Who Gets to Be “The Boy Next Door?” Hoji Has an Answer
Written by Komal Gupta | When MIXTAPE 317 caught up with Hoji at Music Matters Live Singapore 2026, “The Boy Next Door” had only recently made its way into the world.
On The Boy Next Door, the Malaysian singer-songwriter makes room for desire in all its forms: boys, ambition, validation, and the slightly terrifying act of admitting you want to make it big.
There is an interesting contradiction at the centre of Hoji’s debut album, The Boy Next Door. For a record filled with romantic obsessions, messy relationships and boys who are difficult to let go of, the thing Hoji was most hesitant to reveal had nothing to do with love. It was ambition.
“I’ve never written a song about my ambition before,” he tells MIXTAPE 317 at the Music Matters Live festival in Singapore. “It’s mostly about relationships in my life.”
Writing about wanting someone came naturally. Writing about wanting something—success, recognition, a place in the industry—felt considerably more exposing.
“That was the one I was like, should I show this?” he remembers. “That might change how people view me a little bit. Now that they know, I actually want this really bad.”
And Hoji does want it
Ask him to choose between making it and falling in love, and he picks making it. Pretty or remembered? Remembered. Living the dream or daydreaming about it? Living the dream.
For an album concerned with all the different people Hoji can be, perhaps this is the version at its centre: a 23-year-old who has decided that openly trying might be less embarrassing than pretending not to care.
The embarrassment of trying
Hoji thinks his generation has become particularly good at looking effortless.
“People don’t want to seem like they are trying,” he says. “Maybe it’s a fear of failing in front of people, which I totally understand.”
But the performance of effortlessness has consequences. If caring too much is embarrassing, then admitting you want to succeed, especially before you know whether you will, becomes its own vulnerability.
“I think a lot of people are embarrassed about trying, and admitting that they want to succeed, admitting that they want to be big.”
Hoji doesn't claim to have conquered that embarrassment himself. In fact, he is quick to correct that idea.
“I wouldn’t say I’m over that. Embarrassment is something you can’t control.”
What you can control, he thinks, is what you do with it.
“You can just choose not to be embarrassed,” he says. “I’ve grown to have this mindset that it’s way cooler to try than not to try at all. So what’s embarrassing about that?”
It makes The Boy Next Door an interesting coming-of-age record. Hoji wrote it around his 22nd year, after leaving a music production course in London, competing in an international idol survival show in Thailand and returning to Malaysia to pursue music independently. Growing up isn't presented as arriving at some polished, self-assured final form. Hoji seems more interested in allowing contradictory versions of himself to exist at once.
There is the romantic. The messy one. The insecure one. The ambitious one. The one chasing someone, and the one trying very hard to convince himself that he isn't.
On “Give Me Him!”, that last contradiction becomes particularly obvious.
So, is Hoji actually good at letting go, or merely good at convincing himself that he has?
“I think the process is you have to convince yourself first,” he laughs. “Sort of fake it till you make it, right? And then eventually, one day you will just let go.”
First comes the decision. The feeling, hopefully, catches up.
Who gets to be the boy next door?
That multiplicity is precisely why Hoji chose The Boy Next Door as the album's title. Traditionally, “the boy next door” comes with a fairly established image: familiar, approachable, uncomplicated. Hoji is interested in what happens when you stop treating that image as a fixed character.
“I wanted to challenge the meaning of it,” he explains. “What does he look like? What is he supposed to say? What is he supposed to sing about?”
His answer is less a new definition than a refusal to settle on one.
“The boy next door is anybody, any version of me that I choose to be today.”
That becomes particularly pointed when I ask him for the most aggressively not boy-next-door thing about himself.
“I think that I’m not straight.”
And the most painfully boy-next-door thing? He pauses only to arrive at exactly the same answer.
“I want to say also that I’m not straight, because I want to twist the idea of boy next door. You don’t have to be straight to be the boy next door.”
This is perhaps the simplest explanation of the album. Hoji isn't trying to replace one restrictive version of the boy next door with another. For Hoji, the category is wide enough to hold all of it: romance, sexuality, insecurity, ambition and everything in between.
