Lay Zhang: Has already received 2000 trainees’ resumes.

Lay Zhang said that he want to change this impetuous market.

On October 7th, his 29th birthday, Lay announced that Chromosome Entertainment Group, founded by himself, has officially launched their “Trainee Plan”.

We still remember during our interviews two months ago, he mentioned that: “Maybe I really will become a PD and train my own trainees.” We exclaimed that we didn’t expect this matter to carry out so fast.

“It wasn’t fast.” Lay corrected us with smile, “Actually, I’ve been planning this for years.” He dated back at the beginning of his first mini album “Lose Control”. He already set a plan for after finishing four albums that he will move to the next life goal. He already nipped some of his ideas in the bud as early as 2012 when he just debut. He’s just revealing this territory to the public now.

“Of course, I’m an ambitious person in my career.” Lay didn’t hide his wild ambition. But at the same time, he wasn’t conceitedly thinking that having an ambition has anything to do with being “strong”. “All skills can be cultivated gradually. The important thing is whether you have the will to do it.”

“Drawing a big circle.”

In 2016, when he finished his first solo album “Lose Control”, Lay Zhang has mentioned in many occasions that he was drawing a big circle. Frankly speaking, many people were confused about his words: Drawing a circle? Drawing what? How?

Until recently, with the release of “Sheep” (red cover), “NAMANANA” (green cover) and Lit”, in addition, “Lose Control” (black cover), everyone finally realized that his four albums matched with the Four Symbols (Four Auspicious Beasts) of China, which are Vermilion Bird (red), Black Tortoise, Azure Dragon (green) and White Tiger. The whole concept is “Two complementary forces generate four aggregates. Four aggregates generate eight trigrams”. In addition, if you put the these three albums together, you will find a circle and the character”爷” in traditional Chinese.

Undoubtedly, Lay Zhang is such a man with so many ideas. When Lay tried to express his concept of how Four Symbols were generated from Yin and Yang and how he attempts to breakthrough with that in 5 minutes, we were feeling dizzy about such complicated details and ideas, but we were also able to understand a “sense of planning” that belongs to Lay. Just as it was inconvenient to reveal too much details of his “circle” concept, it was also hard to understand when he first mentioned that he studied economics and entrepreneurship because these were big crossover in fields. But with the completion of four albums in four years and the establishment of Chromosome Entertainment Group, we instantly got our answer.

More than that, starting his company and naming it “Chromosome”, are all inspired by the concepts he had from the past 4 years: “You can consider that there are 4 classes in total for our “Trainee Plan”. Vermillion Bird has a high voice, so it represents Vocal group; the White Tiger, which is strong and vigorous, will represent the dance group; the Azure Dragon represent an attitude, so I delimit it to be the representation of rap; Black Tortoise, which itself is the combination of snake and turtle, will represent the versatile group that can do well in every fields. We hope that those who join us in the future can inherit the traditional cultural, as well as the excellent professional “genes (skills)” of our producers and teachers.” That is the reason why our company is called Chromosome. The founding of the company finally let the “career circle” Lay Zhang founded, to officially start operating.

“I want to help them more.”

After his new career was announced, SM Entertainment’s founder, chief producer and industry pioneer Lee Soo-Man recorded a four-minute video to congratulate him. In the video, Lee says that (Lay Zhang) is finally doing the things that he should do.

As a matter of fact, back in the days when he was still working as a member of SM’s “new boy band” EXO, Lay has said that he wanted to be someone like Lee Soo-Man in the future. He joked about himself and said that “it was some careless big talk back then”, but there was a deeper reason for initiating this idea. He said that he has experienced it himself going from a “child of an ordinary family”, to being recruited, trained, and debuted with SM (Lee Soo-man), and finally achieving his dream.

In his opinion: “There must be many children who are willing to fight and work hard for the stage. As the Chinese market is so big, they can’t find their ways to achieve their dreams. Since I got so many helps from others, I wonder if I can help these children making their dreams come true. I will find them and help them realizing their dreams even if they live in the remote areas.”

In reality, Lay received the first invitation for “Idol Producer” during the second half of 2017. Being a “producer” in a show, what he wanted to do was much more than what he could really do in the end. “During the early conversion for that show, I’ve already mentioned the concept of “Producer” — this actually is controlling the “overall quality”, sort of a “quality control”. But a lot of people don’t know the importance of quality control.”

According to Lay’s thought, being a producer means that he not only has to give trainees advice during the show, but also has to be involved with their team operation afterwards. This should be the complete logic behind this industry. “I had planned out a lot of ideas at that time. If you trust in me, I can really give you some help.”, but there were many realistic factors, “It was a pity.”

Anyhow, “Idol Producer” was such a big hit that started a new chapter for the idol industry in China. Two years after that, trainees became the highly anticipated groups for mainstream media. There are idols’ related shows every year by each platform and new trainee companies rose up everywhere. Until now, Lay still receives invitation from idol’s shows every year to be their PD.

