It is another late review. This time it is for a brand new group. SECRET NUMBER debuted last week on the 19th of May with Who Dis?. The group is made up of five members (Jinny, Denise, Soodam, Dita and Léa) and are under VINE Entertainment. You may recognise Jinny, as she previously participated in Produce 48 as an independent trainee and placed 69th. Interesting fact, the group was originally meant to debut back in March. But due to the ongoing health pandemic, they pushed their debut to May.

The first thing anyone would note was that Who Dis? is quite brass-heavy. And this is no doubt appealing to many listeners including myself. The group, despite only being newly debuted, has already garnered a lot of attention as their debut music video has already passed 8 million views. Obviously, SECRET NUMBER is doing something right in either the visual or audio department. And I like to think that this is due to the song. The brass sample that starts off the song is a piece that we have heard before. The instrumental features some brass as wow that peeks through the rest of the of thumping instrumental. When we get to the chorus, it felt like we were gonna be thrown into a loop of that same brass sample that kicked of the song. But that would have been boring. The chorus ended being a lot more interesting, amping up the thumping and bringing in a different brass piece to the chorus. The second verse is essentially the same, with Jinny rapping at the start instead. Jinny returns as a rapper for the bridge, just after a little intense break from the brass dominance. She returns once more as a rapper at the end, layered on top of the familiar brass sample I mentioned that kicked things off. You may notice that I am emphasising the rapping a lot. Well, that is because it the stronger element of the song, compared to the vocals. The group can sing. But they needed to follow through with vocal chops filled with some attitude or power to extend the chorus and make it more dynamic. Everything in the vocal department felt too typical and this drained some of the energy from Who Dis?. For a debut single, they knew what they were doing. They just need to refine their skills and I am sure they will be getting a lot more attention in the future.

As mentioned previously, the group has already garnered 8 million views. And while the music video can be cut down the seam to be audio and visual, this section of the review obviously focuses on the visual department. The music video actually looks really good. It does take on the closeup and choreography combination, but I honestly don’t mind it in this video as the closeups look quite captivating and fun. As for the concept, I don’t think it fits into the usual categories of aegyo or girl-crush. Neither is it a mixture, which I am glad. To be honest, it feels a little generic, but I am fine with that as that would be the preferred option over a combination of girl crush and aegyo in my books.

The performance looks a bit generic, like the music video. And at times, it felt relatively weak to other moves (i.e. the short strutting vs. the moves that followed right after, with the strutting being the stronger dance move). It ticks a few boxes. It has that already mentioned strutting to tick the attitude box. There seems to be some visual intensity as we see in the rap sections of the song and the short instrumental break. Overall, a good performance.

Song – 8/10
Music Video – 7/10
Performance – 7/10
Overall Rating – 7.5/10