening to. So for me, it was just more of a natural transition. I would say 2016 was when I first started to think about doing this. There's a point in time I'll never forget: I was driving home and I was just thinking like I should play electronic and dance and all that stuff. And I'm driving home, and I'm just kinda thinking about it, I was listening to something in my car and I was like, "God, everything sounds exactly the same and I'm kind of going around in spirals right now.” And so, I was like, "What am I going to do?” Like, “How am I going to be inspired?" So I kinda just went through old music of mine in the car and I found a bunch of old bands like old Sum 41, old Bring Me the Horizon, old A Day to Remember and old All Time Low.

It was kinda like a light bulb went off. I started to listen to these songs with these melodies and these harmonies and there was this connection that I felt from that world to the world where I'm currently working. There was an "Aha" moment or a light bulb and I was like, “Wow! This could be really, really interesting bringing my past that I grew up on into the electronic music in my life today.” 

That’s awesome.

Yeah, that was the first moment. And obviously, there was different experimenting sonically with the music and writing-wise with other artists. So there's been a lot of different challenges. But just being able to put aside everything that is going on in electronic music in the past few years is cool and sticking to my guns being like, “Well, this is what I really want to do. This is what I'm passionate about. I'm gonna do it no matter if people like it or not. People are going to catch on, they're gonna understand it eventually.” So I just want to continue to do it. And so, by doing that, I was able to kind of continue building relationships with other artists in the rock scene and little by little I was able to recruit higher profile artists which then brought other high profile artists into the mix. We would do collabs with like Underoath or like the “Last Resort” remix for Papa Roach, those are the cosigns that helped me kinda get my foot in the door with other bands like Blessthefall, All Time Low, Our Last Night and other bands like that. So it's been a long road, to say the least. But a very, very inspiring and rewarding journey to get to this album.

Assuming you're probably one of the first EDM artists to take on the metalcore and pop-punk scene as much as you have, are you surprised with Skrillex being one of the biggest DJs in the world, it's taken this long for collaborations like this to happen?

I'm not surprised because I think he comes from the opposite end of the spectrum coming from the band world with From First To Last. Coming into the world of electronic music, I think as an artist, we always want to find something new to explore and I think for him, he had already been in that world for so long and [he’s] done that. Just speaking off what I think, I think when he got into electronic music and found his sound and motivation and got involved with such high caliber main stage artists and had the chance to work with other massive producers, I think he needed to kind of experiment with pop and work with [artists like] Justin Bieber. 

So no, I'm not surprised it took this long because I don't know if [Skrillex] is coming from the same place that I'm coming from. I get listening to rock music and being a fan of metal and pop-punk and whatnot but he's [actually] in that industry and so I think for him, this was a way to do something new which maybe didn't involve that. So I think that's maybe why it's taken longer. And there's also not that many people overall in the entire scene that like this type of music, like rock music, and can relate to the energy. 

What were your feelings when the A Day To Remember and Marshmello collab came out? Were you excited because it would open more people's eyes to your music or were you bummed because you wanted to do it first? 

I was really excited. I mean, I'm a good friend of his and I had known about that song for a really long time. He had shown it to me forever ago. We all kind of grew up listening to some of the same music and so for them to do that I think it's awesome. I was really excited for them. And I mean also, like you said, I’m excited for the music itself to have another outlet on a mainstream platform ... Working with a band like A Day to Remember and building that name and that sound into [Marshmello’s] world, I think further extends the opportunities for all of us.

Are there other artists you tried to get for Unleashed but couldn’t? How about some you aspire to collaborate with soon? 

I wouldn't say there were any that I didn't get a chance to work with because they didn't want to. I think I just had so many people in mind who I'd love to work with and such a limited amount of time with their schedules and mine and whatnot. But I definitely have a list and I'm always working on music, so I've already got a ton of bands and artists that I've already reached out to and plan on working with in the studio or wherever I can in the next few months to start writing material. I've got a pretty good list [of bands I want to] work with -- obviously, bands like Bring Me the Horizon and those guys that I'm like super inspired by. I would love to eventually work with them. But I've got a lot of other bands that I'm excited to get in the studio with. I'm gonna start working with Atreyu, I've spoken with I Prevail, Wage War and a bunch of other bands like that. So there's a lot more coming after this album. I'm pretty excited.

As you probably know, the metalcore and pop-punk world can be a little close-minded at times, unlike the EDM scene. Were any artists hesitant about working with you fearing they might be seen as selling out?

