Song Review:: G-Dragon (BIGBANG): Ubermensch- TOO BAD

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  • Release date: 2025 February 25

  • Album runtime: 18 minutes

 There are a lot of earlier releases that are higher up in my draft list. So many. So very many. But my music show wins senses are tingling so I'm just going to get this one out of the way now because it's likely that I'll be needing it. The king is back. Long live the king. In all seriousness, that fact that G-Dragon is returning to K-Pop after so long away from it and after everything that has happened with a certain former member whose name we don't mention and also T.O.P, as well as everything he's been accused of the last little bit. BIGBANG has not been a lucky group. Insanely talented, but not lucky. Also, why is everything capitalized...

I'm genuinely surprised by how minimalistic these instrumentals are through most of the song. It's a pleasant surprise, if I'm going to be honest, because I expected more bombast, but where it lacks extreme drama in the instrumentals, it makes up for it with the vocals, which I will get to shortly. It's definitely on the funkier side, but subdued funky. And unless my ears deceive me, it sounds like there might be a cowbell, or some other similar instrument. Either I was missing them entirely, or we've had a sudden influx of songs with cowbells hidden in the instrumentals. I'm not complaining about that. I love cowbells. They're such a weird little instrument. With about thirty seconds left, which is about one fifth of the entire song so this is wholly too short, the song smooths into something a little more...more to it with about five layers to the instrumentals compared to the two or three that most of the rest of this song has.

The vocals is where all the drama resides. His voice and Mr. Anderson .Paak are a little underwhelming for me, and I hate to say that because of who G-Dragon is, but it's too much of roughly the same thing for the entire song, especially with how short it is. Even when the instrumentals shift a little, what the artists are doing doesn't, or at least it doesn't sound like it. However. My next Korean goal, now that I'm starting to understand content unsubbed, is to be good enough that I can understand G-Dragon's lyrics, because that's where the brilliance is. The little bit that I've been able to find that doesn't just translate but explains how brilliant this man is has me in awe of how much meaning he packs into such short lines. Flex, my good sir. Flex. Also, this song is 100% about sex, which I support.

So, I'm underwhelmed by this one. But you know who's happy that Drama got a MV and thus I can do a review of it eventually? This Fangirl.

This is such classic, weird, second gen 2010s music video that I don't quite know what to do with it. He has so much personality. Everything I've seen about this referencing a certain giggling fourth gen rapping pirate leader being his clone makes me go, yes. I could take a week and not know what to do with this music video. And him at the end is so ludicrously iconic that, again, I'm not quite sure what to do with it.



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