Tracklist:

01 Fire
02 I Don’t Care
03 In The Club
04 Let’s Go PARTY
05 Pretty Boy
06 Stay Together
07 Lollipop (feat. Big Bang)

2NE1 releases their first mini-album after huge sucess with their digital singles Lollipop (feat. Big Bang) and Fire. Korea keeps flooding the music industry with girl groups, one new girl group per month debuts on a regular basis. Well, at least it feels like that. 2NE1 are quite new, but with all the training girl groups go through before they’re actual debuts it feels as if they’ve been in the music industry forever. The mini-album starts of with Fire, which the intro experimentates with reggeaton a bit. I hate reggeaton, but I actually think this intro was a very good start to the album. Fire is pretty much they’re first real actual single. Since Lollipop (feat. Big Bang) was a promotional single for cellphone company Cyon. It makes a perfect debut and shows us what this girls are really capable of. Even though the song shows what any typical K-pop song now a days shows. The song is still very catchy and stands out from the rest of ordinary K-pop songs, it’s pretty impossible for any K-pop fan to fully hate it.

I Don’t Care promotional track from the album, also being their second official single, and third single overall. Shows that the girls can take a softer side. At first I wasn’t so psyched over the song but it grew on me quickly. Like Fire the song sticks with you. The song leaves electro-pop/hip hop experimentation a bit and shows us 2NE1’s r&b side. The girls rock it, as always. The powerful chorus is what I mostly love about this song, and this song usually gets stuck in my head. In The Club, like the title says, has a club feel to it. Makes a great song to just leave in the background and relax. Let’s Go PARTY is yet another song with a club feel, but unlike In The Club it has a more upbeat feel to it. But at the end, it’s still very similar to In The Club, and at the end up feeling the same way I feel when listening to In The Club. But still demonstrates to be a powerful song. Even if these two songs are very similar, at the end I think I prefer In The Club than Let’s Go PARTY.

Pretty Boy is very similar to Fire but unlike In The Club and Let’s Go PARTY which feel more like the same, Pretty Boy stands on it’s own. Now Pretty Boy would’ve made a great promotional track for the album. The girl’s vocals on this song are great, and it’s just a very catchy song. Stay Together is another take on a club song, but unlike In The Club and Let’s Go PARTY this one is more different. Has a more of an r&b feel from it, the girl’s vocals on this song goes to the fullest. Proving to us that these girls actually can sing. Lollipop (feat. Big Bang) is a very electronic hip hop song, and it’s one of those songs that you rather love it, or hate it. There’s no in between feelings for it. I on the other hand, absolutely adore this song. Super catchy, and very fun to listen to. For being 2NE1’s unofficial debut, it wasn’t bad at all.

In conclusion, I think this mini-album deserves five stars. It’s 100% perfect, the only flaws I could tell is making songs stand out from one another a bit more. But other than that this mini-album is just plain perfect especially for a debut. Packed with everything from great dance-pop tracks, club songs to r&b, it just makes the best party music. If only this was a full-length album rather than a mini! And it’s pretty amazing, because I haven’t felt this way for a K-pop girlgroup mini-album before. Most of them out there have great songs but still are missing something. 2NE1 truly stands out in the K-pop scene, and their future will just keep getting bigger and bigger.

Favorite Tracks:
01 Fire
02 I Don’t Care
03 In The Club
05 Pretty Boy
07 Lollipop (feat. Big Bang)

Mini-album Score:
A+