SEVENTEEN - '17 CARAT'

Track List:

1. Shining Diamond
2. Adore U
3. Ah Yeah
4. Jam Jam
5. 20


Pledis Entertainment has debuted their new boy band Seventeen. Fans have been able to follow them since trainee days with 'Seventeen TV,' and now on the 'Seventeen Project' TV show. '17 Carat' is their debut mini-album. The 13 boys are apparently split into different teams depending on their specialty.

"Shining Diamond" is an energetic dance track, full of kickin' raps and an exuberant chorus. The hooks come easy here, and it's catchy as all hell. Despite the fact that it's fun and loud, it also serves as a 3-minute long intro track, the boys promising they will "make you shine." But the "dance around like [Michael] Jackson" line cracked me up every time I heard it. 



The second track, "Adore You," manages to be entirely different from the first -- in a good way. Riding in on a funky bass line, the song starts in much the same way as the first track with whispered hooks. From there it takes on a sort of hip-hop groove, and does it well. Woozi wrote, composed, and produced this track and Hoshi helped create the choreography for the performance. Can't argue that they produced an awesome song to debut with, catchy, energetic, with the same loud in-your-face chorus as "Shining Diamond."  

"Ah Yeah" features the Hip-hop Team: S.coups, Wonwoo, Mingyu, and Vernon. This is more pure rap than the hip-hop/pop fusions we've been treated to lately (UNIQ, MONSTA X). There's a bouncing synth line that reminds me a lot of the rap version of 4minute's "What'cha Doin' Today?" on Gayo Daejun. It has what I usually ask of rap: confident and to the point.



"Jam Jam" is handled by Hoshi, Dino, The 8, and Jun -- the Performance Team. Appropriately, "Jam Jam" is a dance track with more than a little trap incorporated. I like it. It's sharp and danceable, and the overused dubstep breaks are thankfully absent.  

"20" gives us a more soft-rock groove and an acoustic guitar, sung by the Vocal Team (Joshua, Junghan, Seokmin, Seungkwan, and Woozi). It's got some odd falsetto quirks, but is otherwise fairly pleasant. I'm not sure what the number has to do with anything, though there is the line "you're my twenties."



Seventeen is a bit surprising as they've got something different from the other boy bands I've heard. The album itself is like a sampler of the different styles of each team. Rather than create another EXO or something of that ilk, Pledis has gone down a different road. I'm hoping they keep it up. Variety is the spice of life, and Seventeen fits the bill nicely. They've even got their own subunits already lined up if Pledis chooses to go there. This is a strong and unique debut, genre-jumping with some bite to it.  

SEE ALSO: SEVENTEEN wraps up US leg of 'RIGHT HERE' tour with stadium debut shows in LA