Can NewJeans Actually Be Bigger Than BTS?

Could NUGENES overtake BTS and BLACKPINK as the most popular K-pop group in the Western world ever? Let's talk about it. Yeah, this is going viral right now. The headline reads, NUGENES have secured their place in international music history by becoming the first Asian girl group to chart three songs simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100 this week. Andrew, only the Pussycat Dolls, En Vogue, and the Shangri-las, which is like from way back in the day, have ever done it. It's very rare for an Asian group to do this, Andrew, because international music charts is more Western-centric. Woo! First time ever. Three songs at once, guys. We got to talk about this. I know a lot of people out there are big fans of NUGENES. I actually like some of their songs, and you know us. We're not the hugest K-pop fans, but we keep up with it, and I do appreciate it. But I don't know. NUGENES is kind of my group, man. Yeah, yeah. Make sure you like, subscribe, turn on your notifications, guys. Like we said, we are not subject matter experts on K-pop at all, but I've got to say that new song, Shoot, Super Shy, Andrew, is probably, in my opinion, going to be the biggest crossover hit from K-pop, at least to R&B, that I've personally ever seen in my entire life. You know what it is? It's because they said super shy. Super, super shy, I'm super shy, super shy. Okay. Anyways, guys, let's get into it. Please let us know in the comments down below what makes NUGENES so popular and so appealing to the Western world. Is it just, it's just over time that there's going to be a K-pop group that really breaks through? Or is this not fully a breakthrough yet? Yeah. Well, we got to talk about the checklist of what it takes for an Eastern group to cross over to the West. Anyway, let's just get into some comments real quick. Somebody said, yo, that's wild. I never see any of the girls in NUGENES wearing jeans. That's kind of a funny comment. Somebody said, sorry to say, but Super Shy and ETA are not as good as their previous songs, Cookies, Hype Boy, OMG, and Ditto. Now, this turned into a little bit of an argument, Andrew. Some of the older NUGENES fans are saying that their new songs sound too American to appeal to them, and it sounds less and less like K-pop. But conversely, that's what is allowing songs like Super Shy and ETA to break the Western charts. Yeah, I mean, I would say even based off the titles of these songs, they could be American songs. Yeah. The names are kind of like, it's kind of like, you know, slang, and it's cute, cute slang, OMG, Hype Boy, Ditto, like. I mean, does this happen with any artist, Andrew, that has an original sound, whether it's like Drake being mixtape Drake, and then turning into more like club music, you know what I mean? Like J. Cole starting off as mixtapes, and then he was making all the, you know, more emo raps. As a non-super deep K-pop fan, I look at it like, man, they just crank out a K-pop group that can appeal to everybody, you know what I mean? And like, there is a lot of thought process and a lot of training that does go into forming these groups and branding these groups. So I think they're doing an amazing job with NUGENES. Obviously, BTS had some thinking, Blackpink had some thinking, and they all kind of have their different appeal. I think it's to a lot of the same market, but it's like for different tastes. And they kind of build on it, right? And I think the barriers to entry, like drop down lower and lower every generation, because I believe we are in the fifth generation of K-pop groups now. Fourth generation was BTS and Blackpink, Andrew. Of course, there was some arguing and turning into Blinks versus Bunnies. Bunnies is the NUGENES fandom, Blinks is for Blackpink. I guess they like beef really hard, and this is one of the characteristics of internet K-pop niche fandoms. They're like, they almost like go to war against each other. I wonder if people can be fans of both and then argue with each other and get heated whenever it feels divisive. Anyways, guys, David, real quick. What are some of the reasons why NUGENES is so popular right now? Like, what are people saying? How do people describe NUGENES? Okay, so I had to do some research. Like I said, guys, let me know if you agree, disagree with me, or you have some stuff to supplement. I'm sure you guys are much more, some of you guys at least know way more than me about this. It sounds sort of like H&M background music because there's a lot of like empty lo-fi. Somebody said UK Garage influenced hi-hats, fast tempo. So basically, they keep that sound throughout their tracks, especially their newer tracks, and that's what it almost made super shy to me sound like Doja Cat. Yeah, so what I noticed is another reason is that they also like don't also sing too hard. Like they'll go into some whispers and almost some mumbles, which is very trendy right now. It sounds like they're not singing too hard versus the kind of classic big vocal K-pop, big sound like almost like arena status sound. You know what I mean? The