Quotes from Eric Nam

So I don't have a normal, regimented schedule at all, but on a normal day, I'd say I wake up around 10 A.M.

I'd love to do some collabs or music with Latin artists and in Latin America - we're working on it! I just really love Latin America and the language, culture, foods, people, and it's a place I grew up visiting pretty often.

I view myself as a musician and I focus on music - other people may try to focus on the music, but the emphasis is heavily on visuals and performance. They're both equally valid, but different.

There was a point when dancing to music became cheesy after the boy band era of NSync and Backstreet Boys, but there were always those who craved that kind of visual satisfaction. K-Pop really filled that void, because it's so geared to spectacle.

I have a very complicated relationship with my skin. It is sensitive, I think, to just changes in water, particularly because I travel so much.

No matter what you do, you should enjoy it. You should really find passion in it.

Living in Korea was a big adjustment because a coffee is going to be a little more pricey than what it is in the States. Wages aren't as high either.

I know people love Supreme. I never got on the wagon.

I'm a very blunt person.

I think K-Pop is something that sucks people in because it's open. I can do pop, EDM, rock, R&B and it doesn't matter, K-Pop embraces them all.

Coming to Korea and becoming a singer, I always had two big goals personally. One was to be able to make it at some point so that I could do good things - I was always raised with an interest in social impact, philanthropy. The other thing was to be able to take my music and do it on a global scale.

I think there are probably ghosts in the world. I have not seen one but I feel like I felt the presence of one. In Korea there's been a superstition that ghosts love music, so they're always in a studio or a dance-training place.

On any collaboration, you want to respect your music and the other's music.

I think one thing I wish would be a little different, and it'll take time, is yes BLACKPINK, BTS, these teams are taking over the world and they're everywhere, but I think at a certain point we need to really push for other artists as well, and really help bring them up further, for this to be a sustainable industry, a sustainable genre.

When people outside Korea think of 'K-pop,' most of them expect 'idols' with several members in a group, dancing in sync.

I look like a 'Sesame Street' character in real life when I wake up. But not like the cute ones, like kind of like the ones that look a little rough around the edges.

Sunbae-hoobae seniority is a very tricky, weird kind of thing.

When you first make money, you're just excited that you have it and just buy things on a whim. You don't really think about the implications that taxes have, because when you owe money, all of a sudden all of the money in your account - it's gone!

I think up until the 'Honestly' album it was very much label-company lead, of 'this is a sound that we need, this is what you need to do. You need to do ballads, you need to do a million different types of love songs,' and I hate ballads and I hate love songs.

I've always been very passionate about trying to have Asian-Americans or Asian faces be more prominent in mainstream media.

I would be criticized, like, 'You don't talk Korean enough. You sound very American. You sound very white in your music.' And I'm like, 'Whoa.'

I had always wanted to pursue music. It was always a dream, but it was always a dream in the sense of, when you're young, 'I want to be president' or 'I want to be an astronaut and fly to Mars.' That's what it was to me.

A lot of my peers, be seniors or juniors, they'll text me or they'll call me and they'll say, 'Thank you for doing the music that you do because it pushes the genre forward in different ways.' It's a very rewarding thing to hear.

The coolest thing for me now is when I'm in the States and I meet other Asian-Americans who are like, 'Dude, thank you so much for doing what you do. I love your music, I love whatever. But whatever you do, we're gonna support you because there aren't many Asian faces doing music.'