In 1994’s Chungking Express, the seminal romantic dramedy by Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, the central character He Qiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) ascribes sentimental meaning to pineapple. He buys a tin every day for a month until his ex-girlfriend calls. When she inevitably doesn’t, he gorges on all 30 cans in one sitting. 

It’s this lush vignette that first sparked inspiration for K-pop idol Baekhyun when it came to announcing his long-awaited comeback album, Hello, World. In a slickly shot surprise teaser released in July, he mimics Kaneshiro, ripping lid after lid after lid off tins of pineapple that are stacked around him. 

“When I saw that scene I thought, ‘That would be a great scene to pay homage to,’” Baekhyun says over video call from Seoul, dressed down in a black tee and barefaced in a baseball cap. The thought process makes sense – the lead single from Baekhyun’s upcoming album is called Pineapple Slice and he was searching for some visual synergy. 

But beyond that connection and the fact Kar-wai’s jewel-toned iconography is a referential shorthand, the film, above all things, is a rumination on the passage of time; how it shapes us, how it changes us and how it courses new paths for us. And that’s something Baekhyun has had on his mind. 

“Hello, World is being released after quite a long break, so I wanted to reintroduce myself to the fans and to the public,” he says, although he hardly needs to. His recent 27-date Asia tour completely sold out, and the first whiff of a new album sent the K-pop community into a spin (to quote a viral tweet: “For non-K-pop fans, this is like Rihanna announcing an album”). 

It’s been just under four years since Baekhyun last released an album, which by Western standards may just seem like normal decompression time. But in K-pop, where artists are known to release multiple new records a year, that gap is significant. “The symbolic meaning behind Hello, World is that, now that I’ve said hello, I’m going to keep being active. There will no longer be any big breaks. I will show many more sides of myself from now on.” 

Baekhyun hasn’t exactly been laying low. First, he completed the mandatory military enlistment almost all men in Korea have to undertake (he was released in early 2023 after 20 months). Then, he decided to make the bold decision to part ways with his longtime record label, the K-pop giant SM Entertainment where he’s been since the age of 18 as a part of the record-breaking group EXO, to set up his own agency, INB100, to manage his solo work. This album is his first release in this new phase of his career as the steerer of his own ship, one moulded by 14 years of experience in the industry.

“This album was special to me in that I was able to participate very early in the planning stages, so I learned a lot,” he says. Hello, World is Baekhyun’s fifth solo album (including one Japanese-language release), coming five years after his debut with 2019’s dark and sensual City Light, then 2020’s vibrant Delight and 2021’s soulful Bambi. While he says he’s always had a heavy hand in the song choices of his solo career, with Hello, World, he was there right from the beginning watching firsthand all of the early-stage prep work that goes into making an album, from A&R to production to visual storyboarding. 

“Since this is my first album in quite a while, I thought ‘Oh, I don’t want to look, like I'm in my thirties’,” he smirks with a relatable half-laugh that anyone who crossed that bridge in the weird limbo of the last few years will understand. “But more than that, I was thinking that my past songs and albums like “UN Village’, ‘Candy’ and ‘Bambi’ had a visual concept but maybe not so much of a core concept.
 For this album, I really wanted a strong core concept that could lead to more exploration of ideas.”

Hello, World is a neat package of six songs, led by “Pineapple Slice”, a departure from his usual, velvety R&B style that ventures into the world of 80s-inspired new wave synthpop. Elsewhere, he dips back into old faithful with tracks like the pulsating “Cold Heart”, “Woo” and “Truth Be Told” and their janglier counterparts “Rendez-Vous” and “Good Morning”. Their cumulative effect is something Baekhyun wanted to convey through the lens of cinema, so he released an ambitious ‘Official Trailer’ for the album that sees him speed-run through different genres like horror, action and comedy as an actor before the camera turns to reveal he’s also the director. ”I wanted to show in this album a world where my imagination becomes reality, which is why I used movies as the inspiration for the concept of this album.”

“I’ve become a lot more humble. There was a lot of time for self-reflection” – Baekhyun

To bring those thoughts to life, Baekhyun assembled a team around him that he now bubbles with effusiveness about through the screen. “The fact that my opinions were being listened to gave me the confidence to do what I really want to do from now on,” he says. “From the very early stages of making an album, many people work really hard to help the artist shine even more. I feel that puts a lot of responsibility on me, and it makes me want to make this album as great as possible.”

“We really supported each other throughout this process,” he adds. “Everyone went through a lot with me. Since everyone worked so hard on this album, the release feels like ‘our’ release, not just ‘my’ release. On the release date of the album, everyone will be nervous with me. We’ll be chewing on our fingernails together.”

I ask if he’s someone prone to nerves, which he says he is, but he also turns the question back, eager to know how I emotionally reckon with my own creative process. “You and I have similar jobs”, he says when I mention that putting anything with your name attached into the world can be a stressful experience, though that feels laughably generous. It’s not the first time he’s decided to switch roles on the call. Even before the interview starts he asks my honest opinion of “Pineapple Slice”, which reads as genuine curiosity from someone who’s spent the last year of his life invested in learning from others. 

As Chungking Express, that first matchstick spark of Baekhyun’s Hello, World era, imparts: time begets change and Baekhyun has been rolling with that adjustment. “First of all, I think I’ve become a lot more humble. There was a lot of time for self-reflection,” he muses when probed on how the last few years away have shaped him. “I'm especially feeling the value of small things as opposed to only focusing on huge goals. If I work with the people around me together, making small steps at a time, I will reach those huge goals in the end. I always want to be a better person for the people around me.”

And Hello, World is just the first step in what he has planned next. There’s the consuming desire for a world tour after the success of his most recent shows and, of course, more music to make up for lost time. “[I] spent a lot of time thinking of new ideas. Some questions that I always asked myself were ‘What kind of music should I do?’ ‘Should I do the music that fans love?’ ‘Should I do music that the public loves or music that I like?’”

“Finally,” he says. “I reached the conclusion that if I want to show my true self as ‘Baekhyun’, I should do what I like first, and then try to make people love what I love.”

Hello, World: The 4th Mini Album by Baekhyun is out now.