Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Junsu has come back with a track featuring rapper The Quiett, and while there’s a ton of elements that work on “Rock The World“, I’m not sure if it all quite comes together.
Well, this was a rather surprising turn of events. Yeah, I expected some kind of hip-hop verve given the featuring, but I didn’t expect Junsu to keep his typical feel of epic, operatic-like sound and try to weave that into the hip-hop feel.
I’m sort of torn on “Rock The World”, because I love the idea and attempt, but I’m not sure how well it all actually works together. The individual parts are all quality, from the sung melodies to the breakdowns to the hip-hop verse to the vocal runs, but I’m not sure if they necessarily work the best when shuffled up next to one another and thrown out there.
For example, the parts I enjoyed the most ended up being the repeating “we gon’ rock the world” and The Quiett’s featuring, not because they were necessarily the most catchy parts of the song, but because those parts weren’t interrupted by abrupt switches or changes and I could actually just appreciate the underlying instrumental for a while. It felt like they were using noise tactics typically reserved for pop groups in need of distracting the listener from their lack of ability to carry songs by themselves, except they were doing it with Junsu and The Quiett and thus for no real reason.
That doesn’t make the song bad, but Junsu’s singles and their epic/musical type of feel to them were already a bit extra (which I’ve enjoyed), so to add another element or two into that same mixer is a bit much to ask from the listener before it becomes disorienting.
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The music video also suffers from trying to do too much instead of letting individual pieces shine. The dancing and choreography was intense and interesting, but there were way too many cuts to get a good feel for it, and it seems like it was edited that way to create action when the actual action that was going on was more than sufficient.
Thankfully, at least there were the visuals, and they included a bunch of neat sets and alternating scenes between simplistic and almost obnoxiously colorful.
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Normally I can get a feel on whether a song might grow on me or not, but “Rock The World” is honestly a bit confusing from that perspective. In the end, that might be the best review of the whole experience. While all the pieces are unsurprisingly executed well and the concept itself is quite interesting, it tried to do so many things at once that it just became a tad lost in direction and I feel like it might leave the listener feeling that way as well.