I don't think so. I was fortunate to work with a bunch of really open-minded artists from the rock world that are either experimenting with electronic sounds in their own records or have been a fan of electronic music one way or another. So when I got in the studio with bands like, you know, Blessthefall, Our Last Night and Underoath, they were open [to collaborations]. I don't think they were too worried about dealing with any backlash. 

Did you ever want to play any metalcore or pop-punk growing up before you got into EDM?

I was such a big fan of it but at that time, I grew up playing hockey and I was in a sports background my whole life. I played hockey from age three to nineteen and that was the only thing I ever did because I wanted to play pro hockey so badly ... so I didn't get a chance. I put so much energy into hockey my entire upbringing but [being in a band] was always something I wanted to do for fun. I just never had the time. 

If you could trade your musical career for a career in the NHL, would you?

Absolutely not. I love hockey. As much as I enjoyed playing it, it's more of a passion of mine in terms of watching as a fan now. I really found my true passion and love when I decided to make music and kind of express myself in a different way. So I couldn't trade this for anything.

Which collaboration on Unleashed do you think you’re the proudest of?

That's tough. I'm proud of a lot of them for so many different reasons but I would say if I had to pick one I'd be most proud of it’d be the one I did called "LA Never Says Goodbye" with ARMNHMR and Kyle Pavone. It was such a devasting thing for [Kyle] to pass last year. Being able to have his last vocals, his last record and have it come out the way it did and give him the chance to have his voice heard and continue to be heard down the line and forever really, it's just a really awesome thing to experience even in such a sad time. So I'm just really proud that song was able to come out and get the attention it deserves. Kyle put so much into that song, I think it's going to resonate with people on so many different levels down the line, whether they're sad or smiling or whatever. So I think being able to have Kyle still be a voice for something really makes me happy. So I would say that one.

That song has definitely connected with a lot of people.   

Yeah, I was very fortunate to get to know him and work with him.

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 28th July 2019

This is going to be pretty short and rushed I imagine, but we’ll see.

Top 10

Now, we have a funny top four, similarly to last week, full of Ed Sheeran, but not at our top spot, as “Senorita” by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello is back at #1 for a second week after our number-two took it last week.

Our number-two, by the way, down one spot from last week, is “Beautiful People” by Ed Sheeran featuring Khalid. Now, the rest of the top four is Ed Sheeran.

First of all, at number-three, we have “I Don’t Care” featuring Justin Bieber returning at number-three, which, due to nonsensical chart rules, must be some kind of record for highest re-entry ever on the chart. We’ll talk about this more in the dropouts section.

Oh, yeah, and to my surprise, “Cross Me”, also by Ed Sheeran, featuring Chance the Rapper and PNB Rock is not moving at number-four. I figured this one would be in freefall.

Thanks to a Justin Bieber remix, and well, not much else, Billie Eilish’s “bad guy” is up eleven spaces to number-five? I’m puzzled about this one, honestly, if anyone could tell me what happened here I’d appreciate it; this should be floundering in the top 30 right now.

Thanks to the rise of “bad guy”, however, Lewis Capaldi’s “Hold Me While You Wait” is down a spot to number-six. Please drop off quicker, I’m begging you.

Also down a single spot on the chart is AJ Tracey’s “Ladbroke Grove” at number-seven.

Eilish claims another victim as MIST and Fredo’s “So High” is also down one spot to number-eight. Don’t worry, all of these songs will rebound.

Oh, and “Wish You Well” by Sigala and Becky Hill is also down a space to number-nine, but I’m still disputing the fact that song exists.

The #10 spot is, once again, held by Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, Young Thug, Mason Ramsey and now that guy from BTS. Congratulations on a record-breaking 17th week at #1 in the US, but here in Britain, it seems oddly stable at #10, I expect streaming cuts to kill it any time now.

Climbers

Freya Ridings’ “Castles” is up eight more spaces off the debut two or so weeks ago, entering the top 20 at #18 and becoming her second ever single to chart there. I’m not complaining, it’s a pretty good song. Outside of the top 20, we have only one other gain here, and that’s “Ritual” by Tiesto, Jonas Blue and Rita Ora gaining more traction than I expected 12 spaces up to #28. I hope this doesn’t reach the top 20, it’s pretty trite and honestly would make an awful fit for Ora’s next album whenever in the next decade that comes out.

Fallers

We have plenty of these, however. First of all, “Goodbyes”  by Post Malone and Young Thug continues its unfortunate slow-burning dive down five spots to #17, with “Someone You Loved” close in front by Lewis Capaldi at #19, thankfully down five spaces from last week. It’s not fast enough, but I’m just glad this is on its way out. D-Block Europe’s “Home” is down five to #25 after surprisingly staying pretty stable on its second week. The biggest surprise here, yet at the same time not a surprise to me at all, is Krept & Konan’s “I Spy” with Headie One and K-Trap collapsing down 14 positions to #32. While most British trap has a pretty short chart run, I at least expected this to last longer than any given D-Block Europe song. Oh, and “One Touch” by Jess Glynne and Jax Jones is on its way out down seven spots to #35 after pretty much flopping, especially considering it’s a Glynne lead single.

