Review

Song Review: BABYMONSTER – Drip

BABYMONSTER - DripIn the lead-up to BABYMONSTER’s first full album, they’ve teased all of its songs except title track Drip. We even heard the full album opener Clik Clak two days ago. I haven’t been impressed by much of the group’s discography so far, but YG Entertainment always seems to come up with at least one highlight for its newer acts. Add a composition credit from K-pop icon G-Dragon and you’ve got the potential for something really great.

Drip has more spring in its step than Clik Clak, tying its tried and true tropes to a rubbery groove and slapping percussion that gives it extra drive. There’s nothing here that can’t be found in a hundred other songs, but the production keeps its energy bouncy enough to maintain momentum. There are a few nice vocal moments during the pre-chorus and especially the bridge, but as usual melody is sacrificed in favor of overly-simplistic catchphrase hooks. Without an idiosyncratic vision or unique delivery, Drip feels like yet another product off the assembly line. It’s performed as well as any other offering from this musical brand, but never quite displays the “passion” and “ambition” included in its lyrics.

On the plus side, it’s nice to hear a rookie girl group harness an in-your-face style this year, as the prevailing trends favor much more subdued fare. Drip‘s boastful subject matter isn’t for me (and it seems to be all YG composers are capable of writing these days…), but I can easily see how it might connect with BABYMONSTER’s target audience. I’ll just continue bopping along to the Euro-cheese of summer single Forever and imagine what might have been if this group had ventured further down that route.

Hooks 7
 Production 8
 Longevity 8
 Bias 7
 RATING 7.5

Grade: C

70 thoughts on “Song Review: BABYMONSTER – Drip

  1. I liked the production, it’s pretty groovy and gives the song more bounce. The chorus doesn’t bother me since they add a nice dose of attitude and some vocal layerings to it. Although it’s your average girl crush song, it also injects some fun into it. But overall, it’s a great step up from Clik Clak.

    8.25 (8, 9, 8, 8) for me. (And P.S, Woke Up In Tokyo is just as shitty as I expected ❤️)

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  2. I actually like this one quite a lot. The bounce is VERY infectious. It oddly reminds me of Lapillus’ “Gratata”, a terrible unmemorable song. It’s definitely generic but idk it does it for me. 8.5 for me. Listening to the album rn. Woke Up In Tokyo!! Awful but so substanceless that it’s not even worth getting mad over. I was hoping the awfulness would evolve from what we heard on the preview, but nope it’s the same for twice the runtime

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  3. Its giving off NMIXX from temu vibes. I can’t help but see how accurate that Hybe internal report was right about this group and production choices

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  4. Is it just me? this song and this mv keep reminding me of itzy?

    I love that we get some a what melodic chorus with these “baby got ambition and passion” line. these cringy rap verses have nice catchy flows. pleasant pre choruses and bridge. the production is loud and obnoxious in a good way

    Generic yet enjoyable

    Liked by 1 person

      • Nothing wrong with the circus, if it’s intended to be a circus. Cheesiness is fine if it’s what you’re going for. I have a high tolerance for things if the music. I don’t just call anyone cringe, this was cringey especially in the beginning

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        • IDK it is a different approach compared to their other boast songs in a sort of carefree way, so I wouldn’t say it feels unintentional. It’s just this cheese sticks in your throat and makes you want to choke, while a song like Forever’s cheese melts in your mouth and goes down your throat seemlessly in your case then.

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          • no there’s no sense of self awareness just cringey ,trite lyrics. To think that boastful lyrics haven’t been tied to this sorry of backing before is weird, there was a time kpop had too many of these

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      • clearly you’re a fan. And it doesn’t matter if it can be worse, once it’s bad I’m not listening lol. Forever got a lot of plays by me. batter up a couple. Nothing else I’ve returned to and I wouldn’t say all of those songs are on the same level

        Liked by 1 person

          • doesn’t matter, brought up listening habits to emphasize my point. It’s not even fair to say they haven’t don’t a fun blackpink when they haven’t been around nearly as long

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            • What I mean by that is them using sounds that BlackPink hasn’t really explored as they have shown with this song or Forever etc. I’m glad they’re able to do things a ever-so differently in their music already. That’s why I said this isn’t the worst it could be because I don’t even think this song is bad anyway so we are just on different minds on that.

