The story underneath from20 is a lot less accidental than the virality suggests. "People easily forget I'm making music by myself," he tells me over a video call from Seoul. Before "Eye Candy" came to life, he'd spent over three years immersed in synth-pop, chasing a sound closer to The Weeknd, before an unexplained pull toward Usher, Ne-Yo, Missy Elliott and Eminem sent Rated R straight into mid-2000s R&B – a genre he'd been obsessed with since his trainee days. "I was confident nobody could sing this kind of music better than me."

That confidence, and the discipline behind it, extends past the booth. With the tagline “We Dream Better, Make Better, Do Way Better,” from20 co-founded the independent label WAYBETTER in 2020 with fellow artist HELLO GLOOM – and while running it hasn't been friction-free, it's sharpened rather than clouded his sense of himself as an artist. "As a CEO I can look at from20 the artist in a little bit more of a conservative way," he explains. "I don't really make weird choices... that's when the CEO part of me takes over."

Underneath both threads – the sound and the business – sits something more deliberate than "superstar" branding usually allows for. Every decision on Rated R, he says, from the album cover to the wardrobe, ran through one single filter: does this feel like from20 is a superstar? It's a mindset that lies at the heart of every decision he makes – and it's one he traces back to wanting to strip fear out of performance entirely.