Korean-born, U.S.-raised singer-songwriter, producer, and violinist ALL’N is carving out a unique space in K-pop. As the founder and CEO of SKS Entertainment, the label behind his music, ALL’N maintains ownership of his masters and intellectual property while overseeing nearly every aspect of his artistry. From writing and producing his music to choreography, styling, and visual direction, he has built his career on creative independence. Now, he is taking that hands-on approach even further, directing and editing the music video for his latest single himself.
Following his April 2026 debut with “We Up,” which surpassed one million views on YouTube and brought him to major Korean music programs including M Countdown, Music Bank, Show! Music Core, and Inkigayo, ALL’N returns with “Dream Higher.” Released August 14 through a new global distribution partnership with EMPIRE, the single reflects on the years he spent quietly enduring hardships and pursuing his dreams before the world knew his name. The song captures lonely nights, relentless effort, painful setbacks, and the unwavering belief that kept him moving forward, culminating in the determination to rise again and dream even bigger.
Built around the powerful line, “dream so high your idols become your rivals,” “Dream Higher” draws from ALL’N’s own journey from aspiring artist to someone determined to stand alongside the idols he once admired. A classically trained violinist, he incorporates electric violin throughout the track, culminating in an intense solo performed in the pouring rain. For the first time, electric guitar joins his signature sound, complementing rapid-fire rap verses, soaring vocals, and a chant-ready chorus designed for a crowd to sing along to.
The accompanying music video brings the song’s raw determination to life. Directed and edited by ALL’N, the visually intense project was shot on RED cinema cameras and combines choreography, breaking, backflips, and physically demanding training sequences in the rain. Unfiltered and deeply personal, “Dream Higher” offers a glimpse into the struggle behind ALL’N’s rise—and his unwavering determination to reach even greater heights.
“Dream Higher” is
described as a song about “the cost of coming back.” What did you have to
sacrifice or overcome to get to this point in your career?
ALL’N: There was definitely a
cost.
A lot of people see the
final result of becoming a K-pop artist: the stages, the music videos, the
clothes, the cameras. But for me, getting there involved a lot of lonely nights
and long hours where there was no guarantee that any of it would work.
I trained for years, had a
career beginning to take off in China, lost that future, started over, went
through COVID, and eventually had to rebuild my life from almost nothing.
During that time I kept producing music, training physically, learning business,
saving money, and preparing for a K-pop dream that a lot of people probably
thought I should have already given up on.
The biggest sacrifice was
probably comfort. I could have chosen a much easier and more predictable life.
But I knew I would regret giving up more than I would regret failing again.
That’s really where Dream
Higher came from.
“We Up” introduced ALL’N
to the world as an artist. If “We Up” was your introduction, what do you hope
“Dream Higher” tells people about who you really are?
ALL’N: We Up
showed people my ambition, my performance style, and this idea of violin-driven
K-pop.
But Dream Higher explains
why I am like that.
It’s much more personal. I
think people saw me debut and suddenly wondered, “Where did this guy come from?
How did he build his own entertainment company and end up on Music Bank and M
Countdown?”
Dream Higher is really the
answer to that. It shows the lonely parts, the failures, the moments when I
lost control of my future, and the reason I kept going anyway.
So if We Up introduced
ALL’N the artist, I think Dream Higher introduces the person behind ALL’N.
“Dream Higher” introduces electric guitar
alongside your electric violin. What made you want to bring guitar into your
sound this time, and how did it change the way you approached the song?
ALL’N: I wanted
Dream Higher to feel bigger and more cinematic than We Up.
The violin carries a lot
of the emotional identity of the song, while the electric guitar gives certain
sections a more raw and powerful edge. I like the contrast because they are
both string instruments, but they communicate emotion very differently.
The violin can soar and
almost feel like a voice, while the guitar gives the production more weight and
aggression. For me, the goal was never to make it feel like, “Here is the
violin part, here is the guitar part, and here is the K-pop part.” I want those
elements to naturally belong in the same world.
That kind of
experimentation is a big part of what I want ALL’N’s music to become.
You trained as a
competitive violinist before becoming a pop artist. What did your years of
classical training teach you that you now apply to performing K-pop or pop
music?
ALL’N: Probably
the biggest lesson was that repetition is not glamorous, but it works.
When you train seriously
in classical music, you can spend hours practicing a few measures until
something that originally felt impossible becomes automatic. That mentality
translates directly into K-pop.
Whether I’m learning
choreography, practicing vocals, preparing a violin section, or getting ready
for a broadcast performance, I don’t expect myself to magically be good at
something immediately. I break it down, repeat it, fix the weak parts, and keep
going.
Classical music also
taught me how important details are. Sometimes the difference between something
that is good and something that feels professional is a collection of very
small decisions that most people will never consciously notice. I carry that mentality
into almost everything I do now.
