Tyrone “NIDDY” Buckner, Co-producer, A&R, and President of Billboard Entertainment Group LLC, first made K-pop headlines in 2012 with his crossover co-collaboration between the US producer Bruce “Automatic” Vanderveer and JYJ‘s own Kim Junsu. The lyrically English track, Uncommitted, was the first official solo English song ever released by the artist and upon its release, it earned the number one spots on both Gaon weekly albums chart and Amazon Japan’s album charts, and peaked at number twenty on US iTunes. In July 2013 NIDDY, along with Automatic, co-collaborated with Junsu once again for the title track of the artist’s second solo album, Incredible. The summer party track hit album charts in a big way, charting well on Gaon, Amazon, and US iTunes, and snagged a coveted fifth place spot on the US Billboard charts.
With JYJ’s release of its third studio album, Just US, in August 2014, fans saw another side of JYJ’s ever evolving career and responded in kind by solidifying over 120,000 copies sold in pre-sales and helping sky rocket the album up to number one on the Gaon monthly album and Hanteo weekly charts, number three on Japan’s Oricon weekly album charts, and hitting number four on Billboard’s World Album charts.With the success of Just US fresh in our minds, we sat down with NIDDY once again to get more insight on the track Valentine, more on the enigmatic group that is K-pop’s JYJ, and his thoughts on K-pop’s true viability in the western market.
With your previous experience working with members of JYJ, how did you come to be a part of their latest album?
JYJ3 