Jackson Wang is on his day off, just after GOT7 — the 7-member K-pop group Jackson performs in as a dancer and rapper — performed a show in Berlin, one of the stops on the group’s Keep Spinning World Tour. Still, he's doing an interview on the phone with Teen Vogue. When I apologize, he’s quick to jump in: “No, no, no, no. It's alright. It's good. I love it,” he says.

And you can tell he means it — he really does love his work. His excitement is most visible when he starts talking about his brand new solo record, Mirrors, which dropped today, Oct. 25. The album has eight songs, including collaborations with American artist GoldLink and Indonesian rapper Rich Brian. The first single “Bullet to the Heart” is a heavy hip-hop slow jam with a catchy electric guitar riff, as Jackson sings in English about a “breathless” and “reckless” love turned painful. The other songs pull in more rap and R&B but with a smooth pop sheen, culminating in a Chinese-language cover of Stephanie Poetri’s Avengers: Endgame-themed viral acoustic pop hit, “I Love You 3000.” Jackson says that on Mirrors, he’s found his “true self at this moment in life.”

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Jackson is no stranger to hip-hop and rap — he's one of GOT7's lead rappers and the solo work he's released up until now has been rap-heavy. On this new record, Jackson says he doesn't feel the pressure to box himself into one genre. “I've released a lot of rap music before, a lot of like hip-hop, trappy, stuff. And at the same time I've been on different programs doing covers of other Chinese artists’ songs like, like ballads, like R&B, like pop,” he tells Teen Vogue. “I found myself [being] like, oh, [Mirrors] doesn't have to be all the way in rap. It doesn't have to be all the way in R&B. I found myself in the middle.”

On one single, “D Way!,” Jackson speaks into (hopeful) existence a Rolling Stone magazine cover, and name-checks rock legends like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards before deadpanning, “Fast lane, fast life, never slow down. If you didn’t know before bet you know now.”

That line has come to describe Jackson’s life. Between his GOT7 responsibilities and his solo work, Jackson is literally working double time. Mirrors is released through Jackson’s own company Team Wang, whereas GOT7 is part of the entertainment company JYP, one of the big four K-pop businesses in Korea (alongside SM, YG, and Big Hit — home to BTS). Jackson describes his life right now as split between the two, with six months in his home country of China with Team Wang and six months back in Korea recording or touring internationally with GOT7. “I mean, it's hard at the end of the day, cause when [GOT7] rests, I have to go to do my Team Wang stuff. When Team Wang rests I go back [to GOT7],” he says. “I produce a two-year schedule in one.” This might explain why he picks up the phone for an interview on a day off.

Now 25 years old, Jackson debuted with GOT7 in 2014 when he was 19. Before then, Hong Kong-born Jackson was working on a promising career as a professional athlete; he turned away from the path that would have led him to the London Olympics in fencing, as well as a scholarship to Stanford University, in favor of pursuing training as a musician and performer. He still loves to fence, but he looks back on that time in his life now and is glad he took the risk.

“I always had the dedication and passion towards music and and it's always has been my motivation to make music.” he says. “I [didn’t] want to be like 80 years old telling my grandkids, you know, your grandpa could have done that, could have done this. Like I never tried.”

Since 2014, GOT7 has released four albums and a slew of EPS, growing an international fanbase (compounded by GOT7’s own members, who hail from China, Thailand, Korea, and the U.S.) with millions of followers on social media (their fans are called iGot7s, or AhGaSes, a wordplay that also means “baby bird” in Korean). As Jackson releases Mirrors, GOT7 is also preparing for their own comeback.

Jackson acknowledges that time is a price he’s willing to pay for working towards his long-term dreams. “This is what I want,” he says. “And if I have to accomplish certain goals and I have that passion, that dedication to make everything work, then I have to do it. And you know, you always have to give up something. Nothing is perfect. We can't choose everything.”

One of those dreams includes growing Team Wang even more; Elite Daily reported that the record label has grown to 30 employees in 2019. He envisions its future in tandem with his own (“I can't just have one hit and then that's it,” he says). Once he’s reached his own heights, continued to earn his own credibility, he plans to pay it forward, using Team Wang as an incubator for new talent in a way that combines art and business strategy.

“You can be a true artist, but not a lot of people know,” Jackson says. “There are too many talented people out there, and nobody can see them. They don't have the chance. If I have that resource, why don't [I] give the spotlight to the people that don't have the opportunity to show their work, but they're ready?”

Joe D'Aleo

Jackson, meanwhile, is seen, and he’s using his platform to speak up about mental health and the stereotypes that permeate Western perceptions of K-pop, even as K-pop artists become some of the biggest performers in the world. He’s been open in the past about dealing with depression, and using his work as a way of unpacking really complex feelings.

He also recently spoke to Zach Sang about the misguided stereotype of the “manufactured” Korean artist, adding to Teen Vogue that media outlets that perpetuate it “should do a lot more research on K-pop before they talk about it. Maybe some Asians feel that Western [music] releases... [are] all the same. You can't just judge us on the outside until you really research this stuff.” He adds about Mirrors, “Every single song on the album is my hard work and is my blood and sweat.”

As he's balancing the rehearsals, releases, and promotions of his work in an idol group, his solo career, and the growth of his own business, in this moment, Jackson Wang seems larger than life. But even while standing on top of the world, his motivations for pursuing his dreams are always top of mind.

“I just feel like, I would rather give so many things up as long as I'm doing what I love every single day of my life. I don't care about earning a billion dollars. If you're going for the money, it's never enough,” he says. “I choose my vision. The music.”

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