One year after “Idol Producer”, Lay joined “Youth with You”. Some of the companies and trainees’ condition made he anxious: “I asked how long they’ve been trained for? Several months. Another one said two days. You came after two days, what are you doing here? For a lot of people, if there’s an opportunity to join a show that give you a chance to be famous after few months, it worth a shot. They would come and try it out, gain some fans and followers and monetize with that. And I thought that was not a good idea. Actually, some of them don’t even know if they really want to be involved in the industry.” During the first stage ranking, Lay already pointed out that “the market is getting impetuous”

During the interview before “We Are Young” this year, Lay also stated bluntly, “I think that you guys shouldn’t do the show this year, there’s no rush to it. We’ve already eliminated so many previously, how can you possibly find the good ones now.”

Talking about the market’s status, Lay grabbed the water bottle in front of me as an example and said: “In our country, most of the time when someone has a bet selling water, another 100 people around will also start to sell water, and they would even sell the exact same type of water. But in some other foreign countries, for most of them people will use water as a starting point to think, to start another hit business about the water. For example: water bottle, coffee, chips. Entirely different systems.”

He expressed frankly that he’s tiredness of this type of show: ‘When this one water is selling well, then everyone else started selling water. Why?’

“But you can’t really change anything?”

“That’s right. Sometimes it’s just doesn’t work. There’s no clear reason. I think if training idols to mature really needs such a long time, but I’m not those platforms, shows or the high level of any kind. So I was thinking what is it that I can do for this problem? Alright, I’ll do it by myself then. I’m not sure if it’s too early or too late, but it will be my career for the rest of my life.’

“People who are eliminated from Chromosome will still be S (satisfactory) grade idols”

Lay said that his life is like a countdown. “I hope that I can do something meaningful before the end of my life. Of course, there will be a price to pay. That price is while being an artist myself, I have to continue learning, communicating with people from different fields, and getting to know the market. There has been not understanding and misunderstanding, but that’s ok, everyone has their own planning.”

In this day that he turns 29, Lay announced his plan for recruiting trainees, “I’m almost 30, people lives to their 60s, then this will be the career for my second half of life. I wish to give this market a truly different idol groups, so that they can define the era, define what idols really are.”

We asked: “Do you consider yourself ambitious about career?”

“Yes, of course. I want to change this impetuous market.”

It sounds like Lay Zhang wants to change the impetuous condition in current market, but in some people’s mind, it might be another “Lay style’s big talk”. However, Lay explained that this doesn’t mean he think he has the ability to. Instead, what he thinks he has been doing is set a long-term goal and marching toward his goals from the small details.

For example, after having the thought of training new idols, he started to do the research on Chinese idol market: “The industry started from Chris Li, the typical way to train idols was through survival shows, another way was with “growing up with” type of training (idols debut from a very young age and grow up with their fans), another way is to work around the artist’s own ability and wait for any unexpected opportunity. But most of the time, when people do get that opportunity, it will be influenced by company’s ‘quality control’. And this influence, you have to ask yourself how far can this bring you with that the company has to offer.”

We happened to talk about the two seniors of Chinese entertainment — Long Dani and Du Hua who has been working closely with the idol industry for long time. Lay explained: “I think both Du Hua and Dani are irreplaceable in this industry. Dani has strong ability on variety shows output, and Duhua is good at creating commercial mode and logic. What Lay Zhang wants to do is ‘quality control’.”

Lay also understands that, comparing with his early age ‘no way back’ trainee experience overseas, the current Chinese market gives these untrained youths too many ‘backup plan’ opportunities, which makes them casual and inactive toward training.

Talking about his standard for an eligible trainee, Lay thinks it’s an abstract thing. But he guaranteed that: “I cansend the Chromosome’s trainees to idol survival shows. I can say, even if the trainees can’t debut from Chromosome, they can still be the S (satisfactory) grade trainees in the market.”

About what is the source of his confident for his company’s trainees, Lay explained: “I think that ‘content’ will always be the core of productivity. I won’t recruit too many people in the beginning, but I will find the best coachesand producers from all the fields for them. I also will go through all the trainees’ information. Only the ones who passed my test can be contacted by the company.”

Currently, the market is only “selling water”, there are rarely stage performance opportunities to support idols’ further development. Lay told us that he also thought about it: “This is how I work, I either don’t do it or everything has to be planned out accordingly if I decide to start. I chatted with someone about the music promotion show, there are some tricky parts to it, which includes coordinating with the front line. I can’t easily start it when I haven’t figured out a reasonable commercial logic and model, because I have to be responsible for all the people who are being involved in it. There are many risks and difficulties. Lots of my friends from venture industry always ask me why haven’t I started the project since I have been talking about training idols. I had steadily completed the plan and found the most suitable partners, and it’s finally the time to start. Like what you mentioned about the industry chain, I actually have other arrangements in the back end.”

Lay said: “After the formal announcement on Oct 7th, I plan to promote it every time I appear, and in any occasions, like telling everyone ‘Is there anyone want to be a trainee? You can come to Chromosome’.” He also told us that he has gone through over 2000 resumes so far, “some of them are really good.”

About the future, there is no need to say too much about it. Lay concluded: “I’ll keep working hard on it anyway. Just do it if you feel like it is what you want.”

Article by 娱理. Translation by XingTweet Translate. Please take out with credits to owners.