After joining Lady Gaga for a feature on one of her singles for Chromatica, “Sour Candy,” South Korean quartet (Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé and Lisa) BLACKPINK have capitalized on the chart momentum of their recent Gaga coattails success in the U.S. with “How You Like That.” Not to say that the girls weren’t well-outpacing Gaga in views and streams before she came along, it’s just that working with her has bridged them into a different type of mainstream. Produced by Teddy Parker, the overconfident “How You Like That” serves as the lead single from what will be their first official LP since the compilation, of sorts, that was 2018’s Blackpink In Your Area. Which is precisely the line that opens the song (and pretty much all others) as Lisa is the first to appear onscreen for the video in a long black gown before the rest of the group joins her to sit on the steps (in silhouetted pose, of course) of a dramatic ballroom-like backdrop topped by a giant purple crystal of a chandelier (which is actually a pair of wing affixed to a torso) before they each cordon off in their own areas to sing their respective parts of the combination Korean and English song.
Naturally, they’re bound to rejoin one another every time the beat calls for choreography, which is often. In a plant-infused greenhouse type of scenario, the quartet goes apeshit on the rhythm in costuming that looks decidedly pulled from whatever stock Forever 21 did not manage to unload via clearance or landfill (though, obviously, it’s much more expensive than that, with Alexander McQueen in the mix at one point). Taunting, “Look at you/Now look at me/How you like that,” the goading, “I’m so much better than you” nature of the lyrics (which also appear in their other high-charting in the U.S. single, “Kill This Love”) decidedly signals the group’s solidification into the devil’s arms–that is to say, they’ve become a firm product of U.S. consumption now (especially thanks to whoever fucked with Trump’s Tulsa rally being perpetually referred to as “K-pop fans” instead of Gen Z).
As such, the hauteur must be amplified, for everyone is still banking on the “regeneration” of the U.S.’ “preeminence” once Joe Biden–who has one foot in the grave, along with everyone else this past decade who has run for the office–takes over Trump’s dictatorship. And once that happens, the U.S. will conveniently forget that it’s been a long-time embarrassment even before the Orange One showed up to solidify that fact.
In any case, that the song actually caps off at three minutes and three seconds might signal BLACKPINK has yet to fully understand the American attention span. Though they seemed to when Gaga took the helm in terms of making their collaboration all but two minutes and thirty-eight seconds. But there are “busier” factors at play in this song, namely a beat that vacillates between hip hop and bhangra (with Lisa at one point walking through a market that looks familiarly Indian appropriated). Jennie then takes the lead with her fellow bandmates dressed in black lacy, ninja-inspired (or corona-inspired, depending on how you look at it) attire. Jisoo then adopts the spotlight in a red floor-length dress and a matching hat that sort of comes across as a pentagram–a theory heightened by the fact that flames burn behind her.
Screaming “BLACKPINK!” the way the Spice Girls once did “Hai, si, ja–hold tight!,” this girl group, despite not being a quintet, is very much slated to be the Spice Girls for the twenty-first century–with the many adolescent acolytes and endorsement deals to prove it. As the video comes to a close, the girls are joined by an army of backup dancers to do justice to the rhythm’s breakdown. And they do, proving once again that the only way the aesthetic and vibe of the early 00s is going to survive in this dystopian climate is through BLACKPINK.
