After he watched School of Rock during elementary school, he began to be interested in music. He started playing drums after he saw a hero who played drums in a movie. Since his father worked in music during his young days, he had easy access to many musical instruments during his youth. When he was middle school first grade student, he joined a band with his best friends and played with them for about 3 years. He was accepted as a trainee under SM Entertainment after coming second place in the 2008 Smart Model Contest. When he first got into SM entertainment, he expected band activity like Trax, but was disappointed upon realizing the difficulty in promoting as a band. After he listened to various music during training, he began to focus on rapping.