big runs and the big like almost like stadium status, and I think that that's why Super Shy reminds me so much of Doja Cat because she doesn't do that either, right? I think the truth is under NUGENES, and I'm going to compare it with TWICE in a second, guys. You guys couldn't believe that we're analyzing this. They shoot a lot of their new music videos in America, and the music sounds Western, right? I have noticed that, that there is a lot of American people in their videos, like white, black people. Like they kind of put themselves in the context of LA, it almost seems like. And I believe some of the NUGENES people actually live for a number of years in Australia or New Zealand. Yeah. There's almost like a UK, Aussie vibe a little bit, right? Their English fluency is very high, at least for I know a couple of the members can basically, can speak it natively, yeah. Somebody says they have funky, unique dance styles that are easy to mimic, but also look different than other K-pop groups, and it's also their management allows them to be a little bit more loose with their dance moves, other than that ultra robotic like 10 out of 10 mimicking that almost looks like, you know, to Western people, I'm not saying this true, but on the downside, it makes it feel robotic or Vocaloid-like. They feel way more like loose with the dance moves. Wait, you mean like when they perform, they don't have to be like 100% perfect? Like army in sync, like they don't need to be that militant in terms of. Like people can dance a little bit offbeat, like in the choreography, just to give it like that more organic vibe. Yeah, people are saying that it just, New Genes really appeals to non-K-pop fans because it almost has some of that 88 rising, hipster, Asian-American, mass pop appeal, almost like, you know what I mean? Lo-fi, the lo-fi vibes. Could they take some of 88 rising steam, yeah? Yeah, I think that they'd be the K-pop group that appeals to the 88 rising crowd. Let's move on to TWICE, Andrew. TWICE is a very interesting group because it's a little bit older than New Genes, right? And they also have like a Y2K year 2000 aesthetic, both in their music videos as well as their music, but a little bit different. And it's interesting because they have nine members, three of which are native Japanese. So actually they sing a lot of lyrics in Japanese as well as they have songs that are completely in Japanese. So do you think this is the most Japanese K-pop group in the sense that part of their appeal is that it's gonna feed into the weeb culture? Obviously Japan's market who wants to hear like a K-pop group that can speak some Japanese. So I heard that prior to this in the K-pop industry in South Korea, they had tried to make a crossover with the J-pop market and it did not work until five years ago with TWICE. It's been the first time they've been able to be the biggest K-pop group in Japan. Yeah. But it makes sense, right? I guess BLACKPINK also, like Lisa and other people are really fluent in English. And that's a huge part of what allowed BLACKPINK to enter the English-speaking market, right? I mean, I think a lot of TWICE's music kinda sounds like some Japanese R&B pop to me, which is like very much influenced, Andrew, by Will Smith's like Men in Black from 1997. That sort of like sound is like really, really big. And yeah, they just got, they're both groovy though. Both NU'JEANS and TWICE are groovy. I think NU'JEANS is even more on trend in 2023, but I think they're both doing something really interesting. And these were the two biggest groups, Andrew, after BTS and BLACKPINK. Wow. I wanna ask, what do you think? So, obviously, like even the Wonder Girls, a lot of Asia, the K-pop female groups have charted before. ♪ Nobody, nobody but you ♪ BTS being the biggest male group, but I think because BTS is males and they act different than the Western male, that it's always so controversial every time BTS steps on an American stage. Right, because people are like all, even in Latin America, some of the media went against them, right? Yeah, there's a whole bunch of tweets and a lot of like chatter about, oh, why do guys look like this? They look like girls, blah, blah, blah. They all look the same. But I feel like when it's a female group, and obviously this is like a difference of how Asian female and Asian men are viewed, where it's like Asian females, they act more like how a lot of global men would want females to act. So in a way, it's more universal. So in a way, as big as- You're talking about the floweriness of both the boy and the girl groups, but flowery girls, it's almost like double femininity in the West. I would argue that BTS's impact, the change they made, was one of the biggest, if not the biggest out of any K-pop group ever. But I can see more people accepting like female K-pop groups as like, you know, their own. You know what was interesting? I was doing some research for this video, Andrew. People were saying that male groups survive on ultra hardcore niche cult fan bases, where female groups rely on the general public, even in South Korea. Like they appeal to, they play differently. Yeah, because- Because guys are never going to follow BTS. