ENHYPEN's Jake on the K-Pop Idol Grind: 'You Can't Really Expect to Have a Normal Life'

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If it seems like your favorite K-pop star is everywhere all the time when they have a new album or tour to promote, there&rsquo;s a good reason for that. In a new chat with <em><a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/music/music-features/enhypen-jake-producing-music-k-pop-idol-reality-interview-1236500983/" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Hollywood Reporter</a></em> **ENHYPEN** member **Jake** broke down the rigors of the K-pop fame machine, telling the magazine that &ldquo;you can&rsquo;t really expect to have a normal life,&rdquo; when you&rsquo;re thrust into the genre&rsquo;s hype cycle.

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&ldquo;Other K-pop artists or other K-pop seniors that have been doing this for longer than me. They know what I&rsquo;ve gone through,&rdquo; he said of the grueling scheduled of rehearsals, recording and promotion. &ldquo;They all went through the same thing. I feel like it&rsquo;s important to share what you&rsquo;re feeling because if you want to ask advice for anything related to your life or my life as a K-pop artist, there&rsquo;s no one that can relate to it other than the same people that are doing it. I don&rsquo;t really know a lot of people, to be honest.&rdquo;








**Jake**, 23, who slid into a producer role on the septet&rsquo;s recent album, <em>The Sin : Vanish</em>, said stepping behind the boards &ldquo;sparked something inside me that I didn&rsquo;t really know that I had,&rdquo; because, if he&rsquo;s being honest, sometimes being a K-pop idol is &ldquo;very repetitive. We wake up, we have a very tight and set schedule down to the minute. We have to wake up at this hour, this minute. We end our schedule at this [time]. I used to enjoy that.&rdquo;







And while he likes that kind of regimented schedule and said he&rsquo;s just naturally &ldquo;wired that way,&rdquo; sometimes without him realizing it the non-stop schedule can get &ldquo;very tiring.&rdquo; Switching things up and trying his hand at production, though, has helped **Jake** escape that exhausting cycle, if only for a little while. **Jake** said that taking the helm on the new LP&rsquo;s opening narration track, &ldquo;The Beginning,&rdquo; and the song &ldquo;Sleep Tight&rdquo; was one of his personal goals for the year.






&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the first time I really worked on the track. I would usually just work on the melodies or the topline on a song, but it&rsquo;s the first time that I really just started working on it from scratch,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It was a very new experience. I found out that I might be better at the producing of the track. A very close producer that I always worked with, he told me that I might be better at doing the track instead of the top melody. It just all came along together very smoothly, which is kind of surprising because it&rsquo;s the first time for me to really work on a song on an album. I was very lucky and very surprised.&rdquo;






Learning a new skill is key to staying relevant in what **Jake** confirmed is the rapidly evolving K-pop universe, one that is quick to react to trends and changes as the industry cranks out a steady stream of new acts, each striving to carve a unique lane to break through to global audiences. &ldquo;I feel like the fact about K-pop that every K-pop artist knows but does&rsquo;t want to talk about is that [the] K-pop industry is very competitive, right?,&rdquo; **Jake** said. &ldquo;We all say we don&rsquo;t want it to be, or we want everyone to do their own thing&hellip; Every K-pop artist is different.&rdquo;






**Jake** said the ever-changing, &ldquo;fast-paced&rdquo; series of concepts his fellow K-pop bands roll out in search of a leg up on the competition keeps the genre as up-to-date as any other. &ldquo;You have to be on top of everything,&rdquo; the singer said. &ldquo;We would be lying if we said we didn&rsquo;t feel any pressure. We are very confident in our abilities to always put out something different or a different concept. I feel like we&rsquo;re confident in that way&hellip; We all try to be the first to do something and be the first to do something different, and I think we definitely did that for this album.&rdquo;