Dropouts & Returning Entries

Thanks to a nonsensical UK chart rule that to be fair made sense for situations like an Ed Sheeran album bomb, “Take Me Back to London” featuring Stormzy disappears entirely from its number-three debuts last week, and was replaced by “I Don’t Care”, which dropped out from #2 last week. It must be really confusing for those who don’t know all the chart rules to see stuff like this. Elsewhere, we have a couple dropouts so the new arrivals can move in, with “Bounce Back” by Little Mix proving that the damage control single doesn’t work, after dropping out of the top 40 in its sixth week from #34. Miley Cyrus’ “Mother’s Daughter” is out from #36, which isn’t a surprise, and neither is “Love of My Life” by Remedee, Not3s and Young Adz dropping out off the debut at #37. Young Thug’s “The London” with J. Cole and Travis Scott is also out from #38 and since we have no returning entries, let’s get straight to the new arrivals.

NEW ARRIVALS

#40 – “RAN$OM” – Lil Tecca

Produced by Nick Mira and Taz Taylor – Peaked at #11 in Canada and #19 in the US

I really did not want to talk about this song. This is... “Lil Tecca”’s first UK Top 40 hit (Yes, that is his name, it’s dreadful) and the 16-year-old’s first major-label single. He has like eight songs out and he’s essentially a younger, less interesting or even convincing A Boogie wit da Hoodie clone. A Boogie even has a song called “Ransom” that sparked a lot of buzz in him back when he started out. Some may say it’s the melodic New York trap scene repeating itself, I say it’s a clear “Homage” (Read: trend-hopping and copying another rapper for the sake of this complete nobody getting a lot bigger, especially now he has a label behind him). Nobody is talking about how he’s probably some kind of industry plant because nobody cares about the person, Lil Tecca, they care about the song, “Ransom”. This guy has no star power at all or even any potential as a legitimately interesting artist. Okay, let’s stop stalling and get to the meat and potatoes of this song, which are that hook and that video. The video, while uninteresting, was directed by Cole Bennett of Lyrical Lemonade and hence propelled the song to, you know, any sense of popularity, which it wouldn’t have gathered before at all, at least not to the heights of a worldwide smash and top 20 hit in the US. God, this guy infuriates me. I’m definitely going to talk about this song a bit more in January, if you catch my drift, but essentially, this song is melodic trap boiled down to its essence, with a Lil Tjay type beat carrying a Juice WRLD type rapper. There’s one barely-a-verse which lasts about 24 seconds, but the issue is the song is two minutes and 11 seconds long, and, yes, that chorus is infectious but not nearly as powerful as he thinks it is to carry the song for this long, especially since he has no charisma. It sounds like a Python programme wrote and performed a rap song, it really is some of the most monotonous, non-descript garbage to come out of SoundCloud rap. I hate this, it’s definitely on my worst list for 2019, and next!

#38 – “Sorry” – Joel Corry

Produced by Joel Corry

Is it bad that my first observation about this song is that some rapper is going to mention this in a sappy out-of-character love ballad? I mean, think about it, “Sorry” and Joel Corry rhyme. It’s going to happen. Anyway, who’s Joel Corry, you ask? Good question. His Wikipedia page or lack thereof redirects me to a record label called Ostereo which seems pretty successful, and they have a tiny paragraph on Corry. Apparently, he started establishing himself as a DJ on the MTV reality show Jersey Shore. This isn’t looking great, I know, but bear with me, he’s also a body-builder and now presents a radio show on KISS FM. Okay, so, really, much like Lil Tecca, he’s a complete nobody who got picked up by some big label who couldn’t care less about artistic intent, except this is a little more intriguing, considering Ostereo is an independent label and Joel Corry is a DJ, so I’m assuming it’s EDM and I’m right, but it seems snipped from a DJ set. You can tell in the intro, it sounds like the end of a song and an abrupt bleep transition, maybe that’s just for artistic effect but it doesn’t sound great. This is pretty standard deep pop-house, with an unnamed female vocalist singing over a lot of snare and keys, with plenty orchestral stabs to remind you a song is playing. Albeit oddly-mixed at times, the build-up is pretty affective, the drums sound cheap as hell though, as does that drop, it’s really anti-climactic and doesn’t really work at all. The final build-up and drop is admittedly pretty epic though, it gets rid of the anti-climactic minimalism and leaves just a club-ready synth melody over a lot of strings, it sounds really cool is what I’m saying. The build-up itself is manic as well, very interesting, and the singer seems to be a sample from Monsta Boy’s “Sorry! (I Didn’t Know)” featuring Denzie, and, yes, I know samples aren’t typically considered guest spots but the female vocalist is instrumental to this song and its success so surely a featured credit wouldn’t hurt. It’s not Denzie, and by the way, this is so much better than that Monsta Boy song thanks to how Denzie is one of the most incompetent singers known to man, and this female vocalist is actually pretty talented despite singing the exact same lyrics, and referencing Brandy, as in “The Boy is Mine” Brandy, which was unexpected. I’ve searched it up and I can’t find her anywhere, not even on the Genius page, so to me this is just a bit of a douche move.

