Kang Daniel – once dubbed “the Nation’s Center” – is one of South Korea’s most famous young men, selling over million albums globally as a soloist and over 4.2 million as part of Wanna One, the K-pop group with whom he shot to fame. He’s also the CEO of his own company (Konnect Entertainment) and a brand ambassador for Givenchy Beauty, just one in a long line of A-list endorsements. Today, the 24-year-old is makeup-free, approachable, and charming. Wearing a cream hoodie he looks like he could be the, albeit ultra handsome, guy next door.
That is, of course, partly why Daniel became a household name. Yet he remains shy by nature; when he speaks, his eyes drift away from the Zoom camera but the longer we talk, the more frequent is his recognisable hiccupping laugh (compiled across dozens of YouTube videos) and the brighter he becomes with that incandescence unique to very famous people. Our conversation ends with idle chatter about creatives in constant chase of the nex
“Making this album was like heart surgery, I was desperate, in pain, and poured my heart into electronic music that slammed harder than any drug I could find,” she wrote.
“I fell apart after I released this album. Thank you for celebrating something that once felt like destruction,” she added. “We always believed it was ahead of its time. Years later turns out, sometimes, artists know. And so do little monsters. Paws up.”
Last week, DJ White Shadow, who produced many of the songs on the album, revealed he had contacted Gaga about a petition from fans calling for a sequel to the album, which currently has over 39,000 signatures.
How long until our data is mined to give us a kind of afterlife? Creepy or beautiful, avatars of the dead are already here
Welcome to A Future World – Dazed s network, community, and platform focusing on the intersection of science, technology and pop culture. Throughout April, we re featuring conversations and mission statements from the people paving new pathways for our planet: activists, inventors, fashion pioneers, technologists, AI scientists, and global youth movements, alongside in-depth editorial exploring the new realities for our future world.
I recently spoke to a man who has decided to constantly record their grandparents before they die. “The reason for 24/7 capture is that it s quite easy to capture video of people,” he said over Zoom, lifting a little camera up to the screen to show me the kind of technology he had installed. “Audio is harder though. My grandparents don’t speak very much, particularly my grandfather. In the future I don’t know how much