Since I found out that Min Hyuk of BTOB was coming out with an album, I have been quite excited for this to come out. So, when I found out he was coming out with Lee Min Hyuk HUTAZONE, I was pretty pumped! What doesn’t Min Hyuk do? He’s even in a TV Show right now, Jang Geum, Oh My Grandma (대장금이 보고 있다). I have been watching the show religiously, as each episode focuses around a different type of food, and there is lots of cooking. Note: Do not watch this show on an empty stomach!
I ordered a copy of the album from an eBay seller in Korea. This is a link to the exact one I’ve ordered. I got my copy for $26.99 plus free shipping. Plus, with eBay, you can save a little bit of money by using the E-Bates extension on your browser, as it will save you 2% on all album purchases, which definitely adds up.
What is E-Bates?
E-Bates is a cashback site that gives you money for purchases you may have already made. They even have an extension for multiple browsers so when you go to a website that uses Ebates, it will automatically pop up the cashback button to make sure you are saving money. I use this all the time, and I got over 80$ back from them for purchases I was going to make anyways. That’s about 3 more albums I can buy!
If you’ve never used EBates before, you can use this link to get $10 when making a qualified purchase of $25 when using EBates. You will also get whatever percent cashback is being offered from the site you are purchasing from. Sephora, typically has 4% cashback, through here. Sokoglam typically has 3%. These percentages Many other major retailers are on there as well.
Can I get it on Amazon?
Yes! You can pick up a copy using this
If you don’t have Amazon Prime, you can get a 30-day free trial using this link here. I will not lie, the free 2-day shipping, plus all of the free music and videos are totally worth it. I also now use it for books for my Kindle Paper White too, and it is honestly a life saver. They have a program called Kindle Unlimited where you can check out 10 books at a time, read them, and put them back in the kindle library. The program cost $7.99 a month, and you get the first 30 days for free with this link.
How do I read this post?
I recommend that you put the album on in the background, and read through it while listening to the track that I am talking about. It will help you understand what parts of the music I’m referring to when I talk about different instruments and different vocal parts. This is what I recommend for all of my song reviews.
Lee Min Hyuk HUTAZONE Track By Track:
Hutazone
I absolutely love how the album starts off with an EDM/R&B vibe. I must say, this track is an amazing start to his self-produced album. This track mixes so many different vibes that fort he whole first verse it feels otherworldly, especially through whole first minute or so. at the beginning of the track, Min Hyuk is singing these sweet, syncopated notes that seamlessly shift into rapping.
I don’t consider Min Hyuk to be much of a singer, so I won’t judge him on that at all. What I will note about his vocals is that they are surprisingly decent for not being much of a singer. He can hit notes quite well. His tone may be a bit breathy, but as a rapper, he wouldn’t have been trained to not do that at most agencies. What I do like about his breathy singing is that it beautifully contrasts his deep voice when he raps. I’m 100% a fan of this intro. It starts the album off on a great note and makes you curious about what else is to come. It sets expectations similar to that of Mino’s album XX.
Ya
So, I already filmed a reaction to this video, which you can watch below:
As you can probably tell based off of my face in the thumbnail, the video gave me the feels. In this case, they were the sexy feels. Every moment of this song just radiated sexiness from the deep bass to the slides on the guitar to Minhyuk’s deep, chesty rap at the beginning of the song. I personally loved every single moment of this track, and have nothing bad to say about it.
Once you move into the second verse, his rap style changes to a much harder syncopated rhythm. Honestly, I have no idea how any of these rappers talk that fast. Every single time I hear it, it is the most impressive thing that I have ever heard! I talk fast, but I can’t do that. Don’t get me wrong I’ve tried, and epically failed. Moral of the story: I leave the rapping to the rappers, and just bow down at their feet.