You directed and edited
the “Dream Higher” music video yourself. made you decide that you wanted to
take on those roles rather than hand them over to someone else?
ALL’N: I
co-directed Dream Higher with Kim Gwang-eun, and I edited the final
music video myself.
A lot of the visual
concept was already in my head before we ever arrived on set. I came up with
the rain concept, the large LED-screen sequences, the physical training
imagery, and many of the specific scenes and environments I wanted to use to
tell the story. I also had a clear idea of how I wanted many of those moments
to be shot.
Kim helped turn those
ideas into an actual production. He helped find the right locations and
production teams, coordinated elements like the LED setup, and brought his own
ideas to the project as well. So the directing process was collaborative, but
the core visual story came from something I had been planning before the shoot.
Because Dream Higher tells
such a personal part of my life, I had a very specific idea of what each scene
needed to communicate emotionally. That continued into post-production. There
were certain cuts, slow-motion moments, transitions, pacing choices, and
emotional beats that I wanted to shape myself, so I took on the final edit as
well.
For me, having creative
control also means accepting responsibility. If I’m asking people to spend
their time watching something that represents ALL’N and SKS Entertainment, I
want to be able to stand behind every decision in the final product.
The video combines
choreography, breaking, backflips, physical training, and rain. How did you
prepare your body to take on such a physically demanding concept?
ALL’N: Dream
Higher is actually much less choreography-centered than We Up. Most of the
physical movement is there to tell the story rather than to function as a
traditional dance performance.
There are moments involving
breaking, training, falling, backflips, rain, and a lot of physically demanding
movement. Fitness has been a big part of my life for years. My personal goal
has always been to become as strong as possible while staying relatively lean,
so I do a lot of pull-ups, dips, muscle-ups, bodyweight work, and strength
training.
But this music video still
pushed me. I actually broke my nose doing a backflip during filming.
Obviously that was not
part of the plan. But looking back, there is something almost ironic about
getting injured while filming a song about falling down and refusing to give
up.
We kept going, and somehow
even that became part of the story.
Which scene from the
“Dream Higher” music video are you most proud of, and why?
ALL’N: Probably
the rain sequence.
Visually, it is one of my
favorite parts of the entire video, but more importantly, it represents the
emotional world of the song. The rain feels cold, lonely, and overwhelming, and
there are moments where I look physically exhausted rather than like a perfectly
polished K-pop idol.
That was important to me.
I wanted the music video to show that chasing a dream doesn’t always look
inspirational while you are actually living through it.
Sometimes it looks like
being exhausted, getting hurt, falling down, and still finding a reason to
stand back up.
If your violin could talk,
what do you think it would say about you?
ALL’N: It would
probably say, “This guy really does not know when to quit… I wish he could be
more gentle with me.”
I’ve had a violin in my
life since I was nine years old, so it has basically followed me through every
version of myself: competitive violinist, trainee, DJ, producer, businessman,
and now K-pop artist.
At this point, the violin
has probably seen enough career changes for one lifetime and it has been
through a lot! It probably wishes it met the standard violinist instead of a
dancing one!
But I think it would also
say that no matter how much everything around me changes, I always come back to
music.
What is the biggest
challenge of being both the person onstage and the person making business
decisions behind the scenes?
ALL’N: Switching
between the two mindsets.
As an artist, I need to be
emotional, creative, vulnerable, and focused on making something great. Then
sometimes five minutes later I have to become the CEO and think about budgets,
contracts, schedules, negotiations, staffing, distribution, marketing, or
whether something financially makes sense.
The difficult part is that
there is no higher person for me to hand the final decision to. If something
goes wrong creatively, I’m responsible. If something goes wrong financially,
I’m responsible.
That is the tradeoff of
having control.
People talk a lot about
creative freedom, but freedom and responsibility come together. That has
probably been one of the biggest lessons of building SKS Entertainment while
also trying to grow as ALL’N.
After “Dream Higher,” what
do you want people to be waiting for from ALL’N next?
ALL’N: I want
people to stop knowing exactly what the next ALL’N song is going to sound like,
while still immediately knowing that it is an ALL’N song.
The violin will always be
there. That is permanent. My English name, ALL’N, represents my mentality of
going all in and giving everything I have to whatever I choose to pursue. In
Korean, my name is written 올린, which are also the final
two syllables of 바이올린, the Korean word for
violin.
So every ALL’N song will
include violin in some form. Sometimes it may lead the song, sometimes it may
support the production, and sometimes it may appear through a solo or
instrumental moment. But it will always be part of the identity.
What I want to keep
changing is the world around it: different genres, different emotions,
different concepts, and different ways of performing.
We Up was one side of me.
Dream Higher is another. I’m only on my second single, so I feel like I’m still
showing people the first few pieces of a much bigger picture.
The one thing I want
people to expect is that I’m going to keep pushing what violin-driven K-pop can
be.
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