NCT 127 Talk KCON, Meeting Fans, Music Influences, & More! PART 1

Hey Young Hollywood, it's Tracy Bear here and I'm in the studio with NCT 127. NCT 127: Yes! Hello Young Hollywood. It's NCT 127. Yeah!

Hello guys, I'm Tae, nice to meet you.

Hi guys, I'm Taeyong, nice to meet you.

Hello Young Hollywood, this is Mark, nice to meet you.

Hi, I'm Porson, Haechan, nice to meet you.

Hello, I'm Doyoung.

Hi, I'm Yuta, I love Young Hollywood.

Hey guys, I'm Jaehyun. I love you.

Hello, I'm Winwin, nice to meet you.

And hey guys, I'm Johnny, what's up?

Well welcome! Thank you guys so much for coming. We're so excited to have you guys here. Um I think we can all just agree that we're all so excited that you guys are in the United States, right? NCT 127: Yes! Oh, we're really excited to be here.

So tell me how your whole experience has been so far. We're here in LA. NCT 127: Well, we we just finished the Hollywood Bowl uh two days ago and we had a really great time. We're meeting a lot of our fans this time. We like we're here and it's really great. Nice to see you I guess.

And first of all the Hollywood Bowl, I mean that's an iconic spot. So I mean I I can't imagine what that was like probably performing there. What is it like seeing all your American fans? Cuz you guys have millions of fans in so many countries. NCT 127: It was amazing. Actually we were so excited to meet our fans here and we were like we should do better we should do well on the stage and the energy was so good.

Was there any fun experience meeting any fans? NCT 127: Um the fans were dancing with us. That was so good. Yeah. And also um I think the uh when we first got to meet our LA fans were probably from when we first came to LA, which was in the airport and from the airport, the energy itself was so good. So having the fans waiting for us in the airport as well was very touching. So thank you guys.

That's amazing. And they're called NCTzens? Is that right? NCT 127: Yes! Okay. So it's like citizens and NCT together, so.

Got to have the fandom name for sure. Let's talk about K-pop for a minute because K-pop is so huge right now. Not only just in Korea where you guys are based, but literally it's becoming a global phenomenon, especially here in the US. I know you've got I mean you guys are charting on the Billboard charts right now. You guys are killing it. So how would you define what K-pop is? And how do you guys kind of stand out from other K-pop markets? NCT 127: Definitely, um I really think that K-pop is becoming an official genre of music now and it's finding its place in the industry. I think it's our job as K-pop representatives to actually make that work and I know we're still like like starting on the beginning steps of this. I think that each step is really important. So every visit to America or any visit to any country is really important. So we're putting our all into the music and to our international fans.

So we have to talk about KCON. I know you guys have been before, right? And you guys are going to be back again. Are you guys excited? What can we expect? Can you give us any little sneak peeks? NCT 127: Uh we're having a KCON on June in New York and we're so excited and we're always excited to meet our international fans and we're so ready. Like the last time our New York fans greeted us, it was amazing. And so we always wanted to come back and now it's actually time for us to come back. So we hope that we can prepare a really good performance or something that we can give to them because we don't really come to New York often. So might as well give them something really great. So we're really looking forward to it.

And NCT, I just have to say, is such a cool concept and you guys are a unit of NCT called NCT 127. So how do you kind of describe, you know, what is NCT 127? What's the name about? What does it mean for people who are living under a rock right now? NCT 127: First of all, NCT stands for Neo Culture Technology and 127, 127 is the longitude of Korea's capital Seoul. So that's so cool. It means that we're going to spread out to the world starting from Seoul where K-pop started and that's what it means.

And you guys are from all parts of the world. I know you're from actually Chicago, right? So what was it like kind of all coming together? Was it challenging to you know communicate at first or is it just been kind of interesting learning about each other's cultures? I will learn Korean by the end of this interview just so you know, I'm going to make you guys teach it to me. NCT 127: So what he said was uh like we all started like for people who didn't know how to speak Korean at first. Uh we started off with like a translator and little by little everyone started learning Korean and right now we all speak through Korean so uh like translation like communicating isn't a problem. And when we go to Japan we all try to speak Japanese cause we also have a Japanese friend. Like when we go to China we try to speak Chinese, when we go to America we try to speak English. I think it's really great to have someone from every like a lot of countries and like communicating through that is really cool.

That's crazy. You're going to learn every language at some point of every single country. And then "Cherry Bomb". By the way your music is amazing. I've I'm obsessed with watching all your videos. You're so talented. The energy, the dance choreography, I mean how do you guys learn the dance moves? I mean who who kind of how do you guys even come up with all that choreography? NCT 127: Yeah, we work with very famous and trendy Korea grappers and one week to learn and one month practice. Wow. And we go to perform the stage.

I couldn't do that. Let's just be honest. Is it true though? I heard that some of you ripped your pants when you were doing the split move. Is that true? Is that true? You have to tell us that story. What happened? NCT 127: So we had a showcase before the album came out and what happened was the pants, like if they get like if you sweat even a little, they start sticking to you. So when they start when you start spreading the legs like the middle part kinda rips. Uh I hope no one sees it. I hope nobody found it but if you look carefully, it's probably there. Oh my gosh. So it's in the video. Like in the showcase. Kind of embarrassing but you know. It's how good the performance is. It's how good how strong the performance is.

That's amazing. And then "Touch" was also your new song, which I love because it was kind of a different side of you guys. You were wearing pink and pastels instead of like the black and the energy. Is that something you know we'll see more of? NCT 127: He's saying that uh whatever concept it may be, we're willing to show everything we have to our fans because we love to show new things to our fans. So "Touch" was one of those too. So yeah.

That's amazing. And do you guys write your own songs or kind of where do you sort of get your inspirations from and who are your biggest musical influences? NCT 127: Maybe me and Mark are writing lyrics and we are motivated by uh all people, all real life, all uh another another artist, maybe. Yes.

Who's like each of your favorite music artists? NCT 127: I love Michael Jackson. Yeah. I like uh I like Justin Bieber. There's many artists but I love Eminem. I respect Coldplay. Coldplay, uh Coldplay love. Yes! It's a wide range. Uh Korean musician? Uh Korean musician, Park Hyo-shin. Yes, Hyo-shin Park. I love him. I love Bruno Mars. So good. These days I love Daniel Caesar's songs. I like Lin Yujia, Chinese Chinese singer. And I I like A-train. Yeah. So as you can see, a lot of us uh like different types of artists and that's like how much music we how much we love like all types of music and all genres.

Do you guys kinda like introduce each other to new songs sometimes and new artists? NCT 127: We definitely do. Especially me and Jaehyun. Jaehyun and I uh also DJ like radio DJ in uh in Korea so we get to talk about music a lot.

We got a million fan questions for you guys so we could only Unfortunately we can only pick two, but okay here we go. If you guys had a time machine and you could only visit either the past or the future, where would you go? How do we say Young Hollywood in Korean first of all? Young is young. And then Hollywood is Hollywood. Hollywood. No, what? Is this not gonna sting him? Not gonna sting?