Though he wasn’t originally a singer when he joined Big Hit Entertainment at age 16, he’s developed one of K-pop’s most unique voices: It’s sweet, with delicately sharp edges, and he contorts his vowels as if they were soft curls of smoke.

The project is a bold evolution from Jimin’s work in BTS, where he’s shown his penchant for making emotional R&B through tracks like 2016’s “Lie” and the sultry Latin-pop-inflected “Filter.” In 2018, he showed he could take on an acoustic singer-songwriter approach with his debut solo single “Promise” — which recently got an official release after living only on SoundCloud for years.

For the upcoming Face singles, he’s also been teasing meticulously prepared performances, which have become a signature for the skilled dancer whose fluid yet powerful style is informed by his background in modern dance and martial arts.

(To see the full scope of his talent, fans can watch his viral contemporary dance to “ I Need U ” at the 2019 MMA awards, where he flips and spins effortlessly as if he were wind personified, or his scene-stealing performance in 2020’s “ Black Swan.”) He’s come a long way since he was a teenager impersonating the sensual performance style of his role model, Big Bang’s Taeyang; this January, he experienced a full circle moment when he was featured on the K-pop veteran’s long-awaited solo track “Vibe.”

Struck by the film’s depiction of a passionate romance between a British woman and American man whose relationship can never stabilize because of visa issues and their respective careers, he tried to convey these ambiguous feelings through the song’s choreography.

This all began at the [Permission to Dance on Stage] concerts in Las Vegas last year, and at the time, I was struggling with the emotions that ended up in [“Like Crazy”]… While we were talking over drinks, I told them, “I don’t know if I’m doing well.