Edit: I’ve done some extra research and the vocalist is Hayley May. It’s also from the Love Island soundtrack apparently, which makes me like the song a lot less on principle. I’d love to see more from May though, she doesn’t even have a writing credit on this song.

#36 – “Hate Me” – Ellie Goulding and Juice WRLD

Produced by Jason Evigan and The Monsterz & the Strangerz – Peaked at #18 in Hungary and #82 in the US

Oh, Ellie Goulding exists. Yeah, I forgot about that. Listen, I don’t hate Ellie Goulding, far from it, I think she’s fine, but at least lately after about 2015 or so, she has not been nearly as interesting as I want her to be, especially because the songwriting chops are definitely there. When I saw her collaborate with emo-rapper Juice WRLD of all people, I knew this would be far from interesting or good so I’m honestly starting to lose hope in that upcoming album, especially since her other singles “Sixteen” and “Close to Me” were far from special. This is Goulding’s 22nd(!) UK Top 40 hit and Juice WRLD’s third, and, yeah, this isn’t great. That hook is really desperate and this would work if her delivery wasn’t bratty and the lyrics really don’t fit and it feels very cluttered and rushed, like they’re just trying to get it over with... which makes sense, I mean that’s the topic of the song but it’s not convincing, because she wants an answer and she wants it quick, so she’d stop at nothing, surely, but the song’s really short and doesn’t really have any lasting impact. Juice WRLD doesn’t freaking exist, gladly, he doesn’t even join in with the chorus really, which by the third repetition gets really aggravating. The production is an airy mess with trap percussion and cloudy synths that cover Juice WRLD’s vocoder-fuelled performance to the point of not being able to recognise him. It’s not good at all, but I feel it’s just tolerable and bland enough for me to not dislike it. I never thought I’d say this, but Lil Peep did it better.

#12 – “How Do You Sleep?” – Sam Smith

Produced by Ilya – Peaked at #4 in Singapore and #29 in the US

Sam Smith’s second single from this upcoming new album and era, after the success of “Dancing with a Stranger” with Normani, seems to be a lot more energetic especially in comparison with his other two albums he’s released. He seems to have ditched the shoddy pop-soul and has gone straight into more danceable territory, which I’m not complaining about. I loved him on “Latch” and “La La La”, and thought “Dancing with a Stranger” was pretty cool, but other than that there’s not a single song by Smith that I like. Anyway, this is his 14th UK Top 40 hit, and you know what, it’s not bad at all. I love the twinkling synths that carry the song’s main melody, they’re cute but paired with trap percussion and intense sub bass can come off as both oddly sinister as well as infatuated, fitting with the content and subject matter of this song, in which Smith questions how his partner sleeps when he has Smith tangled in a toxic relationship which he can’t get out of, and that “love will keep them up tonight”. I love the second verse, where Smith admits he’s lost himself in his relationship through his subtly Auto-Tuned vocals that are still pretty impressive. The chorus is incredibly catchy while still being powerful and despite all this, that drop kind of sucks. After a great vocoder vocal bridge, the drop is really weak and squeaky, especially with that screechy synth tone, which doesn’t sound as melodramatic or pained as the rest of the song, and instead sounds incredibly lazy. It might grow on me, as the weeping of the drop is kind of humorous right now but could easily fit in with the song’s overall tone and mood, but we’ll see. Overall, this song surprised me, it’s actually really good bar from the trap and EDM elements possibly bogging it down a bit, I think Smith’s songwriting is definitely what shines here instead of Ilya’s production, which is disappointing since I usually love his production.

