In this essay, writer Crystal Bell explores Stray Kids' past and future ahead of the release of Stray Kids' new album 5-Star.
I used to think of Stray Kids as disruptive for all the wrong reasons. It's true that their music, known for its radical empathy and sonic experimentation, is ardently provocative in an industry that often likes to play it safe. Artistic freedom has always been central to the K-pop group's ethos. But even liberation has its limits. As Stray Kids approach a new chapter with the release of their third studio album, 5-Star, out Friday, I've been contemplating how artists defined by their rebellion eventually get confined to that image — and what it means when a virtuosic band of kids (their words, not mine) grow up.
It's been nearly three years since the octet whipped up "God's Menu," a chaotic mélange of sounds and textures that marked the beginning of their seismic rise to the top of K-pop's fourth generation. In a recent interview with Cosmopolitan Korea, Felix described it as a turning point for them, the moment when their "growth was clearly noticeable." The sour streak of adolescent anxiety and angst prominent in their earlier work had melted away, leaving a hit of bold umami on the tongue.
For a myriad of reasons, it's easy to separate their career into pre- and post-"God's Menu." It wasn't a hit by today's standards, where the vitality of a pop song is measured in achievements and fans document growth through album sales, streaming numbers, and chart positions. But the track did propel JYP Entertainment's subversive wunderkinds forward, sonically and commercially, still defiantly in the margins yet less self-contained.
When Stray Kids debuted in March 2018, they were unpolished and rough around the edges — a group of world-weary, disenchanted teens who likened the ups and downs of their coming-of-age to being trapped inside of a hellavator (an elevator to hell, a taste of the wordplay they'd become synonymous with). They made their own music, rapped about their personal struggles with anxiety and alienation, and celebrated their individuality. Youngest member I.N was 17 at the time, practically geriatric compared to today's crop of 14-year-old idols, and yet he and the rest of the group managed to sound equal parts jaded and sincere, simultaneously over it and weathering a storm of volatile emotions. You can hear it in their official debut single, "District 9": rumbling EDM, heavy guitar riffs, and biting rap verses with lyrics that quite literally scream, “I don’t know who I am, it’s frustrating!”
These are relatable, caps lock-sized feelings for anyone who's ever been 17 or 23 or 34, and they're delivered with all of the urgency of a person in the middle of an existential spiral. That level of honesty has endeared them to a legion of fans.
Released in quick succession, their first EP trilogy (I Am Not, I Am Who, I Am You) tapped into a deep sense of teenage disillusionment with the status quo. Through a wave of sonic experiments — like the sparse electro-hop of "3rd Eye" and the anthemic introspection of "Question" — they shrugged off their idol veneer and sprinted down their own path. Musically, they took even bigger swings with 2019's Clé series, toying with noisier beats, skittering rhythms, and a left-field aesthetic that positioned them as true outsiders — or disruptors — in the K-pop scene. Yet, rebellion can be its own kind of cage, especially in an ecosystem that often commodifies youthful ambivalence.
If their early oeuvre was preoccupied with looking inward, their more recent work is uninhibited. Themes of self-expression, resilience, and the determination to face challenges head-on, brazen and unflinching in their own capabilities, are paramount to quieter moments of self-reflection. It's not that Stray Kids have grown out of their emo phase — Han's b-side tracks, like "Sunshine" and "Chill,'' boast a refreshingly meditative quality, while Hyunjin's solo demos find the rapper asking, in earnest, "Why is love so contradicting?" — they're just better equipped with the self-awareness that comes in your twenties.
Getting older and gaining perspective doesn't have to stand in opposition to what's come before, and it's not hard to see the threads of 2018's "My Pace" and 2019's "Miroh'' woven throughout 2022's Oddinary EP and its polarizing follow-up, Maxident. The demonstrative "Stray Kids sound" has been described as playful and boisterous, assertive and potently unsubtle in its excessive hubris. They are unapologetically noisy and love a dirty bass. But where is the line between authenticity and artistic evolution?
There's a quote from RM, the leader of BTS, that I come back to frequently: "The problem with K-pop and the whole idol system is that they don’t give you time to mature. You have to keep producing music and keep doing something." He said this in 2022, when BTS announced that they'd be stepping back from group activities temporarily to focus on themselves as individuals. For idols, there's a need to release music at a steady, constant rate, to engage with fans through livestreams, social media, and aggressive performance schedules. With so much attention paid to numbers and output, there's little time to focus on personal and artistic growth. For a group as prolific as Stray Kids, striking a balance between the two has never been more crucial.
On Maxident, they stretched themselves musically, exploring the subject of love through various genres. From atmospheric R&B to drill to glitch-pop, the EP was dynamic and eclectic; it kept the essence of Stray Kids without recycling the same themes and sounds we've heard from them before. It was exciting new sonic territory, new challenges to embrace. (Perhaps no group in recent memory has done so as gracefully as their labelmates, TWICE.) Maxident might not be many fans' favorite album, especially when a lot of them look to Stray Kids for being love agnostic, yet it does demonstrate the real source of their insurgence.
Stray Kids see music for what it is: a playground, a place where ideas and melodies mix like grains of sand, where nothing is too loud or incongruous or silly to expand upon, where creative autonomy is as boundless as your imagination. Here, success isn't measured in sales (though, a record-smashing 4.9 million pre-orders for Stray Kids' 5-Star doesn't hurt); it's gauged by joy. These days, there's nothing more subversive than that.
