close
close

Hot Ones: Rosé talks Blackpink and solo debut

Hot Ones: Rosé talks Blackpink and solo debut

If you’ve ever been curious about the inner workings of the K-Pop world, the latest episode of Hot can be your base. Rosé from Blackpink is the newest guest and she shared some of her experiences of being selected for a girl group (one of the most successful girl groups everin reality). While she emphasizes the spices, she also offers some insight into her upcoming debut solo album, Rosie.

Apparently the album was inspired by how “life has been kind of bad lately” and all of the singer’s “heartbreaking stories.” You wouldn’t necessarily know that if you were cheerful first single “APT,” a Ting Tings-flavored pop collaboration with Bruno Mars. The song gets its title from “a Korean drinking game called ‘APT.’ It’s one of many drinking games, but that seemed to be the one that all my friends in the studio were rooting for. For example, I taught it to them once and they kept coming back to it. They said, ‘Can we do it again?’” she recalls. “I thought, ‘Huh, this is interesting, why do you guys like this so much?’ And so it inspired me to say, I think we should write a song about this, because they were so hooked on it. I was really lucky that Bruno jumped on it. The craziest experience of my life.”

Rewinding to the beginning of her career, Rosé provided some insight into the formation of Blackpink, which began with years of preliminary training in what is essentially a pop star boot camp. “So we are already in the company, we are in the company every day. And then they started to shape us, they selected us,” she explains. “Now we go to the studio, we start doing sessions, we start making music. And then you slowly start to know. And then it’s like one day you wake up and it’s just like the four of us. And we made a song, and they give you a date, and they say, ‘Now you’re going to shoot a video.’

There are a lot of girl and boy bands coming out of South Korea, but “I think Blackpink, all four of us… the one thing that’s so strong about Blackpink is the fact that we all want such big things for ourselves. and us working so hard every day,” says Rosé. “I’ve never seen anyone say, ‘I just want to rest.’ Even if we’ve said that before, I don’t think anyone means it. Blackpink really works hard.” The hard work has clearly paid off!