Conclusion

Yeah, I’m shocked too, but Best of the Week goes to Sam Smith for “How Do You Sleep?”, and Honourable Mention is reluctantly going to “Love Island anthem”, “Sorry” by Joel Corry featuring Hayley May, even if it’s not all that good, only decent. Dishonourable Mention is going to Ellie Goulding and Juice WRLD for “Hate Me” because of course it is, and Worst of the Week should be pretty damn obvious, it’s Lil Tecca’s for “RAN$OM”. Follow me on Twitter @cactusinthebank for more musical ramblings and I’ll see you next week.

hideu

[randomprose]

title: all i see is dominoes falling up | Read on AO3 summary: krtsk train!au. tsukki is some sort of a famous DJ and kuroo is a fan but doesn’t know who he is. they meet at the train. kuroo’s POV.

a/n: i was listening to Flume’s Tiny Cities on loop as I was writing this. title of this fic is from that song. all from all music by tsukki mentioned in this drabble are story specific. :3

--

He hears the EDM blasting through the boy’s headphones.

Tetsurou has a thing with people blasting music so loud the sound leaks out of their headphones. It makes him worry for their hearing even when he knows it’s not his business and therefore should not care. The boy is standing a couple of feet away from him, there’s a business man in the middle of them, and yet he can still hear the muffled sounds of an EDM through the boy’s large (and probably expensive) white Sony headphones.

To keep his sanity in check, he plugs in his own earphones and scrolls through his current favorite playlist. He sets it on an acceptable volume (unlike the stranger near him) before scrolling through his messages as he waits to get off at his stop.

He pulls up his music player app and browse through his song list for the current song he’s had on repeat for days.

“You listen to Firefly?”

A voice sounded beside him and Tetsurou looks up to meet bored yellow eyes. It’s the boy with the loud music and he’s now standing beside him.

“I’m sorry?” Tetsurou takes an earphone off. “How did you know what I was listening to?” He didn’t think his music is loud enough to be heard by anyone else, at least not if they have their own music blasting through their ears, too.

The stranger blinks, startled as if he couldn’t believe Tetsurou heard him, and he slides his headphones down to his neck.

“Oh—umm—Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I just looked down and saw the album cover and I—sorry.”

Tetsurou regards the stranger—tall, blonde, pretty—as he sheepishly looks away.

“Nah, man. It’s cool,” he tells the Pretty Blonde as he thumbs through his music list on his phone. “You know Firefly?”

“I…yeah.”

“My friend recommended him. I’ve only listened to The King’s Fall and Little Giant but so far I like his music. His remixes are good, too.”

“If you like that you should listen to the Flightless Crows and the remix of it he did with Kunikira. It’s longer and more upbeat.”

The doors of the train opened and Pretty Blonde Stranger walks out before Tetsurou could react.

Later, he opens Spotify to search for Firefly’s page. He falls asleep listening to his second EP album.

--

Pretty Blonde is on the same train again standing by the doors and Tetsurou finds himself approaching him. He lowers his headphones when he saw Tetsurou’s reflection on the train’s doors and turns to him.

“So, I listened to the Flightless Crows remix you said last time—well, actually I listened to Firefly’s discography in Spotify until I fell asleep. I normally don’t listen to EDMs or House music much but this guy—he gets it, you know? He knows how to make them real good.”

Tetsurou sees the pretty blonde stranger’s lips curve into a smile. A small one but a smile nonetheless and it looked nice on him that Tetsurou couldn’t help but wonder what it would look like if he smiled more, wider, and what it would take to make that happen.

“I heard he’s dropping a new album tonight.” Pretty Blonde said as he puts his headphones back on. “Around midnight, probably”

“No! Shit, really?!”

Pretty Blonde’s smile is bigger this time, almost as if he’s holding a laugh. And damn, Tetsurou thinks, if he’s this pretty with a smile he wants to know what he would look like laughing.

The train stops as the door opens. Pretty Blonde spares him one last look before he exits.

--

“What do you think?” Pretty Blonde asks as Tetsurou approached him at the same spot by the doors. “Of the new album?”

Tetsurou’s removes an earphone. Firefly’s new album has been on repeat on his playlist since he bought it online.

“Dude, I waited ‘til midnight for the drop. I bought it online as soon as it was available and it’s just been on loop ever since.”

“You think it’s that good?”

“It’s a religious experience.” Tetsurou said, eyes wide as he slowly nods his head.

Pretty Blonde chuckles and it snaps Tetsurou out of his gushing of Firefly’s music. The music from his earphone fading into the background as he listens to Pretty Blonde laugh. Forget Firefly. He wants Pretty Blonde’s laugh on loop instead.

“I’ve never heard anyone call my music a religious experience.”

“I—what?”

The train doors open again and Pretty Blonde is gone before Tetsurou could process what he said.

