The manager who called the wave — and then rode it.
In May 2017, before Mic Drop climbed the Hot 100, before BTS performed at the American Music Awards, before Monsta X stood on the Staples Center stage, before Billboard would name him an International Power Player twice over — Eshy Gazit sat down and wrote an essay.
The piece was titled "America, Let's Make History Through Music." It was published on LinkedIn — not Billboard, not Forbes, not any platform built to amplify a music executive's voice — because the argument he was making wasn't one the industry was yet ready to hear.
The argument: Korean pop music was not a curiosity. It was not a niche. It was the next wave of American popular culture, and the American music industry needed to either get in front of it or be flattened by it.
"Early on, many people in the industry mocked my attempts to break BTS," Gazit would tell Billboard later that year, in their Year in Music issue. "They thought it was never going to happen in the U.S."
The setup
By the time Gazit wrote the essay, he had been working with BTS for about a year. He came to the band not as a Korean music specialist — there were almost none in the American industry at that point — but as a producer-engineer who had spent years at Manhattan's Cutting Room studios and KEXP Radio, working alongside The Strokes, John Legend, Chrisette Michele, Estelle, Mos Def, and Steve Lillywhite. The musical foundation came first. The management came after.
What he saw in BTS, and would later see in Monsta X, was not a foreign product to be translated for American ears. It was something fully formed — a music, a visual identity, a relationship with fans — that simply hadn't been given the runway American artists routinely received. The campaign that followed, what The Hollywood Reporter would later call "a massive guerrilla campaign — radio, TV, press" — was about building that runway.
The receipts
Twelve months later, the "Mic Drop" remix with Steve Aoki and Desiigner hit #28 on the Billboard Hot 100. The track went on to be certified Platinum. BTS performed at the American Music Awards, on Ellen, on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, on James Corden. Their sold-out Wings Tour swept American venues. Two more BTS collaborations with Aoki followed — "The Truth Untold," "Waste It On Me." Fall Out Boy invited RM onto a remix of "Champion."
In April 2018, Gazit wrote a second LinkedIn piece. The title was simple: "The K-Pop Revolution Is Here." The argument from 2017 was no longer a prediction. It was a description.
The second act
When Gazit's partnership with BTS ended in early 2018, the conventional narrative would have been: he caught the lightning. The harder thing — and the thing he chose — was to prove the lightning wasn't an accident.
Monsta X had been on Gazit's roster since 2018. By the end of that year, they were the first K-pop act on the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball Tour. In 2019, they were the first K-pop act to perform at the iHeartRadio Music Festival. That same year, they signed to Sony's Epic Records — alongside Camila Cabello, DJ Khaled, and Travis Scott — in a deal the LA Times put on its Arts & Books front page with a one-word headline: UNPOPPABLE.
In 2019, Gazit joined Maverick Management, the Live Nation–owned firm whose roster includes U2, Madonna, Paul McCartney, and Britney Spears. Monsta X came with him — the first K-pop project Maverick had ever taken on.
In 2020, Monsta X's English-language album All About Luv debuted at #5 on the Billboard 200. The following year, The Dreaming debuted at #3 on Billboard Top Album Sales — positioned directly between Adele and Olivia Rodrigo on the chart for the week of December 25, 2021.
Billboard named Gazit an International Power Player in 2021. They named him again in 2022.
The label
In 2021, Gazit founded Intertwine Records. The thesis, stated in a Billboard exclusive at the time: "Intertwine is designed to support artists from Asia and all over the world to bring their music language to as many people as possible." Monsta X and Wonho were the inaugural signings.
The mission, which now appears on every page of his website, is just five words: Connecting people through music.
Today
In 2026, the roster includes Monsta X, Wonho, IVE, KiiiKiii, DaYoung, and Paul Kim. Wonho won "The Best Stage" at the Asia Star Entertainer Awards. Monsta X took home Top Touring Artist at the same show. The next generation of Korean artists — KiiiKiii, DaYoung — are working through Intertwine with a clearer American runway than anyone in K-pop had access to a decade ago.
Whether what Gazit predicted in 2017 counts as a revolution depends on where you draw the line. K-pop is no longer asking to be let into the room. It owns rooms. It builds rooms.
What Gazit understood — and what the LinkedIn essay made plain, in a moment when almost no one in the American industry was willing to put it in writing — is that the wave was always going to arrive. The only question was who was going to be standing on the right side of it when it did.
Eshy Gazit is a Partner at Maverick Management and the founder of Intertwine Records. He is a two-time Billboard International Power Player. He continues to work between New York, Los Angeles, and Seoul.