GOT7’s Lim Jae-beom steps into 2026 stripped bare, artistically reborn, and more magnetic than ever — as Numéro Netherlands’ June cover subject proves.
DRIFT INTO SOMETHING REAL
There is a particular kind of stillness that only the most self-assured artists carry.
You see it in this image — JAY B standing inside a blue-grey atmospheric haze, a plaid oversized shirt draped and falling like something between a robe and a second skin, layered gold chains catching the light at his chest, head tilted slightly, eyes almost closed.
He is not performing. He is simply existing — and somehow that’s the most electric thing he could possibly do.
This is JAY B in 2026: quieter, deeper, and more dangerous than ever.
FROM JB TO JAY B — THE LONG BECOMING
Born Lim Jae-beom, he won first place at a JYP Entertainment open audition in 2009 alongside Jinyoung, with the two eventually debuting as duo JJ Project in 2012 before becoming two-sevenths of GOT7 in January 2014. He was nineteen. He was ready. He had no idea how enormous it would get.
GOT7 became one of K-pop’s most beloved global acts — a seven-member force with the kind of organic charisma that couldn’t be manufactured or replicated. JAY B led it. He was the anchor, the main vocalist, the quiet storm at the front of the stage. But the whole time, another version of him was composing in the shadows — releasing SoundCloud mixtapes under the alias Defsoul, digging through D’Angelo records at 2am, building a second world that ran parallel to the pop machine he was anchoring.
In 2016, with the Flight Log: Departure EP, his self-written songs started appearing in GOT7’s albums under the pseudonym Defsoul or Def. The fans noticed. The industry noticed. But the full picture wouldn’t emerge until the group stepped away from JYP and into full creative ownership.
THE SOLO PIVOT: VULNERABILITY AS POWER
On January 19, 2021, following the expiration of his contract, he left JYP Entertainment. With the release of GOT7’s single “Encore” on February 20, he started using the new stage name JAY B — and on May 25, 2021, he became the first Korean soloist to enter the Billboard R&B Digital Song Sales Chart.
“At my core, I’m an R&B artist. I’ve always been drawn to more vintage sounds. I love old-school soul and funk — those influences are really the foundation of who I am as a musician.”
— JAY B, listening session for TR.EE, Seoul, June 2026
That wasn’t a pivot. That was a declaration. His solo era hasn’t been loud. It’s been precise.
Every release under his own name has moved further from the polished group aesthetic and deeper into something intimate and textured.
As the leader of GOT7, he spent years as an anchor for a global phenomenon, balancing pop perfection with his own instincts as a primary songwriter and producer for the group’s many tracks — but his solo discography is the sound of an artist systematically peeling away that sleek pop veneer to reveal a vulnerable and very serious R&B musician underneath.
“He’s as mellow as a dawn after a dewy night.”
— Vogue Korea on JAY B’s Def. persona
TR.EE: GROWTH AS A SONIC PHILOSOPHY
After signing with 528Hz in April 2026, JAY B released his third EP TR.EE on June 10. Six tracks. Minimal fuss. Maximum intention.
The project pairs the R&B sound he has long favoured with an introspective exploration of growth, relationships and emotional uncertainty. The lead single “Layback” arrives like a breath you didn’t know you were holding — groove-heavy, unhurried, radiating the kind of confidence that comes not from domination but from deep self-knowledge.
The album’s emotional core, he insists, is the closing track “We.” As he explains: “Layback is the main track, but ‘We’ is the root of the album — it’s the song that became the foundation for everything I wanted to say about relationships and growth.”
The title itself is its own manifesto. A tree doesn’t announce itself.
It simply grows — down into the earth and up into the light at the same time, rootedness and reach existing without contradiction. That tension is JAY B’s entire artistic thesis.
He has described a personal shift that shaped the record’s spirit: “When I was younger, I was always focused on being the best.
These days, I think it’s more important to do your best with the situation you’re given. I wanted music to feel comfortable again.
Once I changed my attitude, I became more relaxed — even the way I speak became calmer.”
WORN WITHOUT APOLOGY
The Numéro Netherlands pictorial carries that same energy. The styling here is not aggressive. It is atmospheric. The plaid shirt — loose, layered, falling open at the chest — reads like a garment chosen for how it feels rather than how it photographs.
And yet it photographs perfectly, because authenticity always does.
His favourite fashion style is grunge or vintage — he has no fashion role model in particular, but prefers to seek out items that old celebrities would wear. That philosophy shows.
His aesthetic has always orbited the worn, the lived-in, the genuinely considered. Stacked gold chains at the collar. Plaid trousers grounding the look. Movement blur catching the fabric mid-drift — as if the camera caught him between thoughts.
