13 tracks · 36 min
The Firstfruit, the debut solo album from NCT rapper MARK, is achingly personal. “After nearly a decade of being an NCT member,” MARK told listeners on his Apple Music 1 radio show on your MARK, “I feel very, very honoured to release a solo album with just my voice, with just my ideas, and just based on me.” Loosely divided into sections based on the four cities—Toronto, NYC, Vancouver and Seoul—the K-pop artist has called home, The Firstfruit tells the story of MARK’s life up until the album's 2025 release. The 13-track collection begins in Toronto, where the rapper was born and spent the early years of his life. MARK sets the scene in acoustic, spoken-word opener “Toronto’s Window”: “I never thought that I could dream in detail, you know?/Always thought that/All I really had to do was to just be faithful and that’s it.” The artist’s faith is a theme throughout the album. “I was born and raised in a Christian family, and so I would always listen to gospel music,” MARK tells Apple Music, recalling sleeping under his mother’s piano as she played in church. While the album’s title is a reference to its role as his first major solo release, it’s also biblical in nature. “In the Bibl…
