Song Review:: NEWBEAT: RAW AND RAD- Flip the Coin {Debut}

• Release date: 2025 March 24

• Album tracklist: Intro : RAW AND RAD, Sounds like Money, JeLLo(Sleepers), HICCUP, You Me + -, Flip the Coin, F.L.Y (Fu**ing Lovely, Lonely Youth), Wonder, We Are Young, Outro : ZERO-SUM GAME

• Album runtime: 26 minutes

 They'll have about a week to be with their older brother group before A.C.E leaves Beat Interactive. In the meantime, congrats on your official debut, NewBeat! It's been a long time coming! Just as a recap on the group, even though I'm ludicrously behind again, the eldest turns 23 this year and the maknae turns 17. They've been very active in public leading up to their debut, with most of them involved in A.C.E music videos or stages, as well as months worth of busking, which is very good to get them the performing-together-in-front-of-an-audience experience they need to really hit the ground running. And the JeLLo music video introduces them with their names, so if you wanted to help get that locked in, that's a thing you can go back and look at. But the album runtime is a no-go for me.

These guys feel a little like the love child of G-Dragon and Stray Kids. And also, they worked with The Blue Tree Foundation for the songs, and regardless of anything else, I'm all about that. The other thing that really pleases me is this is a full album, so we get a good selection of their abilities and what they can do. Personally, I think that's really important for a debuting group.

I'm pretty sure this song falls under the "noise" category of music. But we've still got some interesting things going on in the instrumentals. I'm reminded of an action movie set in maybe India? Not any specific one, but there's something about the combination of the sounds that give me that feeling. I love the piano that lurks underneath the percussion, though. I wish the piano carried through more of the song, because while you might think that the piano would soften the song, instead what happens is it adds a strongly textured drama to the song. There's really only two spots with it, one with higher notes and then the return with lower notes. There's not a huge difference between the higher and lower, but the difference is fascinating because it's not just a copy+paste. I'm pleased with the song having a coin sound effect at the beginning, which is a requirement for a song with this title, but I'm still pleased with its inclusion.

It's been a rather long time since I heard a properly shouty release like this. (Spoiler alert for the rest of the album, they also have songs I really like, so I'm willing to sit and wait for a title track I really like (looking at you, NOWADAYS.)) I'm as pleased about this as you'd expect me to be, but I also know that there are a lot of people who do like this style and genre, so y'all are definitely more the target audience. NCT (specifically the 127 subunit because they typically have more of a hip-hop sound than the others if I understand correctly), Stray Kids, early BTS, xikers, NOWADAYS, fans of those groups specifically should take a look at NewBeat because I'd put them in roughly the same circle in a Venn diagram. But we also get some brief vocals to cut through the intensive rapping. They aren't flexed vocals for the most part, and I do prefer the songs I listen to in my free time to be the reverse of this, but the flow between rap and vocals is pretty smooth and non-clunky. Natural. I appreciate that.

But for example, the song produced by Hyunsik (F.L.Y (Fu**ing Lovely, Lonely Youth) is almost four minutes long, and is one of two songs that I'd recommend if you're more like me with a preference for vocals over rap. The other one that I'd recommend is Wonder, which is also more than three minutes long and is chock full of interesting vocals. And to match with the two pre-debut songs and this one, the third one I'll recommend for you in this is the electric-guitar filled We Are Young.

The music video reminded me of another group that I'm only vaguely familiar with: Young Posse. So there's some crossover there too. Oh, this is a good music video, though. It's dynamic. It's engaging. It's got enough potential lore that my spidey-senses started tingling. I don't know how much connective lore we're going to get across albums, but I'm sensing collective lore across the three songs. I would need to spend some time trying to put pieces together though. Also, the choreography? Wow. I think they might be straight-up b-boying in one spot. This is a cool music video. I really like it.