Lee Jinhyuk Makes Long Awaited Return at New Agency

It’s been over a year and a half since Lee Jinhyuk released any new music. His career has been an interesting one, and he’s been moving around quite a bit since he first became active on the K-Pop scene in 2015. Originally starting with the group UP10TION, Jinhyuk took a hiatus from the group in 2019 to participate in Produce X 101, where he did not place in the final lineup of X1, but was just shy of landing a spot and had a fairly popular run on the show. After that, he officially kicked off his solo career with TOP Media, where he would remain for the next five years until his contract expiration and official departure from both the agency and UP10TION. About a month ago, he officially signed with Bill Entertainment and announced the release of new mini-album NEW QUEST: JUNGLE. Jinhyuk’s last release was in August 2022.

As someone who considers themselves a fan of Jinhyuk’s solo work since his debut in 2019, part of the problem for him besides the lack of releases was the repetitive nature of the title tracks. It seemed like he was kept in a box of a certain sound, and as a result, many of his releases between then and now seemed like the same song and concept with a slight tweak. His rap style, in my opinion, fits a harder-hitting based melody rather than an upbeat and cutesy sound. The newest title track “Relax” sounds nothing like anything he’s released before, having a heavy hip-hop focused melody and more rap lines than vocal lines. Pretty much the entire song, save for the pre-chorus, is performed in his lower vocal register, which is quite fitting of the concept. The timbre of his voice does a good job with this type of track and helps to make it more enjoyable overall. 

Performance is a big piece of Jinhyuk’s talents, so there’s no surprise there’s a pretty heavy focus on choreography in the music video. The performance does add a lot more depth to the song, which could potentially get a bit repetitive on its own. Since the music video is shot fairly simply, a lot of the focus on the choreography is what makes it so eye-catching, and it does a good job of upping the quality of the video overall. It’s simple, but no less entertaining, truly showcasing Jinhyuk’s performance ability. 

Check out the music video for “Relax” below!

Edited by Cara Musashi