너도 나도 (You Too? Me Too!) (Ft. Jeon So Yeon)
Okay, I love the instrumentation on this track! There is a bit of a funk sound going on here! Per usual, I love the bass guitar in the track, as well as the trumpets. The main thing though that distinguishes the intro on this track from others I’ve heard is that humming that he does! I’m totally in love with it! It’s so interesting and different. It’s a great way to start the song before the beat drops.
Now, I must say, I 100% was not expecting that beat drop at the beginning of the song. It took a song that would have been an excellent funk track into an excellent funk dance track. I must say, yet again, the switch into the dance track and the instrumentation that he chose for the rest of the track is phenomenal. It has that very distinct jazzy flair, but it is effortlessly blended into a dance track and the track is clean! I love everything he did with the instrumentation and the vocal harmonies, although simple, are added at the perfect places in the track.
Yet again, I have nothing but positive things to say about this track. It’s fun, it is excited. Jeon So Yeon’s rapping adds nicely to the song and contrasts Minhyuk’s deep voice well. I’m a big fan.
아무렇지 않은 척 (Lonely)
The first thing that I want to note about this track: I’m pretty sure that is a real guitar in the background and not just a keyboard/synth one. How do I know? You hear the strings hit the guitar. I love that sound. Most likely what he did is he recorded the different bits that he needed, and then pulled them into his editing software and set the repeats as needed. It saves time and ensures repeats sound the same.
Another thing that
꿈인가 봐요 (Day Dream) (Ft. Yook Sungjae)
Yay! A ballad! I love when anyone of BTOB does ballads! The one thing that I always say about ballads, and I said it in so many posts, including my BTOB Hour Moment Review is that ballads are really hard! The softer, smoother instrumentation allows you to hear every single flaw, and on some occasions, every single breath.
Now, I, personally, have mixed feelings on breathiness in songs, as there are two types. There is the one where the sound just isn’t being directed correctly to make clear sounds. Then, there is intentional breathiness to add emotion. You can hear both on this track, Minhyuk does the former, and Sungjae does the latter. In Minhyuk’s situation, I will assume most of that is due to the fact that he isn’t branded as a singer, so he didn’t have crazy amounts of vocal training to get that sound out. Sungjae balances that out nicely though!
Other things that I like about the track, I love the strings and the simple instrumentation through the track that builds. At first, the track is some simple piano chords, and I love how they don’t use the typical 4 chords that are in most pop songs. If you want to understand more what I mean about that, this guy does a great job of explaining it well. He also basically gives the reason as to why I don’t listen to as much American music anymore, so make sure to watch that. For this reason alone, I’m a fan of this track.
낙화 (Falling Blossoms) [Interlude]
So, I’m always a fan of interludes. I feel like they allow artists to explore music and how one can fiddle with it in a more condensed version than a
The song is only a minute and a half long, but my ears want so much more than that. I feel like this track could have been extended into a much longer it a very intense, emotionally heavy track. That right there is the beauty of this track. It leaves you wanting more, instead of that abrupt ending. If Minhyuk has an extended version of this track hiding somewhere, I’m dying to hear it!
Fallin’
This track is a complete 180 degrees from Minhyuk singing about wanting to kill himself! It’s happy. It’s bouncy and staccato. This track is a completely different feel from every other track that we have heard on this album up to this point! Although I’m not a fan of the jump from the previous track to this track, as I think it is too abrupt and harsh of a flip, he still managed to flip the sound with that record cutoff at the end. Because of that, you get the feeling from the start that you will be getting a complete 180.
Even though this track is a complete contrast from the previous one, I do still really enjoy it, as it shows a completely different side to Minhyuk that we haven’t seen yet on this album. I really enjoy how he kept this track for himself instead of selling it off to some younger boy group to perform. It’s a cute, happy feel good song, and I’m happy that he included at least one of those on his album.Let’s be real, the rest of it to this point has been very emotionally intense, so I’m happy we are taking a break. What I like even more is that he didn’t leave it for the end of the album. When artists do that, it just feels typical, and like they didn’t know where else to put the track.
