When asked what kind of music he wants to make, instead of naming a genre, Dean described how he hopes people feel when they hear his songs.

“When you listen to Amy Winehouse, you feel like you’re getting to know her,” he said, referring to the late British soul singer who lived an infamously turbulent life before her early death in 2011. 

“Her life, that dissident image, the lyrics, and melody, the sound ... everything comes together. It’s the perfect combination of words, music and the person, and you believe it. At that moment, you’re not listening to music anymore, you’re listening to her story.”

A producer, songwriter and performing artist whose music is described as a hybrid of hip-hop, rhythm and blues, jazz, punk and electronic, Dean does not “necessarily want to be limited to one style,” he told The Korea Herald last week.

When he sat down for a chat last Tuesday at the headquarters of Universal Music Korea, his record label, Dean had just returned from this year’s South by South West (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, where he was the first Asian artist to be invited to perform at the much-coveted Spotify House stage, alongside world-class acts like Kendrick Lamar and Odesza. 

It’s a testament to Dean’s growing popularity abroad after his English-language singles, including “I’m Not Sorry,” a collaboration with Grammy Award-winning musician Eric Bellinger, and “Put My Hands on You,” which featured rapper Anderson Paak, reached international audiences in 2014 and 2015, respectively. On Thursday, he released his first full-length album “130 mood: TRBL” in Korea.

Though the 24-year-old musician has lived in Korea his entire life and is not fluent in English, he said the language barrier doesn’t pose a major obstacle when singing.

“As long as I understand the emotion behind the lyrics, I think people will be able to relate to it.”

He also said his “distinctly Korean sentimentality” mashed up with his pop-influenced music appeals to international audiences in a new way.

Dean was still surprised at the warm welcome he received in the U.S. at SXSW – it being his first time performing at a major international music festival, he had not known what to expect.

“But there were underage girls who were too young to get in, hanging around in the parking lot next to the stage area,” he said. “They said they wanted to hear my music from there even though they couldn’t see the stage.”

Foreign blog reviews have been heaping praise on the up-and-coming musician, calling him an “R&B giant” and “K-pop’s best chance of breaking through the American market.”

Dean said he first fell into music listening to American hip-hop and rap while in middle school.

“I loved rap. I wanted to become an underground rapper,” he said. “When other kids were playing computer games, I wrote rap lyrics. It was like a form of play for me. And the music moved me. And it was an escape from studying.”

Dean then started dabbling in making his own beats, which opened the door to songwriting. He started out like most young amateur producers these days, he says, logging onto Internet forums to learn the basics of computer-based music making. Years later, a track he had produced reached the ears of Joombas Music CEO Shin Wook, who decided to hire the then 20-year-old as a member of the music company’s songwriting team.

Since then, Dean has written several songs, including “Black Pearl” and “Voodoo Doll” for K-pop boy bands EXO and VIXX, respectively. Most recently, he wrote the track “World Tour” on Lee Hi’s new album.

When writing for other artists, Dean says he immerses himself deeply into their persona, questioning who they are.

“Hi has this beautiful, deep voice that makes her sound like she’s lived a lifetime, even though she’s so young,” he said of the 20-year-old female soloist. For her song, which he wrote on his way to the airport, he imagined a speaker wandering, weary of life. The result was “World Tour,” a moody but spunky track on taking flight and escaping the everyday.

Visual imagery is a big part of his music, Dean said. He is frequently inspired by works of art, films and photographs, probing into the characters’ emotions. More than anything, he described himself as a storyteller.

“When you look at a photograph of, say, a woman sitting alone on a bench, you think, ‘She looks kind of sad.’ I want to express that through music.”

So what story did he want to tell in his own album? Who is Dean, as a person and an artist?

“A rebellious spirit is something that I want to keep with me,” he said, explaining that his pseudonym came from American actor James Dean, the icon of wild youth. 

His new album traces the story of a relationship from beginning to end in reverse chronological order. It begins with the outro and works its way backward through “Bonnie & Clyde,” on the destructive stage of a relationship, and “D (half moon),” where lovers feel like half of a whole without the other person -- finally arriving at “21,” the start of a young, powerful crush.

“I imagined the whole process taking place inside one room. You can hear the sound of a TV being turned on or a knock on the door if you listen closely in between songs. I put in a lot of sound effects like that. I wanted listeners to feel, at the end of it, as if they had been watching a gloomy European movie,” said Dean.

By Rumy Doo (doo@heraldcorp.com)

This is the 10th article in a series that explores the driving forces behind hallyu and the global rise of Korean pop culture. -- Ed