For today’s article we’re finally writing about DEAN. I think we’re all pretty familiar with who he is. And pretty much as soon as you enter the Korean music industry realm, you have people who will gush about him. And the thing is, it’s totally normal to gush about him. DEAN has a brilliant brain and his music ranges from heart wrenching to party city. He’s legit one of my favorite artists so I’m stoked.
Debut
DEAN (Kwon Hyuk) had his official debut in Korea in 2015 with the single ‘I’m Not Sorry’ featuring Eric Bellinger. Talk about a quality debut man.
Following up on his debut single, he came out with the funky ‘Put My Hands On You’ featuring Anderson Paak.
He manages to travel around the restrictions of labels like R&B, hip-hop and soul. His rap is flawless, his singing voice has me shook and his charisma is out of this world. Just listen to his cover of Corinne Bailey Rae’s song ‘Like A Star’.
Collabs
Somehow, DEAN manages to collab with super interesting artists like Suran, Gaeko, Dok2, Zico, Rad Museum, Crush, Heize, DPR LIVE, PREP and many more.
Here are some of my personal favorites.
For me, his solo single ‘Instagram’ is still one of my favorites. The balance message and tone of the song itself sits just right.
“There’s a hole in my heart
source
Nothing can fill it up, yeah
I’m sinking right now
Inside a square ocean”
The video was created by the multimedia company FLIPEVIL, 96Wave and Dean himself.
Also check out this groovy ‘Love’ performance.
And definitely this single ‘Sometimes I hear howlin’ in my mind’.
Deanfluenza
DEAN doesn’t only write for himself. Basically he also produces for other artists under the monniker Deanfluenza, which is a contraction between being infectious like ‘influenza’ and the icon James Dean.
He currently has 60 writing credits to his name and 75 composing credits, including his own releases. Here’s a sample.
Currently he is under the label You.will.knovv together with artists like Rad Museum and Mokyo. He’s been collabing together with them quite a bit lately.
We wrote about his single ‘Breath’ here. He was also featured on Mokyo’s latest album, which we wrote about here.
Crew
As a way of closing this article, I want to share some music from his rap crew FANXY CHILD which houses talent like Zico, PENOMECO, Crush, Millic and Stay Tuned.
They teamed up to bless us with songs like these.
The last song I want to share with you is this: ‘Bermuda Triangle’ because of its lasting legacy and badassery.
Here’s the link to his Sportify Profile and his Instagram. Let’s hope for a new solo release in 2021.
