Korea can’t seem to get enough of boy bands – there are new ones every year, they prosper and it seems that nothing’s going to change. Although this market is slowly becoming saturated, agencies have to come up with ideas and concepts that are new in order to secure a solid fanbase and media interest. And I suppose that there hasn’t been a band with seven rappers yet? At least that’s what rapper and producer Cho PD must have thought when he laid huge sums of money out to create a band under the ‘Creating Korea's Eminem Project’. Thus Block B was born. It’s a young group in which most members are not even twenty. They debuted with their single Do U Wanna B? in April 2011.
‘In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth’ – quite a bold first line for the single’s first song, Wanna B. This hip-hop track combines a heavy beat with sometimes quite aggressive rapping parts in verses and delicate singing in the chorus, showing what the members can do. And they can both sing and rap very well, merging hip-hop with other genres, in this case pop and dance, just as their concept foretold. The song is catchy, invites listeners to the dancefloor and surprises with an interesting bridge.
Freeze! is next. The pace speeds up and the whole track is more dancey than the first one, which it owes to the techno elements found in the background. However as a whole song it is very reminiscent of what is currently in almost all k-poppers’ discography. But it’s by no means bad; it’s catchy and difficult to resist, and that is probably why the song was chosen as the single song. Moreover, it has quite bold lyrics: the band addresses a girl encouraging her to ‘let herself go’ and ‘go wild’ on a date. The song’s message is soaked in sexual undertones and it is no surprise that it was banned from prime-time TV and could not be purchased by underage listeners. But it’s addictive and great to dance to.
The last song on the single is Am I The Only One Like This? which is also the calmest of all three songs. It doesn’t however mean that it’s a ballad. The peaceful beat and guitars in the backing track serve as background to rapping and singing. And though the song does sound like many we have already heard elsewhere, for example Big Bang, it ends abruptly and sums up the release in a pleasant way.
As is the case with Korean boy bands, Block B has everything that a group needs to debut and keep the fans’ interest. And although the band’s concept of mashing hip-hop with other genres is quite new, the end result is something rather familiar. But we should bear in mind that Do U Wanna B? is just their debut and as such, it is very good. It is definitely worth waiting for future releases from the septet to see which path they will decide go down, as a potential for success is definitely here.
