I've Become One With Jay Park's 'The One You Wanted'

Welcome to Golden Dragon, a newsletter by Eric Diep about Asians in hip-hop and my takes on trending topics in AAPI pop culture. Golden Dragon is a rotation of interviews, reviews, news, critical perspectives, and random blogs about music I recommend.

• A review of every song on Jay Park’s The One You Wanted, getting deeper into his ideas of love.

• Diep Cuts with Thủy, Saweetie, Haysen Cheng, Stupid Young, Khantrast, and Molly Santana.

• Send It: Epik High’s PUMP (Collector’s Edition) releases this week.

It was early 2023 when I was informed by a publicist that Jay Park was releasing an R&B album.

At the time, the Korean American hip-hop / R&B artist was considering retiring. He has since retracted those statements and formed a South Korean-based label called More Vision, boasting artists like Chung Ha, Honey J, HolyBang, MVP, and K-pop trainee ISOL. Whatever his retirement plans were, he put them on pause to put everything into More Vision and his first R&B album in eight years, a follow-up to 2016’s Everything You Wanted that featured his groovy hit “All I Wanna Do.”

Park has been promising this R&B album for so long that my anticipation was starting to wane. He knew his fans had been waiting for a while, explaining in a press release that he’s a player who needs to “get off the bench and get back in the game.” He dropped three “Seasons” of EPs before the Oct. 8 release date to signal his comeback was real, adding these songs to the final 20 tracks of The One You Wanted. Park took inspiration from R&B in the ‘90s and 2000s, paying homage to the likes of Musiq Soulchild, Maxwell, and Jon B.

My fellow music journalists know what it is like when you’re writing a review and have to listen to it multiple times before a deadline. I used to love reading Yoh’s 1 Listen reviews on DJBooth, impressed at how he was able to describe production and give quick takes on each track. Inspired by those pieces and the “Infinite Cooking Hell” mission on Netflix’s Culinary Class Wars, where the remaining contestants had to go multiple rounds cooking different tofu dishes, I wanted my listens of The One You Wanted to be on the same emotional rollercoaster. Chef Sung Anh said in that semifinal episode that it is more than bringing out flavors, “They have to become one with the tofu.” I interpreted that as a challenge for me to see how many listens would it take for me to become one with Jay Park’s R&B.

After 10 full listens in various settings like in the car, the coffee shop, public transportation, cooking meals, and more, here are my unfiltered thoughts on The One You Wanted.