Rundown: MAMAMOO, Kep1er, Lee Chae Yeon, Park Jihoon, UP10TION, Baekho, more

Holy fuck there were a lot of releases recently, especially yesterday. Almost necessitated this post if I wasn’t gonna fall a month behind again.

There’s a couple solid releases in here, but if you don’t see a relevant release in this post then you should be glad.

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The Rose – “Sour”

Sappy with a spacey but empty sounding chorus that doesn’t fulfill the energy they were aiming to capture.

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MAMAMOO – “ILLELLA”

It’s repetitive and generic and … sonically in my wheelhouse, so it’s solid for me. Granted, that breakdown kinda fucked up the vibes and it felt like a B-side more than anything, but whatever.

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Lee Chae Yeon – “HUSH RUSH”

It’s not adventurous enough to be bad, but it just has a lot of dead air where it feels like the melody should go and she doesn’t have the impactful vocal to inject enough life into this otherwise. I thought maybe it’s for dance-heavy purposes given her strengths, but the music video doesn’t even do that. Dunno.

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Park Jihoon – “NITRO”

Really like the synthy instrumental, especially during the chorus, though it doesn’t really have a strong refrain to push it to the next level. Still, pretty solid.

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Ravi – “BLOCK PARTY”

This rather repetitive instrumental could be a solidly booming foundation for a better rapper, and Ravi seems like a nice guy so I’ll stop there.

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Kep1er – “We Fresh”

Honestly thought this had a lot of potential in a “TOMBOY” sort of way until whatever was going on with the track in the chorus, which was simultaneously overly simplistic in the first half and then busy to the point of being annoying in the second half. Still, the pre-chorus is redeeming.

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Baekho – “No Rules”

That smooth operator male soloist vibe is usually a safe bet, but it can find itself on the wrong side of generic quickly if the production is plain and the artist can’t take it to different place. That’s what happens here.

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UP10TION – “What If Love”

Basically the same as above except the chorus at least salvages something from it.