When you have been to look into the eyes of 20-year-old Lee Joo-heon, you might need observed a flash of willpower in his hardened gaze. In 2015, he had simply debuted as a rapper within the Korean idol group Monsta X, and he was single-mindedly set on one purpose: fame. After years spent within the rigorous Okay-pop trainee system, he yearned for achievement and all the riches that seemingly got here with it. Now, he sees his adolescent vanity as a type of self-preservation. “[That] Joo-heon,” he says of his youthful self, “he was at all times indignant.”
At 28, Joo-heon, who goes by Joohoney professionally, is now not fixated on stardom. As a substitute, he is adopted a calmer mindset, a brand new perspective that has formed his first official solo EP, Lights (launched this previous Could). “This purpose just isn’t vital — it is life that is vital,” he tells AP over Zoom. It is simply previous midnight in Seoul, the place Joohoney is wrapping up a spherical of press interviews for the discharge again at his label’s Gangnam headquarters. It has been an extended day of schedules. Earlier, he filmed a stay taping of Mnet’s M Countdown, a weekly music present in South Korea the place he is likely one of the present MCs.
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However even within the small hours of Friday morning, Joohoney is all dimpled smiles and honest niceties, lyrically weaving out and in of English and Korean: “Proper now, all the pieces is nice.”
[Photo via Starship Entertainment]
It is a stark change from the Joohoney who bared his darkest, most intrusive ideas on his 2020 self-made mixtape Psyche. That Joohoney, he says, felt misplaced, and “Smoky” — with its mix of hazy hip-hop and punchy emotional intimacy — was an try and clear the murk, to search out his true self away from the highlight. Identified for his biting lyrics and unwavering confidence, Joohoney possesses a robust presence. Onstage, he is incendiary, a blaze so huge you’ll be able to’t look away. In particular person, he is magnetic, a power pulling you into his cheerful orbit. When he is alone, nevertheless, he lets his thoughts wander, analyzing occasions and synthesizing them into concepts. By way of the method of constructing Psyche, he realized to let go of negativity and embrace a brand new mind-set.
Lights started with “Do not Fear, Be Pleased,” a feel-good acoustic music that serves because the EP’s sentimental nearer. It is the message Joohoney needs listeners to remove, that regardless of all of life’s hardships “the brilliant tomorrow of our love will come once more.” He wrote it along with his followers in thoughts, and it is the one lower on the EP that made him cry. “My tears simply dropped,” he recollects. “That was a shock for me.” That second of catharsis finally dictated what sort of undertaking Lights was going to be. Within the aftermath of Psyche, he envisioned this launch as “an opportunity to unfold a constructive message.”
“We’re the keys [to our own happiness],” he provides. “All of us needs to be lights for our personal selves.” Joohoney does not let unhappiness linger anymore. He rejects negativity, selecting as an alternative to see happiness as a passing visitor you invite into your soul. Each day, he wakes up and says hiya. “In fact, all of us really feel unhappy and endure laborious issues, however [I remind myself] it is not all the pieces. Working, making music, and speaking to folks provides me numerous constructive power to maneuver ahead,” he says. Joohoney poured that angle into “Freedom,” the EP’s formidable lead single. On it, he roars, “Really feel my freedom” — you’ll be able to hear it within the dissonance between gentle piano keys and thumping bass, sweeping vocals, and blistering rap verses.
He finds freedom within the chaos, one thing the Korean leisure trade sometimes avoids. “In Okay-pop, many idols wish to be free,” Joohoney says. “There are struggles and laborious occasions, numerous coaching and schedules. You are at all times drained.” He had a very laborious time in 2018. He was operating on empty, hustling from one schedule to the subsequent and barely making any time for himself. He recollects working for a number of days straight with out stopping. He is not complaining. He is aware of it is what he signed up for when he selected this life, and dealing laborious has yielded unbelievable outcomes for Monsta X — a high 5 debut on the Billboard 200, sold-out enviornment reveals within the U.S., and worldwide collabs with Steve Aoki, Pitbull, and Snoop Dogg.
But, he was struggling to search out enjoyment within the work. When he took a step again from promotions in 2020, he did some soul-searching, made music purely for himself, and picked up CrossFit. (“That is very TMI,” he laughs, “however whereas I used to be exercising, I noticed that all the pieces is tough, however as people, we do not die, even when doing CrossFit. That modified my mindset rather a lot.”) True to its title, “Freedom” is his purest type of self-expression. To match the power of the music, he realized the way to krump for its choreography from Trix, a South Korean world champion in krump.
“That sort of motion,” he says, demonstrating the sharp rhythm, “actually stems from a spot of extremes.” It is how he wished to specific the feeling of breaking free — from anger, from conference, from something that is holding him again. “I consider that from the second we’re born, we’re not free,” he continues. “We’re caught in a field of what we have to do. There are such a lot of expectations [placed upon us]. Everybody craves this freedom.”
[Photo via Starship Entertainment]
Drawn to music at an early age, Joohoney grew up singing in church. When he turned a trainee as a younger teen, he gravitated towards hip-hop and dance, extra vigorous parts of eloquence. Songwriting and composition got here naturally to him. He launched his first mixtape in 2015, just some months after Monsta X’s debut. He is most affected by virtuosic performers and emotive storytellers, versatile artists who blur style traces and exist on the margins: pop icons, poets, musicians, and rock stars like Michael Jackson, Chet Baker, and Kurt Cobain.
“I really feel most free after I’m making music, [when] I can combine totally different genres and sounds,” he says. “That’s the that means of freedom to me.”
To achieve that degree of self-awareness, Joohoney spent numerous time reflecting on how anger metamorphoses into acceptance over time — not by burying it six ft underneath the floor however by studying to see by it. It is what impressed the music “진화 (Evolution)” on the EP. The observe itself is a journey, an emo hip-hop fusion of 808s, crunchy riffs, emphatic drum beats, shoegaze-y guitar, and the occasional splash of Auto-Tune. It is Juice WRLD meets Nirvana. The sound is acquainted, however the depth of its emotion comes from a deeply private place.
“I used to be impressed by Nirvana,” he says. A good friend in London gifted him a Nevermind LP a number of years again, and it was the primary time he listened with intent. “There’s numerous emotion of their music.” It made him wish to dig deeper, too. He began to query why work strikes so shortly, and why he and his friends work tirelessly on the detriment of their very own psychological well being. As a extra senior artist, eight years into his profession, he sees it as his accountability to talk out and be a catalyst for change. He needs your complete trade to evolve with him. “I am capturing my sincere feelings in my music; this is not typical in Okay-pop,” he explains.
It is why when requested if the phrase “idol” can comprise all of his multitudes, a touch of his assertive youthful self seems. He has a special phrase in thoughts. “I am capturing myself as a complete in my music,” he says with a glad grin. “I can say confidently that I am a pioneer.”
