RAERAE REACTS

ICONIK

ZEROBASEONE put their expiration date through airport security, grabbed the microphone anyway, and made one of their best title tracks.

The short version: ZEROBASEONE finally sound like they know exactly what their name is worth. “ICONIK” is bright, cocky nu-disco with a real bridge, a real final chorus, and enough vocal lift to justify the spelling crime in the title. I forgive the K because the song earns it.

What “ICONIK” Is Actually Saying

This is not a song about becoming famous someday. ZEROBASEONE had already sold millions of albums, collected rookie awards like somebody left the trophy cabinet unlocked, and put five consecutive releases over the million mark. The song starts after the résumé. Its point is that recognition does not create the icon. The members decide what they are, keep moving, and let everyone else catch up.

That distinction matters because of when the song arrived. ZEROBASEONE began as a project group formed through Boys Planet. Fans knew the original contract had an ending attached to it. Every comeback carried a clock in the room, even when nobody wanted to stare at it. “ICONIK” turns that anxiety into posture. The lyrics keep returning to motion, light, impact, and leaving a mark. They are not begging for more time. They are arguing that the time already counted.

There is also a sweeter layer under all the confidence. At the 2025 showcase, Han-bin named the group’s Billboard 200 entry and singing with ZEROSE in an arena as his iconic moments. That answer tells me the song is not just nine men admiring themselves in reflective luggage. Their idea of becoming memorable includes the people who watched them get there.

The Song First, Because the Song Deserves Its Own Passport

“ICONIK” opens fast. There is no soft-focus introduction asking us to wait for the beat. The groove arrives dressed and ready, with a rubbery bass line, bright rhythmic accents, and a melody that keeps pushing upward. It lives in nu-disco, but it does not simply borrow a shiny bass and call the job finished. Strings, synths, vocal layers, and percussive details keep sliding in around the members. The arrangement feels busy without turning muddy.

The chorus is built around repetition, which could have gone wrong very quickly. Repeating “iconic” in a song called “ICONIK” is not exactly a plot twist. What saves it is movement. The first pass establishes the hook. Later passes stack harmonies, stronger ad-libs, and a bigger sense of lift. The song knows a repeated phrase has to change its clothes if it expects me to invite it back into the room.

Fans immediately compared parts of the track to “Crush” and “Good So Bad,” and I hear why. It has the grand opening and muscular push of “Crush,” then borrows some of the melodic warmth and emotional payoff that made “Good So Bad” work. Still, “ICONIK” does not feel like leftovers sewn together. It feels like ZEROBASEONE looking over their own discography and finally deciding which instincts belong in the permanent suitcase.

The bridge is doing unpaid emotional labor

Seok Matthew getting the bridge was the correct kind of surprise. His section clears space in the middle of all that shine. The vocal tone changes, the production loosens its grip, and the song takes one breath before climbing again. Then the final chorus comes in larger, with Han-bin’s belt giving the whole thing a finish line instead of a fade-out and a prayer.

This should not feel rare, but here we are: the song is longer than three minutes. It has verses, a developed pre-chorus, a bridge, and a finale. Nobody chopped the second verse in half because an algorithm might get bored. The extra thirty seconds are not padding. They are where the song earns its confidence.

My complaint

The processing is heavier than necessary in a few spots. ZEROBASEONE are a vocally capable group, and the glossy filter sometimes flattens the exact colors the arrangement is trying to display. Fans pointed this out too. I do not hate the effect, but I would have preferred less polish around the voices and more of the people underneath it.

Now the Music Video: Airport Security for Main Characters

The video stages the group’s journey inside an airport that behaves like a luxury terminal, dream factory, and mild identity crisis at the same time. Airports are perfect for this song. They are places between places. You have left, but you have not arrived. For a project group approaching a contract deadline, that setting is almost rude in how well it fits.

The members move through check-in desks, baggage systems, corridors, waiting areas, and surreal sets as if normal travel rules have been replaced by pop-star logic. Luggage floats. Scale changes. A jeweled star hangs in the distance like a destination that refuses to print its gate number. At one point, a microphone becomes something to grab and leap from. Stardom is not a chair here. It is transportation, risk, and occasionally a very unsafe workplace.

The airport also gives the editors an excuse to keep the nine members in motion. Doors, frames, conveyor belts, and windows create constant entrances. The choreography feels connected to travel because formations open and close like gates. Nobody is simply posing in a handsome warehouse while the symbolism files for unemployment.

Easter Eggs and Surprises

• The floating jeweled star: The obvious reading is stardom, but I like it more as a destination they can see without fully reaching. An icon is not a finish line. It keeps moving farther away every time the career grows.
• The microphone jump: Fame is treated as something they actively grab. The image is playful, but the body language is not passive. Nobody is waiting to be selected again.
• Airport limbo: The group formed through a competition, lived under a fixed-term contract, and released this album while the future of the nine-member lineup was still a giant question mark. A terminal is the most literal possible place to put people living between arrival and departure.
• Dark color grade, bright song: Some viewers found the video darker than the track needed. I think that tension is intentional. The music celebrates. The visuals remember there is uncertainty outside the frame.
• The full nine-member formation: In 2025, the geometry mattered. Every wide shot preserved a version of ZEROBASEONE that fans already knew could change. The video never stops to cry about it, which somehow makes the images land harder now.
• That final expansion: The last chorus opens the visual and musical space at the same time. The song stops proving it can be iconic and simply behaves that way.

Member Moments That Actually Matter

Sung Han-bin provides the final vocal authority. Seok Matthew owns the bridge surprise. Kim Tae-rae gives the track the kind of vocal body that glossy production cannot completely hide. Park Gun-wook brings weight to the rhythmic sections, while Kim Ji-woong knows exactly how little movement a camera-ready face requires.

Zhang Hao, Ricky, Kim Gyu-vin, and Han Yu-jin are linked through the ZEROBASEONE group history until their individual archive pages are expanded. That is not me forgetting them. It is me refusing to pretend a project group’s original lineup can be summarized by whoever happens to be active today.

The Counterargument

Not everyone heard a masterpiece. One review landed at a B. Some listeners thought the track was mellower than its title promised. Others felt the repeated hook did too much work, or that “Slam Dunk” was a strange pre-release choice for an album with stronger material sitting right there.

Fair. “ICONIK” is not radical pop construction. It is extremely well-made idol music using familiar pieces: disco bass, a self-belief lyric, polished group vocals, an expensive video, and a final chorus designed to lift the ceiling. My counterargument is simple. Familiar pieces are not a problem when the group finally sounds fully at home inside them. This track knows who is singing it. That specificity is the difference between competent and replayable.

Credits Without Making You Hunt Through Tiny Album Text

RaeRae Verdict

Receipts and Further Digging

Official “ICONIK” music video · SBS showcase coverage and member comments · GRAMMY interview and chart context · r/kpop release discussion · A cooler counter-review

Continue through the ZEROBASEONE profile or jump to “TOP 5” to see what changed after the original nine-member era.