J-Hope Lights Up the Stage and Pays Heartfelt Homage to BTS on Spectacular First Solo Tour

J-hope’s stage is breathing.

An undulating sea of red fabric pulsing with light, growing ever upwards toward the roof of Allstate Arena outside Chicago until at the center, a figure emerges: the BTS rapper, clad in red leather and rhinestones, alone in front of a matching mic stand. 

The K-pop superstar, 31, is in the middle of a sold out arena tour in the U.S., the second member of the groundbreaking group to do so after his bandmate Suga in 2023.

While showing out at this scale on his own is a massive step for j-hope the soloist, as he stands alone in the middle of the stage, he still introduces himself as “j-hope of BTS” and addresses the approximately 18,000 fans in attendance each night as “Army,” the group’s fandom name.

From start to finish, j-hope’s set is about paying tribute to his roots — both with BTS and before, when he was picking up accolades as a street dancing teen — while looking forward to what promises to be an expansive future, including when the group reunites, having completed South Korea’s mandatory military service, in June.

He kicks off with tracks from his first official solo album, Jack in the Box (2022), as well as his 2018 mixtape Hope World, and Hope on the Street Vol. 1, which was released while he was enlisted in 2024.

Even when BTS’s dance leader is not executing precise choreography, he moves across the stage with a dynamism that is impossible to look away from. During “Hope on the Street,” he glides, stutters, pops and locks up and down a raised column as the skyline of New York City, where he filmed the song’s video with one of his musical heroes, J. Cole, passes behind him. 

J-hope the rapper comes out in full force on “1 Verse,” a 2015 track that was only ever released on SoundCloud, many years before the beginning of BTS’ second chapter meant the members could all produce the solo albums that had long been in their drafts. 

The show also includes a medley of favorite BTS songs, including MIC Drop, Trivia: Just Dance, Silver Spoon and Ego. The crowd’s energy dizzying energy level during them exhibits just how hungry they are for the septet’s next move. 

The crowd sings along easily to his latest fully English releases, “Sweet Dreams” with Miguel and “Mona Lisa,” even though the latter was still unreleased for the first four concerts.

J-hope lights up when the largely female audience takes it upon themselves to fill in for Becky G on “Chicken Noodle Soup,” singing and rapping at full volume in English and Spanish, and again when, during MIC Drop, fans surprised him by shouting “mianhae eomma” (“sorry mom” in Korean) back to him so loud, he actually loses his place for a second.

Chicago is an especially meaningful stop on the tour (which also hits New York, Mexico City, San Antonio, L.A. and Oakland before heading back to Asia). J-hope performed his first ever solo set in the city at 2022’s Lollapalooza as the first K-pop artist to headline any major U.S. festival.

Before the encore, fans’ homemade signs are shown on the arena’s big screen, sharing message of love and support, plus a decade’s worth of memes and inside jokes only BTS and Army will understand. Among them, one that reads “BTS is 7″ is met with the night’s most deafening roar from the crowd. Another says simply, “Army’s Hope June 2025.”

In the very last moment of his encore of “Equal Sign,” “Future” and “NEURON,” j-hope’s face on the big screen begins to disappear behind a collage of old videos of him dancing with BTS, offering glimpses of the members all together, a beacon of what’s to come.