--

Tetsurou made a beeline to the same train doors as soon as he boarded.

Sure enough Pretty Blonde is standing there, Sony headphones on and his head slightly bowed down. He looks up when he sees him, sliding down his headphones to his neck and a greeting at the tip of his tongue before Tetsurou cut him off.

“You’re Firefly.”

The blonde just blinks, slowly, mildly surprised before his expression levels again.

“So, you’ve searched me.” Firefly said, smooth and cool. “I didn’t think you’d find out this soon.”

He did a little—well, okay he did a huge sweep of the internet last night to search who Firefly is. The artist was so secretive and mysterious that Tetsurou couldn’t find anything about him other than about his work and the common industry info. There aren’t even any photos of him except album covers. He only managed to put a face to the name when he stumbled upon a blog entry from a really old blogging site dated four years ago—the year when Firefly’s first demo was released. The blog was about the demo, promoting it and calling Firefly ‘an up and coming artist’ with a picture of the demo’s cover which was a candid profile shot of Firefly. Tetsurou had stared at his screen in quiet shock before he promptly wished for the ground to swallow him whole.

“Why didn’t you—you just—you should’ve told me!”

Pretty Blonde—Firefly frowns, his thin brows furrowing and a cute pout on his lips. Damn it, Tetsurou thinks, even when he’s frowning he’s cute.

“That would have been presumptuous, I think.”

“No, that would have saved me from embarrassing myself in front of a cute boy!” Tetsurou half shouts before he catches himself and remembered where they are and settles to harsh whispering. “I called your music a religious experience! I mean it is—but! I must have sounded obsessed or something. Oh my god. Please don’t think I am. I just really like your music and I—“

“Umm…” Firefly cuts his rambling. “My real name is Tsukishima Kei. Firefly is just what I use for my music.”

Tetsurou blinks at him before remembering his manners. “Oh—umm—I’m Kuroo. Kuroo Tetsurou.” Tetsurou held out his hand and Tsukishima shook it. “Sorry I don’t have a cool alias.” He said with a smile as a he rubs the back of his head self-consciously.

“Kuroo-san is fine.”

Tetsurou would have preferred for him to call him by his first name but, oh well.

There is an awkward bout of silent after that and Tetsurou just wants the train doors to open so he can throw himself under the tracks. That could’ve gone better. He could have made it all casual and just ‘Oh, hey, man. So, you’re Firefly. Cool I really like your music.’ But no, he had to freak out and make it weird. Good job, Tetsurou.

“So, Kuroo-san thinks I’m cute.” Tsukishima says at length, offhandedly and almost teasing. Tetsurou blushes, wanting more than ever to disappear right there and there, but doesn’t deny it.

“I thought it was already obvious with the way I kept talking to you.”

Tsukishima hums and says nothing else. The stop where he is getting off is getting near and Tetsurou is still working up the courage to ask for his number and debating whether that will be creepy. He did just basically admit that he’s a fan and had stalked the internet for his face.

“What was your favorite track? From the album?”

Tetsurou was caught a little off guard but he managed to answer without stumbling on his words and his voice shaking.

“I like Black Cat. It was catchy and smooth. There was that part with the bass drop followed by a sort of sensual beat that’s just so good and now it’s my personal anthem. But my favorite has got to be The Halo Around the Moon.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I don’t know. It’s just…it gives me a rush, you know? Like…like, I just won something.”

“I see.”

“Did that sound weird? I’m sorry if that sounds weird! I just—”

“No, no. Just…thank you. For liking my music.”

“I don’t know what you’re thanking me for. You’re really good.”

Tetsurou catches the slight coloring on his cheeks before he looked away and—God, how can he be this cute? The guy has a 1.2 million Spotify subscribers with a 2.6 million Twitter following and he acts like it’s a big deal that Tetsurou likes his music? Holy shit. He really is out of Tetsurou’s league.

But God must have taken pity on him because just as he was about to call it quits, Tsukishima turns to him and asks,

“Would you like to come to my studio sometime?”

Tetsurou gapes because did he just hear that right? Did Firefly really just invite him to his studio? Did he actually throw himself in the tracks and died and is now in heaven?

The train is slowly coming to a stop and Tsukishima is looking at him expectantly. Tetsurou snaps out of his shock to exclaim,

“I-I—yes! I mean, I—I’d love that.”

Tsukishima smirks at him and not for the first time that day, Tetsurou wonders why is he the way he is.

They exchanged numbers. Tetsurou’s hands was shaking the entire time that he had to double check if he typed his numbers right. He hands Tsukishima’s phone back just in time for the doors to open. Tsukishima sends him a last shy smile before stepping off the train.

