Hey, I'm Brian Hyatt, and this is Rolling Stone Music Now. I recently wrote a cover story

package on BTS, who are, as we declared, the biggest band in the world right now. I don't think there's really

any doubt about that. As you know not know, they are a seven-man pop group from South Korea with three rappers and four singers all ridiculously good

dancers and no one has achieved anything like what they've achieved. No group from South Korea or anywhere in Asia

has had anywhere the kind of success that BTS has had in the US and other markets.

They are on their third number one single

in the United States.

The new one is called Butter,

and it's the second English language single from them and it's very much in the vein of dynamite the previous English

language single but it's got a charm all its own it's great.

But these English language singles, if it's all you know about BTS, really only scratch

the surface. There's so much more to them. There's a lot of depth there. I would definitely

recommend checking out my interviews if you get a chance. But today I also wanted to talk to

Young Day Kim who wrote a book called BTS the review.

He is a soul-based music critic and music colleges.

He actually has, he came to the states to get a PhD in musicology and he's been covering Korean music since the late 90s and

he wrote the first book ever about hip-hop in South Korea.

And so we had a pretty in-depth conversation about BTS and a little bit about the history of

pop music in South Korea and hip-hop in South Korea. The conversation started off with Yung de Kim explaining when he first heard

about BTS back in 2013.

Well, honestly, I sense the significance of BTS or more broadly this new format hip-hop idle in K-pop would be something

important in a lot of ways.

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