Who’s the real Aespa? The hot rookie K-pop girl group is an eight-piece – four singers, four virtual avatars – but will they release an album this year?
- SM Entertainment’s first girl group since Red Velvet in 2016, Aespa’s third single Next Level is a remake of a funky hip-hop track from Fast & Furious
- The music video for debut song Black Mamba hit 100 million YouTube views in just 51 days – but what about the group’s first album?
The new concept puzzled people at first, with many raising questions about the members’ identities. Leader Karina clarified the point during Aespa’s first-ever online press conference on Monday, May 17.
“We are an eight-piece group,” she said during the event, referring the digital entities as part of Aespa. “We took lessons for a long time to fully understand our concept and universe. Now, we know who we are. As the avatars were created based on the personal data of each member, all of us can easily keep in step with our digital selves.”
Giselle added, “We are planning to showcase diverse content with our avatars.”
During the session, the members also talked about their upcoming single Next Level, which hit multiple streaming charts on Monday. Next Level, a remake of a song featured in the soundtrack of 2019 action film Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, is a hip-hop dance song with groovy rap and catchy bass riffs.
“We tried to make our voices sound more powerful,” Karina said. “SM’s founder-producer Lee Soo-man helped us a lot to add our own distinctive colour to the song. In the case of choreography, we wanted to make it look more chic and relaxed.”