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  5. i think for me its a (8,9,9,8) -> 8.5 overall. what ramped up my personal scores of the song was the mesmerising high note executed by ahyeon. (C#5-Eb5-Ab5) although the outro was groovy and catchy, it would most likely keep me engaged for a long time with minimal loss of appeal. overall, the member’s voices had distinctive individual quirk and are what saved the song IMO. prolly my fav title track by baemon, ‘forever’ comes as a close contender.

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  6. Drip feels like yet another product off the assembly line.

    exactly this! it’s not bad, a lot better than click clack but so: “ok here another I guess…”
    and I’m in the same boat for the theme/lyrics. I’m just sooo tired of little girls boasting about being tough, rich and pretty. it’s just lazy writing at this point.
    feels like the lyrics are just here because they need vocals on the song.

    Liked by 3 people

    • I can ignore the boasting lyrics as that doesn’t bug me that much as Nick and others from what I’ve seen especially if the song is catchy. They just need to stay away from being so generic/recyclable as batter-up again.

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    • These “little girls”, as you call them, have been through some extremely tough, challenging times together; most of us will never experience what they’ve had to survive to get where they are. Young they may be, but immature – definitely not.Also, YOU may be tired of this, but for a lot of teenage girls (and older), this stuff is pretty inspiring…

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  7. Like so many songs it ends abruptly, leaving me wanting more. There needed to be another 20-30 seconds in the end ti intensify the drama. Oh well, it’s better than expected. The album is just meh, pretty bland and dull, but the Tokyo song really deserves Worst song of the year award. Best song is Forever by a mile and it doesn’t even really belong on the album, they just slapped it in as a bonus to get at leadt 8 songs.

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  8. They changed their production to something more modern and funky, with frenetic ITZY vibes at certain points, unfortunately it’s still not the best a girl group can offer today

    7.5 (7, 8, 7, 8) too

    I may be the only one on this one but I think the production that would really work well vocally with BABYMONSTER would be something like ‘Good Good’ by KEY from SHINee, their production is well below something like that nowadays, but anything is possible

    YG should try a crunch production with them or totally EDM. Just thinking about the fact that in just a few months we will be in 2025, so we will have BLACKPINK and BABYMONSTER releasing their How You Like That 2.0 and their fans hailing their work as “revolutionary”. This is something I can predict. Well, I hope 2NE1 brings something new to their portfolio, they need it.

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    • better itzy than blackpink again, so don’t mind if they want to polish and go with this type of sound. But you’re right in that they might just go back to their blackpink ways after all this.

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  9. this is definitely not as bad as i thought it would be. i was a little scared after woke up in tokyo and clik clak but it was pretty decent. the opening verses are the only parts that i don’t care for because of the lyrics 😭 otherwise, it’s probably my favorite baemon song!

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  10. There is so much talent shining through in some of their B-sides (I’m going to pretend WUIT doesn’t exist), and in snatches of this song. It makes it even more frustrating that the face they’re showing to the world through their single choices is the cringiest side of their music.

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  11. I saw a little snippet of 2ne1’s DNA in brief parts of the song. Anyways, this is just there; meh. It’s not egregious but neither is it something I personally like or gravitate towards. I already forgot how the song sounds. If it was released by a smaller company, doubt people would be so gracious to it, but then again, with how horrendous Clik Clak was to a lot of people, this might seem exponentially better. I have a conspiracy theory that they released Clik Clak as a promoted single so people would thinks of Drip much more favorably. This release felt so lackluster as their first full album, there was absolutely no need to rush a full studio album if these were the songs they were going to promote.

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  12. Listened it to it when the MV came out yesterday, listened to it again today, and I can say I like it a lot more now

    Liked the part of the chorus before the baby got drip part

    I find it rather exciting. Did not enjoy Ahyeon’s high note though. I hope her vocal chords are ok.

    I’m kinda scared for its longevity, since if I like a song on the first one or 2 listens, I’ll probably get bored fast.

