POWERG-Dragon's single of 31 October 2024, his first solo release in over seven years and the title track of the album Übermensch. IZM and NME wrote about it.
‘POWER’ is a single G-Dragon released on 31 October 2024. The Korea Times reported that it was his first solo release in more than seven years, after the mini album Kwon Ji Yong of June 2017. Billboard reported the same day that he had signed a distribution deal with the American label EMPIRE. The song was carried again as the second track of the album Übermensch, out the following February.
Tommy Brown, Theron Thomas and Steven Franks share the writing credit. The official video went up on G-Dragon’s own channel on the day of release.
IZM’s Jung Ki-yeop reviewed the song on 14 November 2024. He opened with a sentence about what it gathers: “It condenses the G-Dragon of the past into one song.” The record’s conclusion, he wrote, is that “‘I am beautiful for being myself’, which sets it apart from the pessimism of the work before it.” On the sound he wrote that “what makes the vigorous second leap possible is the survival of G-Dragon’s way of writing”, that “working with outside producers after leaving the YG he had long belonged to, it has become far lighter than the older songs built on a blunt bass”, and that “even on unfamiliar ground, the boldly drawn pre-chorus melody and the addictive rap and doubling certify it as an original he made.”
Son Min-hyun, writing for the same outlet, took the song up again the following March in his review of the album. “The soundness and the display carved into the rap of ‘Po￦er’, and the sticky love story that runs through the album,” he wrote, “are the starting point and the final stage of G-Dragon’s way of speaking in music: the absolute beauty he pursued was, all along, love and rhythm.”
NME’s Rhian Daly, reviewing the album on 26 February 2025, picked the song out as confident and colourful, and wrote that the record still leaves room to show what he can do as a rapper. Billboard placed the album at number 20 in The 25 Best K-Pop Albums of 2025 on 18 December 2025, and Jeff Benjamin, who signed the entry, wrote that this song, ‘Home Sweet Home’ and ‘IBELONGIIU’ deliver on G-Dragon’s playful power-pop sound.
The Korean Music Awards gave the song best rap and hip-hop song at its 22nd awards in 2025, and two members of the selection committee wrote the note between them. Nam Seong-hun said that “the real power of ‘POWER’ lies in having taken the process by which genre fans chew over, pull apart, taste and enjoy one well-made rap song and extended it to a scale the whole public could share”, and that “the exquisite match of a clean funky beat and an addictive hook, a subject made particular by its being G-Dragon’s and lyrics full of room for interpretation, fresh rhyming and a designed flow — the public picked over every corner of the song and enjoyed it as genre.” Choi Yong-hwan wrote that “the pointed bars, built on hip-hop’s own way of writing, resolve in the end into a strong self-affirmation, and the lightly bouncing beat, meeting the addictive hook, describes the unburdened state of mind of one who has transcended.”
Circle Chart placed the song at number six on its Digital Chart for week 44 of 2024 (27 October to 2 November), the week of release. It rose to number three for weeks 45 (3 to 9 November) and 46, then held number four for weeks 47, 48 and 49.
It returned to the chart when the album carrying it came out: number 13 in week nine of 2025 (23 February to 1 March), number 13 again in week 10 and number 14 in week 11.
The song took best rap and hip-hop song at the 22nd Korean Music Awards in 2025.
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