Blackpink’s Born Pink — baroque/hip hop fusion is born

For someone who previewed their own upcoming album Born in March this year, with a live medley From Bach To Born, I could reasonably claim to be unsurprised by Blackpink’s album Born Pink. It is everything I have been saying about pop music for a while, but I didn’t know the future would come this fast. As hip hop comes to a close, a new genre Wambop is being born, by drawing on modern and classical sounds, an extension of baroque pop. Now Blackpink have released a whole album which draws on these elements.

‘Shut Down’ samples Paganini’s ‘La Campanella’, reminding me of a hip hop take on Glenn Gould’s renderings of Bach and Beethoven, Uninvited Guests. The song is proceeded by the more recognisable electropop ‘Pink Venom’. A standout on the album is the hip hop-infused ‘Typa Girl’. All in all, this album fuses classical and hip hop elements to produce something brand new, the beginnings of a new genre which has been developing since the culmination of hip hop in Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Perhaps it is almost ready to be born.