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    • Well the song got kind of hyped from the energy the song carried through-out it kinda shocked me and lead me to spamming in this comment section so it raised that much of a reaction out of me so that something at least.

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    • They are using Ahyeon’s naturally high pitched voice to squeeze out some barely controlled high notes in way too many songs. It’s starting to feel like giving Rami some low notes + Ahyeon a dramatic sustained high note is a mandatory part of the formula, and I bet they keep repeating it.

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  13. clearly you’re a fan. And it doesn’t matter if it can be worse, once it’s bad I’m not listening lol. Forever got a lot of plays by me. batter up a couple. Nothing else I’ve returned to and I wouldn’t say all of those songs are on the same level

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  14. This song got me being a key-board warrior for a minute and wanting to see what others thought of it. I was surprised by the constant energy of the song which is what got me the most behind this song to think it is a decent all-around k-pop song. It’s okay. I feel TTYL by Loossemble is the most-apt comparison in how the song never stops in the fast momentum it has, though TTYL is much more polished and thought-out verison of that.

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  15. This song has some serious highlights, and at some points I even feel like it could be a 2NE1 track. It’s showy, it’s energetic, it almost fully convinces me but the chorus is ultimately a bit of a letdown. This is almost amazing.

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    • So is a loop of nails on a chalkboard over a pounding bass line of mixed farts and belches with a melody of “this is the song that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend, some people started singing it not knowing what it was, and they’ll continue singing it forever just because.. (repeat).” And I’m really hoping you’ve heard that tune before and get it stuck in your head for the PTSD you gave me thinking of Katy Perry’s album. 😽💕

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  16. At least this song doesn’t sound like it should be the backdrop for a TikTok of preteen’s Sephora haul bought with mommy’s credit card. That’s something. If YG wants to pull from either the assembly line or their back catalogue, I don’t know why they don’t go with songs more along the lines of 2NE1’s Happy, Ugly, Gotta Be You, I Love You, etc. It would mesh well with the age range of their lineup and actually be different than what most other groups are putting out. At this point, I’m honestly starting to think AI could create a better YG girl group song for Babymonster than YG can. This isn’t bad, but it also shouldn’t be one of the best songs they’ve released out of 7 promoted singles either.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Now you reminded me of those iconic 2NE1 instrumentals, stuff like I Love You or Come Back Home… which also shows how BM instrumentals could try harder to stand on their own

      Liked by 1 person

      • Instead of meeting the members’ talents half way, the production side is giving like 5% and expecting the girls to make up the rest. And they had EIGHT PRODUCERS on this! I don’t know if it’s too many cooks in the kitchen or they are just incapable of fresh production. Everything feels like they just picked a few beats, looped them together, put in a pause, and called it a day. YG did well in the beginning by taking Western trends and giving them a K-Pop twist with some more experimentation. But the trend cycles are too fast and too prolific now, and ever since they started hyperfocusing on the US market, they dropped the experimentation for playing it safe, but that just gives a result of a song that you feel like you’ve heard a thousand times in the past year. The lazy lyrics also double down on the impression that they aren’t even trying.

        Liked by 1 person

  17. The beat in this is pretty fine imo and holds the song together well, I might even return to this sometime lol. Other than that I’d say Really like you and Love in my heart are nice songs that make the album feel fleshed out and like someone here is actually doing something.

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  18. Late to the party again

    I swear I heard a close resemblance of this and another song, so I start humming it and scrolling through the itunes.  … … It will come to me someday.

    Anyway, since I had the opportunity to scroll through my itunes, here is a short list of nugu groups, possibly or probably disbanded, with similar vibes.  A curated list of If you like this, you might like this.  Bubble X “Follow”. BULL-DOK (presumably pronounced Bulldog) the one I call the A-yo one but is this “어때요”.  EvoL “Get Up”.  GIRLKIND “fanci”.

    Finally, Oh My Girl “Drip” was much maligned at the time for being a bit weird, but it is a far superior Drip song as it is not boring and doesn’t sound like much else out there.

    As far as this song.  I mean, from what I write, you can tell that for me its just the nth version of a song like this.

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