Tetsurou stares after him even as the doors closed and the train moves, clutching at his phone and unbelieving of his luck.

[sadbirdmusic]

A disturbing trend among electronic musicians

I’ll be blunt about it. I do not like where the EDM scene is going, and it doesn’t help that the more and more the scene grows, the less and less interesting the music becomes. Don’t get me wrong, there are an exceedingly large number of great things coming out of the EDM scene growing. It’s building friendships, spreading love and happiness, it’s bringing people together. There really are so many amazing things coming out of the EDM scene. Sadly, though, those are only latent functions of an over-saturated industry. While it’s great that people are coming together and making friends, the music itself hasn’t gotten much better or innovative like it was five, ten, or fifteen years ago. Before I begin, I want to clarify that I am not belittling the musicians. I am simply criticizing what is either their label’s choices or their own choices. It’s often hard to tell when it’s the label making them do this, or if it’s simply their own free will. We live in a musical society where singles reign high, and albums are afterthoughts. Even EPs are set on back burners. The other day I was scrolling through the new releases for electronic music on Spotify and I couldn’t help but be disappointed. Almost every release was a single from some big-name DJ that, honestly shouldn’t be popular because of the lackluster ideas and over-used synths. If you were to go to any major DJ/producer Spotify profile, you’d see more singles released this past year than Sufjan Stevens has albums. And quite frankly, these singles are often just copy/paste of the last single with moderate edits. The only exception to this is when the DJ decides they want to try something new (props to them) and end up making a trap single or a future bass single (take those props away).  Some DJ/producers actually release incredible music every time they have a new single. But with that in mind, why not make an album? If you’re churning out a grade-A song every month or so, at that rate you could make an album and be even more respected and looked up to than the next guy making the same style. Albums define an artists’ versatility, right? They show off how much the artist can actually do, allowing them to push their ideas to the next level, and connect them all together with fine threads and repeated motives.  Nope, not in these days. You get a single! You get a single! Everybody gets a single! That’s how it is. Even in sub-cultures that I am a part of in the EDM scene such as trance and house, you see it all the time. Why is it that EDM has so many singles and every other musical genre has albums and EPs galore? It’s been going on for decades, and no one has bat an eye. It’s less of a problem when you see the DJ/producer have BOTH singles and albums, that manages to clear some air.  There are a few reasons why this may be occurring in the EDM scene more than other genres. Here are a few of those possible reasons:  Firstly, it’s easier on them. They crank out a song a month, get signed by a big EDM label with a cult following, make bank, then keep doing it. That’s why you see so many DJ/producers who make the same kind of song every single time they release something. You see it everywhere, even in trance and house music. In the end, it’s about making money off your work, and if you enjoy doing it, there’s really nothing wrong with it, except your work may be disinteresting to a lot of people. The next possible reason is that it’s been going on for years, why change it up now? For nearly 2 decades the electronic music scene has run almost entirely on singles and double releases. Even back in the late 90′s and early 2000′s, DJs put out singles that often had an alternate mix on the other side of the record. They never made albums, never made EPs, so if the legends of yesterday did it and they succeeded, why don’t we do the same thing? It feels like EDM DJ/producers release strictly singles almost out of tradition. But if we’ve learned anything in the past ten years from anything, it���s that tradition sometimes needs to change.  While singles are great and consistent, they get boring, and they don’t show what the artist can do. It can be seen that even the biggest DJs who make albums end up only releasing ten to fifteen songs under a cover art titled “generic EDM album name” and they are just that, a collection of songs. At that rate it might as well be a “best of generic DJ including songs that may or may not have been released yet” album. Hardwell released his album a couple years ago titled “United We Are” (I cringe every time I read that title), and i dubbed it one of the worst albums I’ve ever heard. It didn’t flow, it had no continuity, ideas were re-used not in the way that they should be in an album (to clarify, every song sounded the same). It was a collection of bangers rather than an album, or rather a DJ set of unmixed music full of songs by one DJ. This is what EDM albums often end up being.  If you are an EDM producer, and you’ve managed to refine your sound to a good enough standard where you can say you “know what you’re doing”, I ask you to even simply make a concept EP, or even an album if you have enough content. Something that can get the ball rolling. I see this method being used by indie bands and synthpop groups, and even some EDM artists. They make three, four, even five EPs before they release a full album. The EPs get the ball rolling, end up building up a fanbase, and having a strong catalog (not riddled with singles) already before they release their debut album. I’m doing this myself. Seven Lions has been doing it since his first release on Viper, and he still has yet to release an album (I almost think he will never have an album).

