Mixtapes are all the rage for K-pop acts looking to build street cred. The thing is, “street cred” doesn’t really exist in K-pop and mixtapes function essentially the same way any other release would. Girl group Keyveatz debuted earlier this year with an abrasive hip-hop sound and double down on that with their mixtape A1 GO and its promoted track A1ㄱ.
A1ㄱ is indeed a hip-hop track. The girls are rapping and kind of singing, though these vocals are slathered in effects to give the song a slurred “we don’t really care” attitude that’s meant to come off as cool and imposing. The thing is, at this point it’s just a formula and while formula may work well in a pop setting it’s a horrible vessel for showing “authenticity.” I won’t pretend this release was ever targeted toward my taste and I can appreciate what it’s trying to do, but nothing about A1ㄱ makes me want to hear more and thankful at just over two minutes in length I don’t have to.
| Hooks | 6 |
| Production | 8 |
| Longevity | 7 |
| Bias | 6 |
| RATING | 6.75 |
Grade: D+
Yawn, how many more times are we gonna get songs like this? The rap flows are all the same, we need variety, give us some fun hip-hop groups for once!
7 (7, 8, 7, 6) for me
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As some of the lyrics are in English, unfortunately we can hear it all too well. “We in the groove, no we ain’t going down, A one girl, it’s going down just ain’t no way …”
(are they going down or not going down?)
Should we play a game of would you rather? Would you rather have workshopped slop or AI-generated slop. Tbh I think this may be the latter, just a guess.
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