Minzy shows promise but gives listeners musical blue balls on “NINANO”

Former 2NE1 member Minzy is finally making her solo debut after what seems like forever, and she recruited Flowsik to help her out on “NINANO“.

“NINANO” gets off to a promising start with a trunk-rattling bass and sort of an almost Latin flair spread throughout, giving the listener the thought of, “Alright, here we fuckin’ go.” However, it quickly scales things back to a light and fluffy type of feel for the pre-chorus, which was a bit odd but maybe it was a play to get the chorus to hit harder, right? Um, not really. The chorus comes and goes with a whole bunch of nothing, as it basically just recycles the beat from the verses and then has a curt “NINANO” sprinkled throughout. Don’t understand it.

“NINANO” is the rare achievement where the instrumental and the artist both do well, but the choices in structure and writing of the song are what kill it. Flowsik’s inclusion sort of goes to my point, as he comes in way too late to have an impact, because by then the listener has already forgot he was a part of this. Then when he does come in, everything about the release is so much better. Like it’s not great when the impression you come away from Minzy’s solo debut is wishing it was Flowsik featuring Minzy.

Also, the thing about the music video is that people want to see Minzy dance her ass off, but instead we get like 500 camera cuts in a T-ara-esque directing/editing effort, so we can’t even get a true feel for that either (dance version, please).

What I’m saying is that it was like the musical equivalent of blue balls — a whole lot of teasing and build with no release, and it just leaves you wanting in the end.

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I seem to be one of the few who didn’t come into this release with “underrated queen slayyy” levels of hype, so it wasn’t just a letdown that happened, “NINANO” just didn’t excite like it aimed to. The funny thing, though, is that what her solo debut did successfully do is help me get a peek at the type of music she could actually excel at. Because while “NINANO” didn’t go anywhere, with a few tweaks, I could definitely see this type sound working for future Minzy solo efforts. Hopefully that’s what happens going forward.

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