'too little too late'

the album; blackpink

[mini album review]

best songs: pretty savage, love to hate me, you never know

rating: 6.5/10

after 4 years of activity, its finally here. blackpink's first full album. with heightened expectations, was it worth the wait? i'm not so sure it was.

the mixing on this album is it’s greatest weakness i believe. because the songs are sparse, they sound shrill in the ear. this could’ve been solved with fuller sounding beats or using what they have more creatively. "kill this love" is an excellent example of blackpink using minimal instrumentation creatively to make a grand anthem song. so its not like their producers are incapable of doing it. someone mentioned to me that a lot of these songs sound a bit like demos and they do. the production is incomplete, in other words. when you pair this with the fact that the songs are very short (4/8 songs are less than 3 minutes), it leaves you underwhelmed. i don't think the album was as well thought out as it could've been.

this album is not a full album, its 2 mini albums. when you make a full album, there has to be something a extra to make it a full work that ties everything really neatly together; thats missing here. now that may be good thematic or musical cohesion, storytelling, structure, genre etc. examples of albums that do this well are shinee’s married to the music, exo’s exodus, bts’ love yourself tear, fx’s pink tape, iu’s modern times. there is cohesion musically on here but because the production sounds incomplete, the cohesion works against the album.

blackpink incorporate a lot of modern hiphop flows in contrast with songs from the early 2010s and i think thats their way of making sure the album is still relatable to an audience of this era. they revive a nostalgia while applying their own modernity through rap. their use of rap shapes a lot of this album. the vocalists fill up the empty spaces and i think thats the general trend their music has shown over the years. but here is the interesting thing, their best display on this album was without a doubt “you never know”. a vocal centred song that is also the longest track on the album. tho the production is sparse, their voices fill up the song nicely. it feels very earnest and i like seeing that side them. i think thats one of the reasons why songs like "hope not" + "stay" appeal to me the most. in addition, “love to hate me” is also an example of focus on the vocals. because they balance rap and vocals well, it sounds more complete than most of the other songs

they do have their rare moments of creativity as well but it's not nearly enough with the sparseness displayed all over the album. the sinister melody (pretty savage), the outro (pretty savage), vocal melody in the bridge (lovesick girls), vocal melody in the chorus (love to hate me).

i think because of the wait everyone endured for this album, the expectations were really high. i was also really looking forward to it because it would be definitive in giving the landscape for their sound and how they are building from it. and everyone knows i used to say back in the day “9/9 songs slap”. i do see the vision, i really do but this album should’ve been released a lot earlier, not this late. i think the foundation is there, they just need to really dig deep, and go beyond the surface with the production.