Penomeco’s ‘RNSSNC TAPE’: K-Hip-Hop’s New Sound

There’s a ghost at the edge of every song on RNSSNC TAPE—a memory, a previous version of PENOMECO, or perhaps just the echo of a different way of being. But what’s remarkable is how he never tries to exorcise it. Instead, he builds around it. This EP doesn’t bury the past. It curates it. Rewrites it. Warps it through synths and emotion until it becomes unrecognizable.

Released on July 23 via EGO GROUP and Kakao Entertainment, RNSSNC TAPE is an 8-track suite that threads grief, swagger, satire, and ambition together with deliberate touch. It’s a rebirth, yes—but one that refuses to burn down the past for the sake of reinvention. It sits in the discomfort and moves through it with style.

The title track “EGGE,” featuring YDG, shouldn’t work as well as it does. It’s dizzyingly weird—built around a slang term that sounds like a sneer, then flipped into something hypnotic and percussive. But there’s something fearless in the way PENOMECO treats language as melody. It’s that blend of humor and bite that gives the track such power. “Can’t tell me, egge, egge, egge” rings less like a chorus and more like a taunt—against the industry, the system, or whoever’s still trying to define him.

Elsewhere, he turns cold textures into longing. “Dance With Me” feels like a memory dissolving mid-sentence, while “Leave Without You,” carried by Moon Sujin’s delicate delivery, fractures into vulnerability. “Fine By Me” is spare and haunted, a breakup song that doesn’t beg for closure. The emotions are clear, but PENOMECO doesn’t dramatize them. He just lets them exist.

“My Chick” plays like its own dimension—Afro Pluggnb filtered through industrial synths and late-night nerves. Lil Cherry appears like static interrupting the signal, her delivery all glitch and edge. It’s romance, but broken. Flawed on purpose.

Even the sequencing feels deliberate. The EP opens with “RNSSNC,” a kind of thesis statement, and closes with a remix of “COCO BOTTLE,” his 2018 fan-favorite reimagined by APRO. It’s a clever way of collapsing timelines—past and present held in the same space. Nothing is static here. Everything morphs.

PENOMECO has been a quiet architect in Korean music for years. His pen has shaped tracks for IU, Crush, EXO, and ITZY. But RNSSNC TAPE feels like the first time he’s built something entirely for himself. He’s said, “I hope all of my work is seen as one continuous piece.” This EP makes a strong case for that kind of thinking—music as motion, as collage, as fluid identity.