For many listeners, an early introduction to Hoji came through “boys boys boys,” accompanied by what his official bio describes as the first BL-inspired music video by a Malaysian artist. But The Boy Next Door widens the frame. Across the album, Hoji is romantic, insecure, ambitious, messy, hopeful and occasionally contradictory. Some songs describe wanting the boy; others wanting the career, the recognition or simply the reassurance that everything will work out. Rather than asking any one of these versions to represent him completely, Hoji lets them coexist. In other words: he gets to be ordinary in considerably more interesting ways.
Please notice the details For all the album's emotional openness, Hoji is also hoping listeners become nerds about it.
He self-produced The Boy Next Door, and when asked for one tiny detail he wants somebody to notice, his answer arrives immediately: the transition between “I Wanna Dance With You (Reprise)” and “It’s Gonna Be Okay.”
“The songs are connected by a seamless transition,” he says. “It just plays one to the next without stopping. And I hope when they catch that, they will be like, ‘Oh, that’s super cool.’”
It is a wonderfully producer-brained answer to a question about a deeply personal record. Listen to my feelings, yes. But please also notice the transition. And in Singapore, there were signs that people were listening closely.
Music Matters Live marked Hoji’s first time performing in the country. Part of the wider All That Matters conference, the festival brings emerging artists from around the world to Singapore, connecting music discovery with the region’s broader entertainment industry. He performed three songs from the album without knowing quite what to expect from the audience.
Then he spotted people singing his lyrics back to him.
“I felt like, okay, I’m in the right place, you know.”
Hoji was doing some discovering of his own, too. He caught supercatkei's set at the festival and was struck by the way she commanded the crowd without relying on sheer volume.
“She created energy in a different way than just being loud,” he says. “I feel like she invited people in with the softness of her song. That was so beautiful.”
The age of validation Feeling like he was “in the right place,” however, doesn’t mean Hoji has stopped questioning whether he has earned that place.
On “Age of Validation,” the desire to be seen becomes much less playful. Asked what he is still trying to prove at 23, Hoji talks about experiencing a degree of imposter syndrome.
“Sometimes I feel like I have to work to earn my place here, like in this industry, or even on a stage,” he says. “I feel like I have to prove that I deserve to be there.”
Who is he proving it to? Everyone, perhaps. But mostly himself.
“Because I think if I believe it, then other people will believe it.”
It makes his rapid-fire answers unexpectedly revealing. Hoji would rather know he is going to make it than have everybody else believe he will. He would rather be remembered than be pretty. He chooses the real person over the imagined one, walking away over remaining somebody’s secret, and an intense romance over ten silly flings.
For all the album's contradictions, his choices have a peculiar decisiveness to them.
Perhaps that is because The Boy Next Door doesn't document someone who has figured everything out. It documents someone becoming increasingly willing to say what he wants before he knows whether he will get it.
For now, Hoji is resisting the temptation to immediately turn that ambition into another checklist.
“I just put out an album,” he says. “So I’m trying not to be like, ‘What’s next? What’s next? What’s next?’”
He does, however, allow himself one answer - another music video.
The response to “boys boys boys” was far bigger than he expected, and when the right song arrives, he wants to do it again.
Which feels appropriate. Even while attempting to live in the moment, Hoji can't quite stop wanting the next thing. Maybe he doesn't need to.
After all, if The Boy Next Door argues anything, it is that wanting loudly doesn't disqualify you from being ordinary, relatable or familiar. Neither does ambition. Neither does contradiction. Neither does admitting that you care very much about whether all of this works.
The boy next door, according to Hoji, can be “any version of me that I choose to be today.”
Today, at least, he is choosing the one who is trying.
The Boy Next Door: Rapid Fire
Before we let Hoji go, using his lyrics we gave him two choices from the world of The Boy Next Door.
Making it or falling in love?
Making it.
Chasing someone or being chased?
Being chased.
30 seconds to impress you or a second chance?
A second chance.
The real person or the version of them in your head?
The real person.
Being someone’s secret or walking away?
Walking away.
One intense romance or ten silly flings?
One intense romance.
Being pretty or being remembered?
Being remembered.
A promise ring or no promises at all?
A promise ring.
Knowing you’re going to make it or having everyone else believe you’re going to make it?
Knowing I’m going to make it.
Living the dream or daydreaming about it?
Living the dream.
A note from Hoji 💌
Before he left, Hoji had one last message for Mixtape 317 readers:
“I am a singer-songwriter from Malaysia, and it’s been my dream to self-write my entire album. So I just put it out. It’s called The Boy Next Door, and I hope you guys listen to it.”
HOJI
Comments