One Of A Kind원 오브 어 카인드원 오브 어 카인드
G-Dragon's first mini album, released to streaming on 15 September 2012 with 'Crayon' as its title track. Rhythmer, IZM and AllMusic all wrote about it.
One Of A Kind is G-Dragon’s first mini album. Its own information page dates the streaming release to 15 September 2012 and the physical album to 18 September. The title track is ‘Crayon’, and the record was his first since the solo album Heartbreaker of 2009.
YG Entertainment’s album introduction says the record leans further into hip-hop than the album before it, and credits Teddy, CHOICE37, Choi Pil-kang, Ham Seung-cheon, Kang Wook-jin and Tablo among the people who made it. ‘Crayon’ was written by Teddy and G-Dragon together. One track is missing from the list above: the information page withholds its title.
Rhythmer, the Korean hip-hop and R&B outlet, ran Kang Il-kwon’s review on 9 October 2012. “What matters,” he wrote, “is that the closeness of the construction, the realisation of the sound and the staging of GD’s own kind of swag are reaching a certain level.” He picked the title track as the place where the record’s virtues are gathered, and wrote that chopped and screwed, Auto-Tune and a varied set of rhythm parts come together there in an orderly way that makes a spectacle of the production. Closing the piece he said he had been surprised that songs whose main genres and styles differ so much hang together oddly well once bound into one album: “In a domestic scene where a musician with the ability to command an album is rare, this is a very encouraging thing.”
IZM took the record in its issue for September 2012, in a review by Hong Hyeok-eui. Of ‘Crayon’ he wrote that “throwing out, without a second thought, a strong piece of electronica that would play at a rave party, and doing it on stage, is possible because it is G-Dragon”; he read the guest appearances by Nell’s Kim Jong-wan and Jaurim’s Kim Yun-a as an experiment aimed at a synergy between hip-hop and rock. In the tracklist at the foot of the same piece the two songs he marked as recommended are ‘One of a kind’ and ‘Today’.
Kim Ban-ya, writing for the same outlet, chose the record for IZM’s year-end feature 2012 올해의 가요 앨범 that December. “The work with Nell’s Kim Jong-wan and Jaurim’s Kim Yun-a,” she wrote, “goes past an exchange between hip-hop and rock and brings out one side of ‘G-Dragon the artist’.” She closed: “A shrewd strategy that leans or tilts to none of ‘identity’, ‘artist’ or ‘popularity’ is in this single record, One Of A Kind.”
AllMusic’s David Jeffries described the record as a nonstop party of a mini album. He wrote that the Auto-Tuned title track is a bright, boastful number with a hooky chorus and plenty of exciting production tricks, and that the kinetic ‘Crayon’ bounces between electro and rave-rap.
The Korean Music Awards selection committee also left notes on the record and on the song of the same name when it made its 2013 awards. Nam Seong-hun, writing the note for best rap and hip-hop song, said that “rather than a lucky fit, a fluency is steeped into every song”, and that “the producer Choice37, scattering a range of sound sources while keeping a full control that makes the appeal of minimalism strongly felt, delivered a production of world-class standard rather than an imitation.” Kim Bong-hyun, writing the note for song of the year, said that “first of all, Choice37’s near-flawless beat leaves the mouth hanging open.”
‘Crayon’, the title track, was written by Teddy and G-Dragon, and all three reviews above name it. Circle Chart placed it at number 13 on its Digital Chart for week 37 of 2012 (9 to 15 September), the week of release, and at number three the following week, week 38 (16 to 22 September).
‘그XX’ (Geu XX) went highest of any song on the record in the week of release, at number three. Rhythmer’s Kang Il-kwon picked it as a high point of the album, finished with acoustic playing and a plain arrangement, and wrote that the strangeness that might have stuck out in the running order is thinned by a vocal form that keeps faith with its looping.
‘Missing You’ features Jaurim’s Kim Yun-a and ‘Today’ features Nell’s Kim Jong-wan. On the week 38 Digital Chart the first was at number two and the second at number 17. Yun Ho-jun, writing the Korean Music Awards note for best dance and electronic album, said that “the techno that carries half of ‘Crayon’ is at a level that rivals a specialist’s, and the sweetness of ‘Missing You’, which puts Jaurim’s Kim Yun-a on the vocal, is a candidate for pop song of the year.” In the same note he called the title track “the finest hip-hop single to come out in 2012.”
Circle Chart made the record number one on its Monthly Album Chart for September 2012 and counted 171,512 copies for the month. On the Yearly Album Chart for 2012 it placed fourth, with 204,326 copies counted for the year.
All six of the record’s songs were inside the top 100 of the Digital Chart in week 38, the week after release: ‘Missing You’ at number two, ‘Crayon’ at number three, ‘One Of A Kind’ at number nine, ‘결국’ (Gyeolguk) at number 10, ‘그XX’ at number 15 and ‘Today’ at number 17.
The record and the song of the same name took three categories at the 10th Korean Music Awards in 2013: song of the year and best rap and hip-hop song for the song, and best dance and electronic album for the record.
Claims in this story link to official or primary sources.
G-Dragon put out his first record, Heartbreaker, on 18 August 2009, and followed it with the mini album One Of A Kind in 2012, the full-length album COUP D'ETAT in 2013 and the mini album KWON JI YONG in 2017. Here are the four, by date, by format and by what was recorded at the time.
