Thanks to her track Like This being included on the Fifa 21 video game soundtrack, this South Korean-born, LA-based producer’s stock has risen vertiginously of late. Park Hye Jin makes all her own beats, sing-rapping in a mixture of English and Korean; she sounds both box-fresh and jaded.
As on her previous EPs, Hye Jin continues to deal in simple melodies, in lyrics that double down on one central emotion, and an accomplished array of mainstream-plus-niche sounds. On I Need You, trap beats pair with beatific piano, for instance. Although the dominant mood is bedroom-dreamy, the effect of her staccato choruses and slapping beats is hammeringly percussive, allying her with the hyper-pop of Charli XCX.
Depending on the listener’s ear, Hye Jin’s work can also come across as repetitive and facile. Much art pivots on feelings that are hard to express. She just comes out with it, with confoundingly little differentiation in tone. Her sexually forthright tracks – the excellent, bassy Can I Get Your Number, or Sex With Me (DEFG), which nods to Chicago footwork – pack a mighty frisson, but her vulnerability is expressed in the same register. “I miss, my mum, I miss, my dad,” goes Before I Die.
