Ruby by Jennie | Album Review

Another debut album from a Blackpink alumnus delivers a flurry of genres orchestrated by some of music’s most in-demand producers.

As I mentioned in my recent review of LISA’s Alter Ego, Blackpink is easily one of my favorite K-pop groups, and recently, all four members decided to strike out on their own as solo artists.

While LISA has always stood out from the quartet in my eyes, one shouldn’t discount young Jennie, who aims to show off she has just as much versatility and star power on her debut LP Ruby. Over a diverse mix of beats crafted by some of today’s hottest producers, Jennie shows off rap flows, nimble singing, and everything else she can muster, and it comes together fairly well.

After a soft and pleasant intro track, we hear “Ha, c'mon, it's gonna be fucking hard,” and the beat suddenly drops on “Like Jennie,” a hip-hop influenced “I’m that bitch” hype track extraordinaire. While the lyrics aren’t curing cancer or anything, the deep bass, choral vocals, and massive hits of percussion, courtesy of legendary producer Diplo, were built for live shows and the dance floor.

Another superstar producer, El Guincho, helped craft “Mantra,” a groovy little dance number about the life of a pretty girl. Guincho managed to make a fantastic, entrancing beat with a limited selection of sounds, and Jennie sounds great over top.

But my favorite song on Ruby might be “Love Hangover,” a sultry R&B number with heavy bedroom vibes. Jennie sounds great singing easily the album’s most memorable melody, and Dominic Fike’s rap verse has grown on me in such an unexpected way. Although I think he’s delivering these bars completely serious, they come off as campy in the best way, especially the line where he rhymes “playing possum” with “OK, awesome.”

However, moving toward the end of Ruby, song quality falls off precipitously. “Filter,” for example, embraces these incredibly irritating “la-la-la” vocals that sound like a pitch-shifted cat meowing, and Jennie’s bars over top are painfully generic self-love gobbledygook. 

Conversely, “FTS” tries so hard to sound like a pained piano ballad, expressing how frustrated and overwhelmed Jennie gets by the restraints of societal expectations. Unfortunately, its chorus is just “fuck that shit” and other sentence fragments, failing to put that emotion into the words, and leaving only a feeling of cringe behind.

Jennie also tries to end the album with a slower, more emotional song, just like her Blackpink co-star LISA did on her solo LP. But while “Dream” is one of the best songs on Alter Ego, “Twin,” with its repetitious verses and minimalist chorus, is simply missing the lyrical and musical weight of an album-closing ballad.

All in all, Jennie and LISA’s debut albums are more similar than different. Both combine pop, hip-hop, and R&B into a mixed bag of modern popular music. Some songs stand out, quite a few don’t. In my view, it’s going to take more than just being pop chameleons to propel the careers of the Blackpink girls. Let’s see where they go from here.

Production: 7/10

Lyrics: 5/10

Songwriting: 6/10

Overall: 6/10

Favorites: Like Jennie, Mantra, Love Hangover

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Thank you for reading! What did you think of this album? Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts and recommendations.