If you asked me to pick two Korean artists who could produce a duet together, I’d be listing off names for nigh on a year before I landed on Soyou and Rain. But it’s the year 2019, the world is crazy, and here we are.
Soyou, of course, is well-known for her impressive lineup of duet releases, including Some with Junggigo, The Space Between with Urban Zakapa, and ironically, Rain with EXO’s Baekhyun. An annual Soyou duet is practically K-Pop tradition by this point.
More surprising is her partner for Beginning, Rain (real name Jung Ji Hoon). Rain is better known for his dancing, along with R&B and hip-hop tracks like How To Avoid The Sun, The Best Present, and Rainism. He’s also notable for a somewhat dubious Hollywood resumé, a product of his misguided detour through movies as a self-proclaimed “world star”. His roles peaked with 2009’s forgettable Ninja Assassin, and the straight-to-streaming 2014 dud The Prince.
Recently, though, he’s come back to Korea and is focusing on music again, with mixed results (we don’t speak of 2017's Gang ‘round these parts). This collaboration with Soyou, however, can be firmly placed among some of his better work. It’s too bad it has to come in the form of a promo song for Pepsi. (What, you didn’t notice the blue costumes, the blue color grading, the Pepsi cans littered everywhere, and the Pepsi-drinking interludes?)