Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Mino released his digital single “Body” a few hours ago, and even though I’m never the biggest fan of Korean idols trying to do this genre of music, this one worked out surprisingly well.
The instrumental is easily the best part about “Body”, setting the mood as sensual and seductive while still maintaining an edge to it. The booming bass is what will be talked about, and deservedly so because it works well in this setting, but I thought the underlying keyboards (I think?) that set the tone initially and continued throughout were what really differentiated “Body” from the plethora of other babymaking R&B/hip-hop attempts. The bells and whistles used throughout kept the instrumental from being plain, and it helped the song avoid becoming annoyingly repetitive.
The chorus worked for me as well, as the almost chanting/yelling combined well with the bass for a memorable hook that seems to echo in your brain for a while. It’s rare for these types of songs to have a sound that stands out to me because most of them are almost generic on purpose, so “Body” was a nice switch on that expectation from me.
That said, I gotta say this probably isn’t my favorite performance from a rapping standpoint. I realize that isn’t really the point of these kinds of tracks, but even for the brief moments where it would be appropriate to go off, Mino’s flow was like a half-assed commit to the trendy sweg lawd stylings. It’s like Mino sorta wanted to go that route, but wussed out in the end and thus we end up with this awkward hybrid flow. It’s unfortunate because if he just stuck with his more traditional stylings instead of trying to step out of his comfort zone, I think the whole song would’ve been better for it.
Oh yeah, and because I can’t NOT mention it, the wordplay with ‘mom’ and ‘daddy’ worked out well, as he wasn’t really saying that…
MINO – BODY lyrics pic.twitter.com/3J3gdsIdjD
— Kristine Kwak (@kristinekwak) September 7, 2016
…but actually was.
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The music video wasn’t overly complicated, and for this type of song it didn’t have to be. That is to say it wasn’t amazing or anything, but it did what it was supposed to do for the concept, which is an underrated attribute.
https://twitter.com/asianjunkiecom/status/773578420114436096
100%
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There were more positives than negatives about “Body”, and the music video was executed well with Mino representing the genre, but I was a bit disappointed that most of the pluses of the song had little to do with Mino himself. Most of the time it didn’t feel like he was in his comfort zone, at least as a rapper, and that was to the detriment of the overall product. Still, while “Body” probably isn’t going to be a pop hit or anything, it fit within its genre nicely and even had a few bells and whistles that separated itself from being standard fare. These types of tracks from K-pop idols don’t usually draw me in because they end up being relatively basic, but the build of the pre-chorus and the addictive qualities of the hook on “Body” put the release over the top for me.
