There’s something fitting about XLOV naming their first mini album UXLXVE. Even the title reads like a challenge – a twist on the word “unlove”, crossed out and rewritten into something else entirely. It’s clever, but it’s also deliberate, and that sense of duality has followed the group since their debut. Here, it finally finds its fullest form.

Across six tracks, UXLXVE feels like the moment XLOV stop introducing themselves and start defining what they actually are. It’s sleek, layered, and surprisingly emotional beneath its glossy shell – a collection that bends sound and identity until both feel fluid. For a rookie group not yet a year into their career, the ambition is startling.

The project builds on the “genderless” idea that’s always sat at the core of XLOV’s work. It isn’t just about style or aesthetic – it’s about perspective. They’ve talked about rejecting the need to suppress negativity or sanitise emotion, and that thread runs right through this record. The title itself is a visual play, sure, but also a philosophical one: flipping the “N” and “O” into “X” as a symbol of dual negation – the idea that two wrongs, or two wounds, might make something right. That tension runs through every track: the dark and the bright, the sensual and the spiritual, destruction as transformation, all built around permission to feel.

Musically, the album is restless in the best way. It jumps from 808-heavy hip-hop to hyperpop chaos and R&B restraint without ever losing direction. You can hear the DNA of the producers – pac odd, JUNNY, 8NUVO, QSTNMRKS – but there’s an unmistakable cohesion holding it all together. That’s likely down to Wumuti, who once again leads much of the lyric work and production vision. His creative control gives UXLXVE a sense of authorship that’s rare in a scene where rookies often play it safe.

Opening track “Scent” is a clear tone-setter – humid, slow-burning, and tactile. The production is thick but never muddy, and the vocals move like smoke through the track. It’s a sensual R&B cut that flirts with subtlety rather than spectacle. JUNNY’s co-writing touch is evident in its smooth phrasing, but it’s the group’s chemistry that sells it. There’s a calm confidence here – less about showing range, more about presence.

Then comes “Rizz”, the main title and the album’s loudest statement. Built around 808 trap drums and minimalist synth textures, it’s almost taunting in its delivery. The hook loops on itself like a mantra – “Rizz, Rizz, Rizz” – while Wumuti’s lyrics dive into darker territory, questioning control and mortality with lines that sound more philosophical than they first appear. The dual energy – brash yet reflective – gives it bite.

“Dirty Baby” lands next, and it’s one of the record’s most interesting turns. On the surface, it sounds like a seductive trap R&B track, but the subtext runs deeper. Beneath its sleek grooves lies a kind of defiance reclaiming desire as freedom. It fits neatly within XLOV’s ongoing narrative about autonomy and identity. The soundscape is smooth and slick, pulled between confidence and vulnerability, and the vocals stay just rough enough around the edges to keep it real.

The album’s other centrepiece, “Biii:-p”, veers in the opposite direction – bright, hyperactive, and strange in a way that only XLOV could pull off. It blends 8-bit textures, hyperpop energy, and cartoonish synths into something that borders on chaotic but never fully loses control. Lyrically, it takes a swipe at “haters”, but not in a predictable way. The tone is tongue-in-cheek, closer to a puzzle than a diss track, with Wumuti and Piper 57 weaving cryptic humour into every line. It’s the record’s weirdest moment – and probably its most fun.

Things cool down with “kiss and say goodbye”, a devastating ballad that could’ve easily sounded predictable but doesn’t. The composition from Choah, Kim Jiseob, and Parkhyeon keeps it grounded in warm piano tones and stirring guitar riffs, leaving space for emotion rather than over-arrangement. Wumuti’s lyricism comes through again, framing heartbreak not as collapse but as acceptance. It’s incredibly mature, and easily one of their strongest vocal moments yet.

“Drip Drip” closes the set on a surprisingly hopeful note. Built around UK garage drums and acoustic guitar, it balances tension and calm, like movement through a storm that finally clears. It’s not an obvious finale – no fireworks as such – but it leaves you with the sense that this chapter isn’t about endings at all. 

What ties UXLXVE together is the constant push and pull between opposites – light and dark, control and abandon, love and its absence. The record sounds polished, but you can tell it was made with intention. Every track connects back to that idea of duality, of turning rejection into resilience. Even its visual concept – the crossed-out “UNLOVE” – mirrors what the music is doing: taking something negative and reshaping it into strength.

There’s also something to be said for how self-contained this release feels. While many K-pop acts rely on external creative direction, XLOV are already building their own language – in sound, design, even typography. It’s all part of the same world they’ve been crafting since debut, only sharper now, darker, more sure of itself. You can feel the growing confidence in every choice.

For a first mini album, UXLXVE does exactly what it should: it establishes a sound, deepens a concept, and proves that XLOV aren’t just another flash in the rookie cycle. They’ve taken the risks most groups wait years to attempt and managed to make them sound effortless.

It’s rare to see a group arrive this self-aware, this early – rarer still for them to translate that awareness into something so musically coherent. If this is XLOV’s first real look inward, then it’s also a mirror held up to the scene around them – one that asks, quietly but confidently, who’s really brave enough to feel everything.