New boy bands will usually sing of love, whether it be romancing or heartbreak, with hopes of quickly making fans by touching females’ hearts. But such was not the case for NU’EST, who became dubbed the ‘spokesmen of teenagers’ upon their debut last summer. The group consisted of members JR, Aron, Baekho, Minhyun and Ren, sang of the problem of bullying in schools through their debut song “FACE” which has long been a social issue in Korea. Then through their song “Action” from their first mini-album, the five raised their voices on nonconformity. It was only through their latest release “Hello” in February that they spoke of love, but it seems they may go back to where they started at.
The group, already gaining presence throughout Asia, met with TenAsia for an interview last week before hitting the road for their Asia tour “2013 NU’EST L.O.Λ.E. TOUR” starting in June.
Q: How have you been?JR: We’ve mostly been practicing a lot for our concert in Japan. Aron is also the DJ for a radio program so he’s been doing that too.
Q: Could you each introduce the person next to you?
Ren: Aron is the rapper of our group. As the oldest member of the team, he always takes care of us and guides us. When we do something wrong, he tells us so and he also cooks for us. Aron is good at cooking things like pasta, he’s our chef.
Minhyun: Aron always tells us not to cook. I sometimes try to help, but he says “No.”
All: We all are really bad cooks. To the point you can’t eat the food we cook.
Aron: JR is the team leader. He dances and raps. JR is a bit childish so he likes reading comic books and assembling Gundam V plastic models.
JR: Minhyun is tall and such a model student. He’s also really clean. The four of us don’t clean much, so Minhyun usually does the cleaning. He scolds us a lot afterwards, telling us things like, “Clean up after finishing your meal” or “Do the dishes.” He’s like the mom of our team.
Minhyun: Baekho is the main vocalist of our team. He is very masculine and has a strong mindset but is also playful and a bit lazy, so he is the one I have the hardest time with as mom.
Baekho: What does Ren do? I think he’s the best looking on our team. And he likes weird clothes. He has a unique sense of fashion.
Minhyun: Ren’s closet is full of clothes that we avoid. He wears unique prints such as pyramids or flower patterns even in daily life.
Q: If Aron does the cooking and Minhyun does the cleaning, what do the rest of you do?
JR, Baekho, Ren: We decide by rock-paper-scissors.
Q: Since Minhyun does the cleaning, is he the best roommate?
JR: Minhyun cleans the house all the time. When we go overseas and stay in hotels, Baekho and Minhyun, JR and Ren share a room together and Aron stays with the manager.
Minhyun: There’s a disadvantage to sharing a room with me. I sing in the morning.
Ren: I share a room with Minhyun. He sings while taking showers and it wakes me up.
Baekho: Minhyun sings, but I’m fine with it. I sleep deep and singing doesn’t wake me up. I’m comfortable sharing rooms with Minhyun.
Q: You’ll be performing in a lot of countries soon including Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysia. Which country are you looking forward to going to the most?
JR: Japan excites me the most. My birthday is June 8 and that’s when we’ll have our concert in Japan. In a way I guess it’s sad because I won’t get to spend it at home.
Baekho: Taiwan. Because that’s when my birthday is. It wasn’t on purpose, it just turned out that way so I’m sorry to my Korean fans because they seem to be sad about it. But I’m looking forward to it.
Minhyun: I choose Japan. And it’s because we are currently practicing hard for the concert. I want it to be a success.
Aron: Malaysia for me. The shows in Japan, Singapore and Taiwan will be our own concerts but the one in Malaysia will be for our entire agency Pledis so I think it’ll be more special.
Ren: Singapore. The whole country was so clean when I last went. I felt like I was in heaven. Although Minhyun does a good job of cleaning too.
Q: What has been your favorite theme among the albums you’ve released so far?
Baekho: ”Hello” for me. And it’s because the choreography wasn’t difficult. I had a hard time with the other songs, sweating a lot. But “Hello” is pretty quiet and you don’t have to dance other than for your own parts. (laughs) That’s what was good about it.
Minhyun: My favorite is our debut song “FACE.” We sang as spokespersons for teenagers which I think many people related to so if we got to do another song, I’d like to sing one that many people can identify with.
JR: Every concept was good. I liked the “Hello” at first, but changed my mind after reading all the comments from fans. I always check them and many of them said they want us to go back to the theme we went with for “FACE.” That’s why I’m hoping our next album will be like “FACE.” It’s both because our fans want it and because I think our fans would feel sympathy to our music.
Aron: Though we didn’t perform it on stage, ‘Introduce Me to Your Noona,’ [translated title] is my personal favorite. I kind of like jazz and R&B.
Ren: I like “FACE.” It showed our color the most and fans responded to it well to.
Baekho: I choose “FACE” too. (laughs)
Q: Is there any country you’d like to travel to again or recommend for traveling?
Baekho: For me it’s Thailand. It’s the place that we went to most recently and we had such a great time snorkeling, riding motorcycles and bumper boats. Everything was so much fun.
Minhyun: We went to L.A. last December. I was so excited to go there since it was my first time. But we couldn’t do much because of our schedule. We mostly stayed at the hotel, concert hall and shooting site. Aron showed us around a little, but we didn’t have much time.
JR: I’d like to visit Paris one day. We were supposed to visit Paris once, and I got very excited about it. But it didn’t happen so I’d like to visit it and see the Eiffel Tower with my own eyes.
Aron: L.A. of course. It’s my hometown. I lived there. I know every corner of the place, but I like to visit it once in a while. The last time I went there was for the KCON. Mom, Dad, I love you (laughs)
Ren: I want to perform in New York. I’ve wanted to go see the Statue of Liberty since I was young. New York is also the background to the movie “Home Alone 2.” I dreamt about visiting New York while watching the movie then I was young.
Q: There was an incident at the airport in Singapore last year.
JR: We went to Singapore for a showcase last October. We were on the plane when there was an uproar amongst the fans. And some fans had said we hit them.
Minhyun: We had already taken our seats in the plane when the police came and asked me and JR to step outside. I didn’t know what was going on, but we followed him, and Aron came along with us to translate for us.
JR: We were told to get off because the police thought we had assaulted someone. But it turned out that some of our fans got into a fight with each other but the police misunderstood them and took us off the plane.
Aron: We resolved a misunderstanding, but the plane had taken off by then so we had to wait inside the airport for 12 hours for the next flight.
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