Rosé pulls back the curtain on K-Pop and her new single on Hot Ones

If you’ve ever been curious about the inner workings of the K-Pop world, the latest episode of Hot Ones can be your primer. Rosé of Blackpink is the latest guest, and she shared some of her experience being selected for a girl group (one of the most successful girl groups ever, in fact). While stressing through the spice, 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 from the upbeat first single “APT,” a Ting Tings-flavored pop collaboration with Bruno Mars. The track 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 vibing to. Like, I taught them once and they just kept coming back to it, they were like, ‘Can we do it again?'” she recalls. “I was like ‘Huh, this is interesting, why do you guys love this so much?’ And so it inspired me to be like, I think we should write like a song on this because they were so addicted to it. I was really lucky enough to have Bruno jump on it. Craziest experience of my life.”

Rewinding to the beginning of her career, Rosé gave some insight into the formation of Blackpink, which began with years of prior training in what is essentially pop star boot camp. “So we’re already in the company, we’re, like, at the company everyday. And then they start forming us, they selected us,” she explains. “Now we start going to the studio, we start doing sessions, we start creating music. And then that’s when you start slowly knowing. And then it’s like, one day you wake up and it’s just like, us four. And we’ve created a song, and they give you a date, and they’re like, ‘Now you’re going to shoot a video.'”

There are a lot of girl- and boybands 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 each one of us, we want such big things for ourselves and we work so hard everyday,” Rosé says. “I’ve never seen someone that’s just like, “I just want to rest.’ Even if we’ve said that before I don’t think anyone means that. Blackpink is really hardworking.” Clearly the hard work has paid off!