In June 2019, he attended the YSL 20SS Men’s Collection event in Los Angeles as a representative of Korea, signalling his place in the global fashion conversation even then.
But it was never about front rows. It was always about the language fashion speaks when worn by someone who isn’t performing it.
The Numéro Netherlands shoot understands this perfectly.
The blue-teal backdrop, cool and slightly surreal, doesn’t compete with him — it extends him.
The motion blur across his left side introduces a painterly quality, as if he’s not quite fixed in time. He belongs to the frame and exceeds it simultaneously.
THE TAPE: ROOTS TOUR — AND THE AHGASE ETERNAL BOND
On June 12 KST, JAY B’s agency 528Hz released a poster announcing his 2026 Tape: Roots concert tour. Confirmed cities include Seoul, Bangkok, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Tokyo — seven shows in total, with two-day concerts scheduled for Seoul and Bangkok. The tour kicks off at Seoul’s Yes24 Live Hall on June 20 and 21, wrapping with a final show at Tokyo’s Hulic Hall on September 2.
The tour name is everything. Tape: Roots. The tape — the archive, the record of his journey. The roots — what feeds him, what grounds him, what he cannot leave behind. Eleven years into one of K-pop’s most extraordinary careers, and JAY B is still going deeper rather than wider.
The Ahgase fandom — iGOT7 — have tracked every step of this. They are not passive spectators.
They are co-creators of a cultural legacy that began in 2014 and shows no sign of running out of chapters.
The intimacy of his solo shows, the vulnerability of his songwriting, the rawness of his fan communication — all of it has deepened rather than eroded the relationship between artist and audience.
His previous solo LP Archive 1: [Road Runner] topped the iTunes Top Albums chart in eleven regions. TR.EE arrives with even more emotional precision, and the Ahgases are ready.
“The blur in the photograph isn’t a mistake. It’s the whole point — JAY B has never been easy to pin down.”
DEF. — THE OTHER SELF THAT REVEALS THE REAL ONE
What makes JAY B such a compelling subject for a magazine like Numéro is that there are genuinely multiple layers to excavate. The GOT7 leader.
“TR.EE isn’t an album. It’s a confession from someone who finally stopped apologising for his own depth.”
The solo R&B artist. And then Def. — the underground creative persona that lives entirely outside the idol system. Def. tends to create “something very up close and personal… in the R&B, alternate pop and indie genres.” He describes it as a way to release the music he really likes and experiment with songs not catering to the general public.
To write lyrics, he first senses the song’s mood, then thinks about past events, current experiences, or things he has seen in movies or read in books.
“Twelve years in, and Lim Jae-beom is still the most interesting person in the room — precisely because he’s stopped trying to be.”
This is not a persona constructed for brand extension.
This is how a musician thinks when no one is watching — and choosing to let people in on that process is itself an act of radical artistic honesty.
In a K-pop landscape often characterised by meticulous image management, JAY B’s willingness to be genuinely uncertain, genuinely searching, genuinely himself is its own kind of radicalism.
THE FRAME AND THE FEELING
The photograph on this page is doing what the best editorial photography always does — it tells you something true about the subject that a hundred words might fail to communicate. JAY B in soft plaid and gold, suspended in a cool blue world, not quite still and not quite moving, eyes closed as if listening to something no one else can hear. That is the music. That is the man. That is what twelve years of becoming looks like when worn without apology.
Lim Jae-beom grew up watching g.o.d perform and deciding, at seven years old, that he would become a singer. He b-boyed at Ilsan Station. He won an audition. He led a global group. He left. He began again. He signed with 528Hz. He released TR.EE. He stood in front of a camera for Numéro Netherlands and did the bravest possible thing.
He just stood there. And it was enough. It was more than enough.
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Credits & Rights
Featured in: Numéro Netherlands — June 2026 Issue (Pictorial Preview)
Editorial Coverage: Kpoppie Magazine
Publisher: Velocity Entertainment Inc. Limited (Japan / New Zealand)
Artist: JAY B (Lim Jae-beom) | Management: 528Hz
Group Affiliation: GOT7
All editorial content, copy, and creative direction in this article are the original work of Kpoppie Magazine / Velocity Entertainment Inc. Limited and are protected under the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. Reproduction, republication, or redistribution in whole or in part without express written permission is strictly prohibited.
Photographic rights remain with the respective photographer and/or Numéro Netherlands. All artist-related factual content is published in good faith for editorial and journalistic purposes. Kpoppie Magazine makes no claim of ownership over any third-party imagery used in a purely editorial capacity.
© 2026 Velocity Entertainment Inc. Limited — Japan / New Zealand. All rights reserved.
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