Swings Opens Up About Losing 8 Artists at Once: 'If I Had JYP's Money and Power, They Would've Stayed'

Rapper Swings sat down with the YouTube channel Stayfolio on the 26th and spent a good portion of the conversation being more frank about his business than most label heads ever allow themselves to be. The headline admission: eight of his top artists left AP Alchemy at the same time, and he said he understands exactly why.

"They all signed at once, so they left at once," Swings said. "I don't resent the reasons they left. There was nothing more to gain from me. If I had the money, recognition, and power of senior Park Jin-young, they would have stayed."

The JYP Entertainment founder is one of the most powerful figures in the Korean music industry, and Swings invoking his name wasn't bitter, it read more like a clear-eyed self-assessment. He followed it up with characteristic directness: "Leaving is natural. If I don't want that, I just need to get bigger."

Running a label, and what it costs

Swings founded AP Alchemy as a holding company that consolidates several hip-hop labels under one roof. On the surface it looks like an empire; his conversation with Stayfolio made clear how much the human side of it wears on him.

"It's hard. People are hard," he said. "I never know when I might hurt someone, and they never know when they might hurt me." He added that he has recently come to realize how difficult it is to lead people, and responded by scaling back: cutting workloads, reducing his roster.

He reached for a wolf documentary analogy to explain what he thinks leadership actually requires. The strongest alpha wolf, he said, has to offer something, there has to be something worth following. His read on why his artists left is rooted in the same logic: if the leader isn't providing enough, departure is rational, not personal.

Why he stopped loving music, and started acting classes

The other major thread running through the interview is a creative restlessness that's been building for years. Swings said music started feeling difficult five to seven years ago. "It didn't work the way it used to. I used to write lyrics drunk and it was fun. Now it's less exciting."

That honest reckoning sent him back to something older. He grew up in the United States and spent a lot of time watching movies with his father, Bruce Willis and Jim Carrey were the names he remembered loving as a kid. Film was always part of his interior life; it just got set aside when music took over for two decades.

"So I asked myself: what do I actually like?" he said. "I worked up the courage and started taking acting lessons a couple of years ago. It's been a lot of fun."

His approach to breaking into the industry is almost aggressively pragmatic. He contacted casting directors and filmmakers directly, leveraged his name recognition to get meetings, and put in the work at an acting school. "I'm out here hustling hard," he said. "Failing and being embarrassed is better than never trying. And if you fail, you learn and grow."

His first film role, arriving September 23

All of that groundwork leads to Tazza: Song of Belzebub, which opens on September 23. Swings plays a character named Abraham, his very first film role. He noted that the part was originally smaller, and that the director generously expanded it during production. "Think of the character as someone who drills straight through the film like a bit," he said.

The film follows Jang Tae-young, a man who built his life around online casino success only to lose everything to his friend Park Tae-young, and then cross paths with him again at a poker table. Byun Yo-han plays Jang Tae-young, Noh Jae-won plays Park Tae-young, and the cast also includes Jo Woo-jin and Yoon Kyung-ho. Director Choi Guk-hee, whose previous credits include Life Is Beautiful (2022), Default (2018), and Split (2016), helms the project.

Swings reflected on the difference between the two worlds he now straddles. In hip-hop, he said, conflict between artists is simple, you go home and record a diss track. Film is a completely different animal. "You can't make a movie alone. Dozens of people deliberated over casting just me. Actors are clearly team players." He described the experience as humbling, noting that some directors on set are old enough to be his mother. "I'm just a small part in a turning clock," he said.

On rest, he mentioned in passing that travel does nothing for him, he finds the broken routine, the spending, and the inevitable overeating more draining than restorative. A hotel room with its particular sense of privacy and quiet is the closest thing to a vacation he actually enjoys. It's a small detail, but it fits the portrait of someone who has spent a long time learning, sometimes the hard way, exactly what he needs to keep going.