VAV : JACOB turns 25 years old.
Today, we are September 7th, which is the 25th birthday of VAV‘s face of the group, rapper and singer, JACOB !
Zhang Peng, also known as JACOB, Cobi or Mister J, was born on September 7 1996 in Huibei, China. JACOB is an only child from a comfortably family, and entered a modeling and acting school in China. He then joined the agency Dian Tong Entertainment, one of Ateam Entertainment’s partners, and decided to go to South Korea to start his career as a K-POP idol with VAV, even if his parents didn’t agree with it. He debuted as an inital VAV member with the song “Under the moonlight“ in 2015, and will also debut two years later as an actor in the chinese movie “The dreamer on the catwalk” in 2017. One year later, he will start as a C-POP singer with his solo song “Love night” released on May 2018, before going back to China and start in January 2019 in the survival show “All for one”, in order to make VAV more popular outside of Korea. He will be eliminated 3 months later; and during his time in China for the show, VAV will make a comeback called “Thrilla killa“, unfortunately without him.
Although JACOB is currently the only foreign member in the group, when he made his debuts with VAV, he shared the same nationality as XIAO. To remind you briefly about the former members : XIAO, ZEHAN and GYEOUL were part of the initial lineup of VAV, then they left the group for different reasons. At the time, VAV had a vampire concept and JACOB’s role in this concept was 2nd vampire, representing manliness and strong desire. He had a personnal official colour, dark green, and a symbol which was shining veins. The name of the fandom, vampz, comes also from this era. Although this concept is no longer topical since AYNO, LOU and ZIU joined the group in 2017.
JACOB is very charismatic and confident man, it’s cristal clear when you see his videos on tiktok and Douyin where he shows off his body a lot, but JACOB is also a shy and reserved person. It may be also because he is not confident with his korean, but if you have already seen him on live (alone or with the members), you will notice that it’s in his nature to not speak a lot, but it doesn’t stops him from comunicating with fans with other ways. For example during his many lives on Douyin (he goes on live probably once every two days), there’s always background music, so even if he is not speaking, he shares us his playlists, his favourite songs and also sings along to it, or it already happened to him to go live on VLIVE and just sit around without talking much but he was busy making bracelets from coloured beads for the vampz to win. However, that duality is what makes JACOB special. This and his obsession for Pikachu…
So today we are sending our best birthdat wishes to JACOB !
You can fin him on his personnal SNS such as Instagram or Tiktok with the user @jacob.vav !
Journalist: Solenne
Translator: Solenne
Source: VAV’s SNS