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's true, man, because yeah, BTS is basically more polarizing, is what I'm saying. Right, right, right. Interestingly enough, Andrew, speaking about floweriness, there is a Korean-Japanese mixed rap group, not twice, called XG right now, and they've been dropping a lot of cyphers. Oh. And like hardcore rap cyphers, where one of the rappers is a Japanese female, and one of them is a female Korean rapper. There is a group called G-IDLE, Andrew, that reminds me of some pop punk, like Avril Lavigne influences. Same with a group called Dreamcatcher. There is a group called Le Seraphim, that sounds way more like urban hip-hop influence. Red Velvet sounds more EDM based, as well as the boy band Stray Kids, TXT. This reminds me of the sound that like C-Pop is trying to copy right now, where it's kind of like really like hard, dark, kind of some dark themes in the music videos, but it's still pop music. There's a new group called IVE, that sounds like standard K-Pop music. There's a group, Andrew, called ITZY, that has a Indian girl and a Russian speaker in it too. So they're kind of getting like multinational with it. Wow, man. No, I mean, dude, they are, they got a lot of different groups out there. I like the angles. What do you think about how it's like diversifying, and it's almost like there's a K-Pop group that's influenced by an additional subculture for like every crowd? I mean, I think they look at the talent pool that comes in and they see the like, oh, wow, this person and this person could pair up, and that would be really interesting. And it's almost like you're cooking a dish, right? You get all these different ingredients, these people who want to enter the K-Pop industry, whether they're from another country or not. And then you just look at it and you're like, oh, what can I make with this? Does it remind you of rap music? You know how nowadays in 2023, there's like emo rap, there's like goth rap, there's stadium rap, there's obviously boom bap, hardcore battle rap. Like there's so many subgenres within it. I mean, it's a little different. That's like if all the different types of rap all came out of one singular city, though. Right, right. Versus like K-Pop, it comes out of essentially one city. Seoul. Essentially, right? And then so it's like, that's why it's like a kitchen that can cook all different types of dishes. Versus, you know, going to a neighborhood or a plaza that has different restaurants of different cuisines. It's like one restaurant. Maybe, I don't want to say one restaurant. Cheesecake factory, Andrew. They got Rasta pasta and they got Mandarin salads. All right. Sorry, sorry. Let me, it's like a food court. It's like one mall. I don't want to say they're all the same restaurant. Yeah. Anyway, guys, what do you think of our K-Pop breakdown? Like I said, I don't know everything. I probably got some stuff wrong, but let me know in the comment section below some final thoughts that I have, Andrew. I think twice, I think the music from New Jeans more appeals to me sonically, but I think twice with the Korean-Japanese angle is pretty cool because it kind of reminds me of, was that Ko? Or which song was it where they had Ko and Keith Ape? Yeah, Ko. Was it It's G-Ma? I think that was It's G-Ma. Yeah. One of those songs. Yeah, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, I think that that's pretty interesting. Do you think that we will see like half Mandarin, half Korean K-Pop? Because I think that the Japanese language and the Korean language, they do sound more similar and also grammatically, it's more of the same. It's non-tonal. But could you see them chase that market? I mean, pop culturally wise, obviously, it makes sense that Koreans and Japanese are closer together as definitely as far as the pop culture goes. No, no, it's true that their tastes are different but more similar. I think China's just like way different than both. Yeah, it is different. And then also will we see half Mandarin, half Korean, a big half Mando, half Korean pop group. They tried to do it back in the day with XOM and I believe that's what Kris Wu came out of, right? I don't doubt that they're trying to do it, but I don't know if it's popped off yet. Right, you know. What do you think of the K-Pop fan bases almost being like some Philadelphia sports fans and willing to just like duke it out? I don't know, man. I don't know if I ever seen anything like it. No, I don't know. I think it's on the internet because I'm like, I'm pretty sure they could like... You never seen Blinks and Bunnies fight in real life. Well, even if they're arguing online, maybe they also are fans of each other too, but they just want to argue. I don't know. They want to be tri-boy in the moment. You guys let me know. I'm not on those message boards. So I don't know actually how divisive K-Pop groups are. What do you think of this accusation? This came from an American music Reddit forum saying K-Pop is just 90s