WOODZ

WOODZ (우즈), born Cho Seungyoun (조승연) on August 5, 1996, in Seongnam, South Korea, is a singer-songwriter, rapper, dancer, and record producer under EDAM Entertainment. He is one of the few artists in K-pop to carry genuine self-producing credentials across his entire catalog, writing, composing, and arranging the majority of his output from the ground up. He first rose to prominence as the main rapper of UNIQ, a Korean-Chinese co-production group under Yuehua Entertainment that debuted in October 2014. When UNIQ's Korean activities stalled amid political tensions between China and South Korea, Cho Seungyoun began working as a solo artist under the name Luizy in 2016, then rebranded as WOODZ in 2018 to reflect a shift toward alternative R&B and rock-influenced production. In 2019, he participated in Mnet's Produce X 101, ranking fifth and debuting with X1 in August 2019. The group's abrupt disbandment in January 2020, following the Mnet vote manipulation scandal, returned him to his solo career with renewed clarity of purpose. His subsequent EPs and mini-albums -- Equal (2020), Only Lovers Left (2021), and Colorful Trauma (2022) -- built a devoted fanbase known as MOODZ and established his reputation as one of the more artistically autonomous acts in the fourth-generation scene. His 2023 B-side "Drowning" became a phenomenon of its own kind: the track went viral while WOODZ was serving his mandatory military service (January 2023 through late 2024), eventually reaching number one on Melon's annual chart for 2025 -- a B-side from two years prior outperforming active releases. Following his discharge, WOODZ returned with the single "I'll Never Love Again" (September 2025) before dropping his first full-length album, Archive. 1, on March 4, 2026 -- a seventeen-track project with two title songs in "Human Extinction" and "NA NA NA" that he has framed as an archive of years of self-produced material finally made available.