Hueningkai is currently going viral in Japan for his vocals. It's about damn time!

TXT were on The Music Day 2024 in Japan a couple days ago. Aside from performing their new Japanese comeback, "We'll Never Change", Hueningkai and Taehyun also had their own collab stages. Taehyun and Tomohisa Yamashita performed their original song "Perfect Storm", and it was a great show. But what REALLY caught the Japanese public was Hueningkai covering "Betelguese" with Snow Man's Watanabe Shota.

As a warning, Watanabe was unfortunately not in the best vocal shape that day. I immediately cringed when I heard those first opening notes. But then Hueningkai swoops in like the angel he's been dubbed by all of TXT to be, with those clear pitch-perfect notes and the crazy falsetto transitions that this song requires. The vocal mastery he has is so obvious especially as he hits the chorus. As many Japanese locals have pointed out, not only did Kai manage to stay on pitch while his partner was so off, but he also appeared to have the song memorized while Watanabe kept glancing at the monitor. A JAPANESE song, while Hueningkai is Korean (albeit a massive weeb).

Needless to say, Japanese netizens are eating him UP right now. The performance currently has 17M views on Twitter. His amazing and highly underrated Lee Mujin Service has gained ~200k views. If you go to Kai and Taehyun's awesome 2023 MAMA "Endless Rain" collab with Yoshiki , all the latest comments are Japanese people who got curious from Betelguese. They're also loving his awkward, pure nature, like when he pulled out the sweater paws on the national broadcast.

At the cost of Watanabe, many of the Japanese comments are using Kai as an example of how K-pop is vocally better than J-pop. While I don't necessarily agree (and feel really bad for Watanabe rn), K-pop subs are always such doom and gloom without recognizing the amazing vocal moments we DO have. Heck, wasn't there a post recently about great 4th gen vocalists? Why was my man in like two of those answers? The lip sync accusations flood in as always, but thankfully the TXT members are taking none of that because check out what Taehyun and Kai posted yesterday on Twitter LMAOO, prettiest sounding "fuck off" ever!

As a classically-trained musician, I biased Hyuka ever since I saw his piano cover of "All of Me" by Jon Schmidt (of Piano Guys fame ifykyk) on TXT's debut reality show, One Dream. His vocals, drumming, classical guitar skills, songwriting, hilarious pikachu piano convos... I don't mean it lightly when I say he embodies the musician part of being an idol. More than a musician, really, he's a freaking rockstar!! I'm so glad Kai is taking 2024 to be his year to show his experience, from the track on their Japanese album he wrote AND produced, the Music Bank stage where he rocked out to Sk8er Boi, and his NEW SHOW where he joins different university bands. New episode drops July 23rd so until then, go binge episode 0 when he's a one-man band and episode 1 where he drums for Yonsei!!!