Flower
Cube Entertainmet
December 13, 2013
Yong Junhyng may be known for his clean and concise rapping skills, but his composing skills seem to go under the radar. He produced his entire BEAST band mate Yoseob’s “The First Collage” mini in 2012 and scored an all-kill with “Will You Be Okay?” for the group last year. It was a matter of time before he would be focusing his talents on his solo debut.
“Flower” is that debut and it’s chock full of surprises. The album opener “Nothing is Forever” is a prelude to the album’s title track, made up Autotuned ad-libs, repeats of the English line “Nothing is Forever, everybody know that” and a strong, yet unfortunately short rap. This could have worked as a full track rather than an intro. Next is the title track “Flower” which is the strongest song on the mini. We hear more Junhyung’s rapping as it takes front and center, over a beat that recalls a lot of American R&B hits done in the late 90s mixed in with some complex electronic beeps and a little bit of dubstep for good measure. The only pitfall of the track is the drowning out of the trumpet towards the end. For his next trick, he enlists label mate G.NA for “Anything” the vocal assist. To be honest, it’s a bit too simple. We’ve all heard the rapper featuring singer thing numerous times and it would have been nice to give the song some more variety: have them alternate the lines, maybe have G Na rap. But it works for this album. Simple, just too simple. It then flows back into the 90s R&B for “Slow” where the rapping is put aside for a minute and singing is the main attraction, at least for most of the song. The rap during the second verse is freer flowing than on the previous tracks matching the tempo of the track nicely. The final track of the album is “Caffeine”, the hit that Junhuyng composed for Yoseob, now retooled as a piano and string driven duet. Junhyung takes most the vocals while Yoseob is given the chorus. It winds the album down from the upbeat tracks “Flower” and “Slow” and ends on a high note, literally with Yoseob pulling of an impressive falsetto. The mini does a great job at showcasing Junhyung’s talents as a composer and as an artist, with nice production and solid vocals. Of course every work can use some improvement, but that just seems nitpicky for a mini. Anticipate a full length album sometime in the future because this much perfection is too good to waste.
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