Today’s rapper in the spotlight belongs to one of my favourite idol groups. This guy has a solid solo career and also writes, composes and produces for his group. We will be talking about WINNER’s Mino.
Beginnings
Song Min-ho started off his career in the underground rapping scene. He became a Stardom Entertainment trainee and was part of the line-up for the idol group Block B, however, he left the company due to legal issues.
He joined Y2Y Contents and debuted in the idol group BoM with the stage name ‘Tagoon’ in 2011, however, this group disbanded in 2013.
Mino was scouted in 2013 by YG Entertainment, after they watched a cover he did for Big Bang’s ‘La La La’. The same year he appeared in Mnet’s survival show ‘WIN: Who is Next?’ as part of the “Team A”. This survival show gave many fantastic stages, here are a few of our favourites:
YG Entertainment
“Team A” won this survival show and became the idol group ‘WINNER’, they officially debuted in 2014 with the album ‘2014 S/S’, for this debut album Mino has writing and producing credits for most of the songs, and even a solo single, check it below.
In 2015, Mino competed in the survival program ‘Show Me The Money’, he ended up second place in this show, but left many incredible and absolutely legendary performances that left more than one crying or speechless.
The first round of elimination was just unexpected and fire:
The battle that did not go as expected:
The collab track everyone loves:
This performance = goosebump + tears
In 2016, iKon’s Bobby and Mino debuted as the hip-hop unit MOBB with the album ‘The MOBB’, this album included his solo single ‘Body’ which did extremely well in the Billboard World Digital Song Chart.
Solo Career
Mino made his solo debut in 2018 with the album ‘XX’, the title track ‘Fiance’ peaked in the Korean charts and won several awards. Check out the music video below.
This year he came back with his second solo album ‘Take’, in the album he featured some incredible artists including Zion.T, DPR LIVE, BewhY, and others. Below you can watch the music video for his title track ‘Run Away’.
You can check out Mino’s discography here, and also check WINNER’s one, he is fantastic as a soloist and very wholesome as part of WINNER.