Seven Lions is a perfect example of someone who has balanced singles and concept releases. Every EP he has has a concept. Every single he releases is incredible and different from the last. My theory on his success and skill level is that he spent years before he got signed refining and perfecting his sound. He did it so well that even his first EP is astoundingly good in production quality, and he has only gotten better (I like to call him one of the EDM master producers, up there with Noisia, Nero, deadmau5, KOAN Sound, and Andrew Bayer).  If more and more new, and already established DJ/producers took a line from Seven Lions’ success book, and released a more interesting song every time they release something, and balance it out with conceptual EPs and albums, they would stand out, they would catch more eyes. Singles are not the way to being recognized and respected, though it has been done before. There are better, more artistic ways to succeed in the EDM world. If you want to be called an Artist, you need to think like an artist. Don’t be a manufacturer.  This is the biggest problem with the EDM world. Too many singles, not enough art. 

[bonbonzbb]

Frank Ocean's Surprising Slide Back to Pop

His team-up with Calvin Harris and Migos on "Slide" scrambles some expectations, but mostly just sounds like summer.

“Frank Ocean appears courtesy of Frank Ocean,” reads the liner notes to Calvin Harris’s new single “Slide,” which in this unseasonably warm late February has kicked off the 2017 song-of-the-summer battle. Most artists only ever appear anywhere courtesy of their record label, but Ocean is a free agent and this song is another surprise move in his ongoing rewriting of pop stardom.

Last summer, the buzzy R&B singer broke years of unexplained silence with a duo of albums, Endless and Blond(e), that defied conventions both musically and business-wise. The latter of the two releases—the one that was actually for sale and had distinguishable songs, in contrast to the free-form streaming audiovisual project Endless—arrived not via his record company, Def Jam, but independently. Through years of wrangling (and the help of Apple, the new corporate patron of label-agnostic pop artists), he had freed himself of the kind of contract that once was considered both prize and necessity for new singers.

It seemed possible he’d then use this newfound liberty to burrow deeper into an anti-commercial, anti-pop mindset. Blond(e) is a masterpiece, but a weird one: mostly free of drums, recognizable song structures, and anything that could be a hit. It took him four years to make, had two competing spellings for its name, and featured a tie-in print magazine. You can understand why its creator might not want to have to run all of his material past Universal Music Group’s A&R. And you might guess that future Ocean projects would become even more esoteric.

But today brings the mostly good news that Ocean has not entirely decided to withhold his talents—a voice that imparts both feeling and attitude, an adventuresome ear, a smart and funny lyrical sensibility—from the radio race. He’s paired up with Calvin Harris, the Scottish EDM star famous for unsubtle but irresistible Top 40 fare like “This Is What You Came For” (his 2016 summer smash, featuring Rihanna) and “We Found Love” (his 2011 summer smash, featuring, again, Rihanna). Rounding out the bill are two-thirds of Migos, the Atlanta rap group enjoying breakthrough national success in 2017 with the tricky-fun album Culture and the No. 1 hit “Bad & Boujee.”

Harris’s knack for consolidating popular trends and nudging them ever-so-slightly forward is on display here, with the beat for “Slide” sucking in Bruno Mars’s recent revivalist funk and Justin Bieber’s airy tropical house for a blend that will only reveal its full potential when heard on the beach. One of Ocean’s latter-day signatures, a squeaky manipulated voice, opens the track with the couplet “I might empty my bank account / And buy that boy a wooden pipe.” I won’t pretend to know exactly what the wooden pipe is supposed to mean here. But the sentiment comes across, to these ears, as a boy hitting on a boy.

Which is not insignificant in 2017 pop, especially in light of recent comments by Migos: Asked about the rapper Makonnen who’d just come out as gay, they said it seemed “fucked up” and “wack” that he’d previously put on a tough, streetwise persona. The group later gave an apology that said they were fine with gays but that didn’t quite address the stereotypes they’d seemed to endorse. In any case, they are now on a track with Frank Ocean, who shook hip-hop with a 2012 admission of an affair with a man—and who has since scrambled all sorts of expectations about culture, machismo, and sex.

Migos themselves sound great, the stickiness of their distinctive flows suddenly plainer than ever over such a sturdy and sunny beat. Ocean’s verses seem to cryptically, wearily talk about the moment at the end of a night in the club when the lights come up and you see who you might take home; Migos’s lyrics are explicit boasts of wining and dining and heterosexual screwing around the world. The divides between Ocean, Migos, and Harris’s sensibilities couldn’t be clearer, but the song is a reminder of pop’s power to make very different elements slide together.

-The Atlantic, 2/24/17