Ruby

After an utterly dismal pair of formulaic backwash records from BLACKPINKs ROSE and LISA, it is an absolute relief to see an album from this group that someone actually gave a shit about beyond thinly sketched concepts.

Is it the year's masterpiece? No. But I have to give JENNIE her props. "like JENNIE" was the first song across the three albums so far to really capture my attention for the better, the features here pop off hard *especially* in Doechii's case, and with "Mantra", "Filter", and the bizarrely effective plucky acoustic ballad closer in "twin" rounding it all off, I'm going to have to call it: Jennie is winning the "member of BLACKPINK worth listening to solo" war.