This was Psy's last album under YG before his departure on May 15, 2018.[2]
Background
On May 1, YG Entertainment officially announced PSY's comeback by unveiling a poster of the comeback schedule, along with the title of the album 4×2=8.[3] From May 4 to May 7, the track list was released, revealing the title track and featured artists, including Big Bang's G-Dragon and Taeyang, iKON's B.I and Bobby, Zico, Tablo, Lee Sung-kyung and Park Jin-young as a producer.[4][5][6][7] One day before the release of the album, illustration teaser images were unveiled for each song.[8]
Songs
Most of the songs were written and composed by YG Entertainment artists, unlike his last album Chiljip Psy-da which didn't feature any YG artists.[9] Psy stated in an interview that he wanted young blood for the album, and didn't want it to sound old, so he worked with B.I, who co-composed three tracks on the album. BigBang's Taeyang is featured on "Love"; iKon's B.I and Bobby on "Bomb"; and actress Lee Sung-kyung is featured on "Last Scene". Tablo participated in writing the lyrics and is featured on "Auto Reverse" with B.I. BigBang's G-Dragon took part in writing the lyrics for, and features on "Fact Assault", which is notable for having profanity, Psy stated "this track has so much profanity, and I don't even expect it to pass the censorship rating".[10][11]
Music videos
Actor Lee Byung-hun is featured in the music video of "I Luv It", while Apink's Son Na-eun played the title role in the music video of "New Face".[12] The music videos cumulatively reached 8 million views within 14 hours, with "I Luv It" surpassing 4 million views and "New Face" surpassing 3.7 million views.[13]
On January 1, 2018 "New Face" surpassed 100 million views.[14]
^The title of album is a Korean pun, since the mathematical
formula can be read in Korean as "sa yi pal(사이팔)" which is equal to 4 times 2 is 8 but also can mean Psy's 8th album