If anyone were to ask a member of Blackjacks who out of all the members of 2NE1 has the most successful solo career, the majority of them will say it is the K-pop group’s leader Lee Chae Rin, better known as CL. At this moment, CL is successfully integrating her solo music career into the most prominent music industry today, the American music industry. Backed by the managerial guidance of Scooter Braun and the musical tutelage of Diplo, she is garnering a following beginning with her appearance at MDBP leading up to her first single “ Doctor Pepper .” As a matter of fact, CL is now considered one of the top ten artists to look forward to, according to Rolling Stone .
Despite the hype built around her American debut, there is no clear-cut date given for the release of CL’s EP. However, Diplo – the disc jockey and producer shaping up CL – did give subtle hints on its release.
The foreshadowing of CL’s EP release were said during Diplo’s interview with Time . It initially started with Diplo chiming in on his career working with such big names like Madonna and Britney Spears. Eventually, they switched into Diplo’s foray into K-pop, in which he gave his own insight on both the genre and CL.
“K-pop is a weird term because K-pop has everything—rap records, it’s very pop-sounding, there are really boy-band sounding records. It’s going to be [labeled] K-pop because she’s doing it, so it’s going to be coming from another place and there’s going to be Korean lyrics. But for the most part it’s eclectic. She’s very rap-leaning, she’s very fashion forward. She’s like the Nicki Minaj of that world.”
However, the most important parts of the interview pertaining to CL, which are seen in the video of the interview and not written, gave subtle hints on when her album will drop , as reported by KpopStarz .
“We have an EP we’re putting out in the next month or two.”
Given the time of the interview being August, Diplo just said we can possibly expect CL’s EP to release either in September or October. Of course, schedules change, but at least Blackjacks now have a time range for their anticipation. Besides that, Diplo also claimed how CL is breaking into the U.S. music industry is “the right way.”
“I think CL’s doing it the right way because she’s coming through an underground channel. So she’s getting new fans and also developing while she’s putting her album out; as opposed to coming here with one big record, doing talk shows, and having people forget about her. She’s developing and gaining fans from the ground up.”
This is good because numerous K-pop groups and acts have tried to break in the way CL is not doing it. This includes Girls’ Generation (with “The Boys”) and Wonder Girls (with “Nobody”). Those songs are great, but those are literally the only songs they have that cater to the American music scene. No true Blackjack (or true fan of K-pop) wants that to happen to CL.
[Image via CL’s Official Facebook Page]