All Day
So the first thing that I noted about this track when it came on was the record scratch, and the retro sound to the instrumentation. It has a slightly honky tonk sound to it, as if he is playing a very old record from the 1920’s and performing on top of that. I’m not gonna lie, I dig it. I absolutely love that time frame, and I think modernizing the style from that time by rapping on top of it is quite frankly, brilliant.
As the song progresses, it moves into more modern song that sounds like it may have popped off of an R&B album in the early 2000’s. I’m not mad at it. On top of that, I think Minhyuk’s breathy vocals actually match the style of this song too. It’s an easygoing, light song. The instrumentation is simple to really put emphasis on the lyrics, and it’s main purpose of it help Minhyuk maintain the beat. I dig it.
Purple Rain (feat. Cheeze)
Purple Rain was released in 2017 as a part of Piece of BTOB (Vol. 5), because of that, I’m not going to go into crazy detail on the track, but there are a few things that I want to touch on. First, I love the arpeggios on the piano that continue through the whole track they help to add continuity and interest through the whole track and connect each section of the track together. On top of that, the instrumentation, plus Cheeze’s soft sweet high notes on the track actually softens the rap so it sounds much more flowy. I enjoy this track quite a bit.
오늘 밤에 (Tonight (With Melody))
I’m not going to lie, the instrumentation on this song reminds me of Grease. It has a distinct 1960’s vibe, but with a modern twist as the track features a few electronic accents to propel it into the 21st century. If you listen closely, you will hear them clearly. Overall, this song is really cute! It is a nice happy feeling song that sound like it should either be the theme song for a comedy or part of a cute scene in a coming of age K-Drama, like Boys over Flowers, where they do a montage of fun things at Lotte World.
Although this song is definitely not anywhere in my personal favorites on the album, for what it is, it is executed extremely well. The production is clean, it has a simple melody, and it would be very easy for others to follow along.
Waiting for You
We have finally reached the end of the album, and are on to the final ballad of the album! Yet again, I like what Minhyuk is doing with the instrumentation on this track, especially the piano. It adds a level of complexity to the track that you can’t get with other pieces of instrumentation on ballads. Think about it, almost all ballads are light on the percussion.
As for Minhyuk’s singing, yet again, it isn’t my absolute favorite. He has decent vocal pitch, great low notes, but his middle range isn’t fully developed. If he worked at it a bit and really focused on tightening his vocal cords just a little bit and move the sound a bit higher in his mouth, he could have an even clearer sound than he currently has.
One thing that I will note that I find interesting is in this track, once he gets out of his “comfort range” and has to focus a bit more on the note he is singing, such as On the word “waiting” in the chorus, he gets that perfectly clear sound that I’m talking about. I’d love to hear him tack some time to focus on the range that he is comfortable in and tighten that up a bit more, as he has so much potential with just a little bit of tweaking.
K-Points: 61/5
When I decided after I heard about this album coming out to review it, I wasn’t sure what to expect with Minhyuk’s album. I like BTOB, but up to now, everything that was just Minhyuk was singles. There were no full albums, and some artists have tons of music, but they don’t always fit well together into. This time around, I think he did a very good job for an artist producing his first solo album. Although he did a bit of singing on this album, because he is primarily a rapper, I’m not taking his singing into as much account in this score. As a singer, he has the potential to be very good if he works hard and gets a vocal coach to help him with the tweaking.
So should you get yourself a copy of this album? Honestly, the instrumentation and composition work done on this album is fantastic. For that reason alone, I think this album is worth purchasing. Reason 2 you should get it is Lee Min Hyuk’s abs potentially making an appearance in the photos (I’m crossing my fingers). Should you stream it? I 100% think you need to. Minhyuk did a very solid job on his first album. It’s clean. It’s innovative, and you can tell he poured his soul into it. He crossed genres and blended them all together in a very unique way!
Which track on the album is your favorite, K-Nuggets? Let me know in the comments below!
사랑합니다!
–Rachel
