Song Review:: NEWBEAT: RAW AND RAD- HICCUP {Pre-Debut}

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  • 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

 This is the second of their pre-debut singles and I'm not going to lie, but when I saw the teaser for this song, and the title reveal, I was a little concerned that they don't know what a hiccup is. Or the creative team doesn't. But it's fine. It didn't dissuade me from being curious, especially after how catchy JeLLo was. This song is almost three minutes long, so I appreciate that. They have a former member of TOO/TO1 in the group, by the way, as well as a former Boys Planet trainee. Maknae turns eighteen in July.

So I was initially disappointed because the over the last little bit of music from a few artists, when I've heard something cool or interesting in the intro, it's been relegated to only the intro and we never get to hear it again in the song. Some people might like that. Me, it makes the song feel a little disconnected and it makes me sad, because it's a waste of the cool thing. So this time when I heard the piano in the beginning, I was hoping that we'd get kind of a jazzy style through the song, but the hip-hop that shows up squashed that hope and I resigned myself to the piano being a gimmick. But then it stays underneath the hip-hop for a little bit, and I was hopeful. It didn't stay long, but even that was a welcome departure from that trend. The result was a discordant, but strangely intriguing, start to the song proper. After that it felt like fairly standard hip-hop, complete with a challenge or meme reference and record scratches. So imagine my surprise when the piano comes back, more than once even. Also, at one point in the middle, we get a little bit of the crackling.

The base of this song is hip-hop, and so we get quite a bit of rapping in the verses, which is not my preferred thing, but I get it.. I'm reminded a little of NCT and early EXO in how the song is structured vocally. Also, those vocal runs? They're a good surprise to be having and a great demonstration of what we could hear in the future. I've been very insistent about letting everyone know that A.C.E are incredible live and I love their vocals live. HICCUP shows off their potential to follow that same capability, even if the style of music is not the same. So this pleases me.

Once again, the music video is slightly longer than half the length of the song, so it's more of an extended music teaser instead of a full music video. And, like with JeLLo, it's weird. It's 90s hip-hop weird. It's second gen k-pop weird. I don't think it's as weird as JeLLo, but it's both serious and goofy, and also seriously goofy. Also included is the lyric video that was released.





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