Song Review:: KickFlip: Flip It, Kick It- Mama Said {Debut}

•  Release date: 2025 January 20

• Album tracklist: Mama Said, Umm Great, WARRIORS, Knock Knock, Like A Monster, See You On Tomorrow

• Album runtime: 17 minutes

 Stray Kids officially have a little brother group in the same division! I think! I'd have laughed if they'd ended up debuting in October (because ATEEZ's younger brother group debuted in March, the month Stray Kids did, and I would have found that absolutely delightful), but January is good too. As I said in the pre-debut single, the maknae turns eighteen in a couple of months, so I'm grateful their debut took so long. Unfortunately, there's only one song on this debut album that is longer than three minutes.

I haven't had an alarm be a regular beeping in years, and yet my trained response to hearing that sound at the beginning of this song fills me with the "I've slept in!" panic. The rest of the instrumentals are solid without being particularly revolutionary, and remind me quite a lot of GOLD by ITZY, which I absolutely love to pieces, and makes it a solid addition to the JYPE discography. There are some additional little higher trills and blips that help differentiate it from the normal form songs of this genre. I also appreciate a lot that it's slower than I was expecting, which makes the song feeler heavier and more powerful. Like, for instance, my dog Chewbacca is a grand total of about twelve pounds. When I'm at my parents' house, I often have him with me, which makes the contrast with my mother's dog funnier. Bilbo is about fifteen pounds. For everyone else in the world, that's about five and a half kilos and almost seven kilos. When Bilbo trots about, he has a tendency to shake the house (which caused some stress when we were dealing with aftershocks a few years ago). The instrumentals remind of that earth-shaking, absolute brick of a dog. 

This is a solid debut, vocally at least. There's a difference between the singers and the rappers, which is a good thing, and there's a difference with the vocal tones, so I'm actually pleased with this debut. I don't think it necessarily reinvents the wheel, but it's very solid. The tone is clear with minimal audible autotune for the most part, and the places where the autotune is very noticeable is also very appropriate for the vibe of the song. It kind of reminds me a little of what TWS might sound like if they'd debuted under JYPE instead of Pledis, which means I'm automatically partial to the group and not just because they're Stray Kids's younger brothers. It's good for me to have an aural reason for me to like a group rather than pure sentiment and loyalty. KickFlip? I foresee myself really liking them.

So, instrumentals? Solid. Vocals? Solid. I assume we're going to get quite a bit of the choreography as well. I thought they were adorable with the pre-debut single, so they already have that going for them. They're still adorable little hooligans. We got some good dance skills but not as much on display as I was expecting, and instead we got storyline, which wasn't what I was expecting. This music video is just a rowdy good time, and even though I feel old watching it, I appreciate the sentiment in the lyrics as well.