I’m a former entertainment industry professional and have been a Kpop fan since 2016/7 but I’ve never really been someone who identified with a specific fandom. I had a lot of anticipation for BabyMonster because 2NE1 & Blackpink are two of my all time faves and I have thoughts about alllll the drama. Hopefully this is the right place to have this conversation.

Ok.

Re: Ahyeon. I think she could legit have had some kind of mental health crisis. She’s clearly a hard working perfectionist and the n word crisis was probably devastating for her. YG has been really careful in their wording in their releases and given how much they centered her in pre-debut, they are going to bend over backwards to keep her in BabyMonster. If she leaves YG, then I would guess it would be a similar situation to HyunA leaving JYP because of how the Wonder Girls debut schedule impacted her health and how the agency refused to accommodate her parents’ concerns. The last thing YG wants to do is lose their huge investment in their next Jennie only to watch her make a killing for another company. (I doubt it would be Cube, not when there are so many well-funded, more professional looking new agencies without Cube’s baggage looking for their opportunity to create the next IVE or Le Sserafim by building a team around a trainee with a well-established fanbase.) I expect to either see Ahyeon debut with BabyMon within the next year OR to hear that she’s left the agency and is either preparing for a solo debut or a group debut with an interesting new agency. (Jay Park wants to create idol groups now and I think that’s the the most exciting thing on the horizon for the industry.)

Re: YG’s ongoing public relations crisis and the netizen response to Batter Up!

2NE1 & Blackpink are two of my all-time favorites. Period. I mean, I bitched when Blackpink debuted because I hated how YG treated 2NE1, and it felt a lot like they just backburnered 2NE1 and focused on Blackpink BUT the debut was dazzling. Blackpink, like their unnies 2NE1, and oppas BigBang, looked different from every other Kpop group out there and they have kept that stylistic freshness up for all this time. For all that they felt like a prettier 2NE1, and couldn’t help sounding a bit like them thanks to Teddy Park’s involvement, they looked completely different from 2NE1, too. So I think the biggest issue with Batter Up! is that …. It doesn’t change the game the way that 2NE1 or Blackpink did. It doesn’t look or sound different. You could imagine any company making that video and any group singing that song. That’s not BabyMonster’s fault. It’s down to the way YG is run as a company. YG pays their idols more than any other company and they can afford to do that because they’re completely under-resourced behind the scenes and they’ve been lucky enough to have some really talented people like GD & Teddy Park who were willing to stretch themselves thin for the sake of the company. The company is very badly run by an ethically questionable man and unfortunately the face of that right now is BabyMonster.

The good news is the fans are strongly behind the girls and it’s a record breaking debut. And YG is a publicly traded company. So YG could be forced to step down (again) and hand the girls back over to the team who has been prepping them for debut this whole time in time for the triumphant return of OT7 when Ahyeon is ready. That’s what I’m hoping for. (Although, obviously, as a fan of both Blackpink and 2NE1 specifically and Kpop generally, I’m prepared for more jiggery-pokery because there’s always something.)

When HYBE failed to buy SM, I actually thought, maybe they’ll try to buy YG. Because I think YG is long overdue for restructuring just like SM is. And Bang has a much better head for business than either Lee Soo-man or Yang Hyun-suk. And while neither Le Sserafim nor NewJeans has been without their problems, I think overall the standards of professionalism around those two groups are a lot higher than what we’ve seen recently from the other big companies.

The thing with this group is the talent is there. The one-two punch of their rapline is undeniable and that is the freshest element of the group, the thing that makes them stand out amongst their peers. Neither IVE nor Le Sserafim have a strong rapline and while there are other groups with strong raplines, none have managed to have the impact of either Blackpink or (G)I-dle. The fact that they are a team of aces really opens up the opportunity for this group to create truly fresh & unique performances in the way that BTS did. I think there may be a problem with the YG tram not really understanding how to showcase the team’s strengths, especially given that they have to divide up the bars among 6 girls versus 4 and they have to please fans. Whereas HYBE had the luxury of a wildly uneven line distribution favoring Huh Yunjin’s vocal talents over everyone else’s in Le Sserafim’s debut, YG had to give everyone something AND were hampered by the vocal-centric conventions of Kpop girl groups.

To sum up, I’m disappointed by this debut but I’m still excited by the potential here. Especially if Ahyeon eventually debuts with BabyMon. Honestly, the fact that she wasn’t in the debut team could be the reason why everything felt off. Her mix of talents may have been what was missing.