and 2000s and 2010s era R&B repackaged in a new language and generation. Nah, I think that's too simplistic, man. I actually don't agree with that. I used to say that 10 years ago about K-Pop. I can see why on the surface level, you might think that, right? I think eight years ago that was more true. I don't think... I think K-Pop runs that type of music now and I do think they sprinkle in their own unique vibes and I don't know. You just can't say it. I don't know. You just can't say that anymore. What do you think about this whole new wave that New Genes could be starting, Andrew? K-Pop that doesn't really sound like K-Pop with heavy English hooks, like maybe four out of five members are fluent in English. Is this good? Bad? Are the old K-Pop fans going to accept it or is it just opening it up to new Western audiences? What do you think? I think it's opening it up to new Western audiences. I think it's just expanding the market because think about it. If us as non-super huge K-Pop fans, like New Genes, that's a good sign because at least it might even capture more Asians first, you know? But it doesn't sound like K-Pop. But I like it. And it's going to appeal to like all different type of people, you know, even like the non-K-Pop fans. And the reason I'm saying it doesn't sound like K-Pop is because the beat is much more minimalistic and there's not as many genre switch-ups whereas I guess typically standard K-Pop it could go through like five genres. I'm not always into that big K-Pop sound where they like are on these huge sets and like all this stuff. Like I don't love that personally. Like I can vibe out to New Genes. I can just vibe. I think there will be plenty of K-Pop that has that standard K-Pop sound. David, you know, once people start being able to smoke to K-Pop songs, you know what I mean? Like that kind of smoking music, that's going to be, that's going to open up the market too. Wow. I'm just letting you know. What do we think about C-Pop and the status of Chinese music, Andrew? Obviously, we know that the Chinese music scene is way less Westernized. There's way less American British influence than Japan and Korea. It's sort of like really still in the love ballad stage. It's almost like Khalil Fong, you know what I mean? Or there's another guy called Crowd Lu. This is still sort of where it's at. People are still listening to old Jay Chou and Boba Shops from like 15 years ago. It just feels like, the artists make a lot of money domestically, but nobody outside of like China likes them. You know actually where I see it being at because there actually are some good artists. Sometimes I'll talk to like an international student and they'll be like, oh, yeah, I'm listening to blah blah blah. Like check out this song and I'm like, oh, this song is really good. But you know what it is? The whole lifestyle and culture behind it is not there. You're saying they can't sell the image. There's cool Chinese artists, but like a lot of Chinese Americans and even Chinese students out here, they're not like repping for them that hard. You know what I mean? Like they're not like, like sometimes you'll hear about a concert in New York or New Jersey that's actually a big Chinese pop concert, but it's not that big compared to a K-Pop concert. Not everybody's talking about it. And it's nobody outside of the Chinese market, right? China or Taiwan or Singapore. I just think like maybe it didn't infect the Chinese youth as much so that the Chinese youth is not like acting like C-Pop artists. You know what I mean? Once kids start taking on that identity, then it becomes this whole scene. I would say Jackson Wang is the only Chinese pop artist that I feel like it sounds competitive or more similar to Korean music, but obviously he was trained in Korea. Yeah, people know about Jackson Wang. He's probably the most crossover artist right now. What do we think? Finally, Andrew, I just want to compare this with the Spanish market. There's 600 million Spanish speakers, you know, due to Spain as well as colonization. There's about 80 million Korean speakers globally, but 26 of that 80 million are in North Korea. That leaves about 54 million in terms of a viable native audience for music. There's 1.3 billion Mandarin speakers. But like we said that, you know, the tastes and the cultural leanings right now are just way too traditional or just differently. And yeah, it's just an interesting place where we're at right now, right? NUGENES, top three in the top 100, Andrew. Dude, do they continue? I think so. I think so, especially if they can have verses in English and verses in like obviously the hooks right now are in English. Yeah, they're just going to get some big American features. They're going to be good. All right, everybody. Let us know in the comments down below what you think about NUGENES. You are watching the Hot Pop Boy. Oh, who's another K-pop group that's coming up that we might like or that you like that sounds a little bit different. I'd be interested to check them out. So let me know in the comments down below and until next time we out. Peace.