now did yg entertainment invent space and time?
hi, welcome! my name is angelina and this is my little series where we basically review
kpop comebacks together, now the titles usually get me into a lot of trouble but if anyone takes
issue with the title of this video, the title of aespa's "next level" being familiar...when it's
literally a remake... then i'm selling everything including Kevin and moving to Seoul because SBS
have copyright claimed my face and i apparently do not belong to myself! but yes in today's video i
did want to discuss aespa's come back with "next level", the kind of first official comeback with
"forever" having been another remake.... [ __ ] sm, what is going on? but this time
instead of being incredibly annoying and talking to you guys about what it reminds me of, which it
doesn't remind me of much to be honest! so we're we're in luck in that part, but i really wanted to
talk about the backstory how it connects to "black mamba" as well as my theories on everything that
i've personally seen SM release, you know on top of just discussing this comeback with you guys
like i would a friend, i also wanted to do like a little bit of a deep dive, you know yesterday
i went through the entire "black mamba" music video i went through episode one from sm culture
universe titled "black mamba" as well i have a lot of connections to make so if you're interested
in this type of video please keep on watching and while you're here you might as well like,
comment and share this video with friends you don't have! so i do have to say i was incredibly
excited for this comeback as i usually am when i make these types of videos, this comeback-
i was gonna make a joke, this comeback- you guys are probably sick of hearing this type of joke-
this comeback was next level! i'll see myself out. from the teaser photos alone i was just
over the moon excited, i was anticipating this comeback, but as excited i was to really deep dive
into this i do have a little bit of a beef with sm entertainment and here's why, this beef really
stems from the fact that "next level" is a remake, not that there's anything wrong with remakes,
you know, reduce, reuse, recycle however for the second time in a row SM has given
aespa someone else's song so the first time for "forever" you know very beautiful remake, but
that was kind of part of sm's tradition however to give aespa their kind of first official comeback,
having everyone super hyped up for this comeback and then last minute being told this is this is
actually a remake, it just felt a little weird to me so let's talk about that! so if we take a look
it seems that "next level" is a remake of a song featured in the soundtrack of 2019 action film
"fast and furious presents: hobbs and shaw" it is a "hip-hop dance song with groovy rap and catchy
bass riffs" and you know within this remake it seems that they really wanted to show their own
flavors their own colors and so on so of course i thought you know i'm gonna give it a chance, i did
hear some snippets of the original and it sounded really cool so obviously i was excited to see
what kind of tone that aespa would be bringing to this but then come to find out that it really
wasn't aespa's flavor that was added to the song but more just an sm overall company flavor that
was added to the song it felt more like this could be a song given to any sm artist rather than aespa
in particular and i say this because personally for "black mama", we all know i tend to not super
vibe with sm comebacks, sometimes i do sometimes i don't, but generally just the sm sound isn't
always my cup of tea but for "black mamba" it was kind of one of those songs where i thought "okay
this is an awesome sound that is distinguishing itself even further into what i thought would be
aespa's sound rather than listening to the song and thinking okay it's an sm song" i
thought "okay this is the sound" so i was kind of expecting that a little bit more with next level,
but instead it just felt like what SM has done before, you know? this bead drop, shall we say,
has been used in girls generation "i got a boy", it's been used in super junior's "house party",
this kind of shocking feel of having a specific beat and then completely changing it a few times
within the song and for something like "i got a boy", it was quite revolutionary for its time and
i felt like it worked for that concept but for next level i feel like we're just being brought
to really weird places i feel like it's kind of an excuse on sm's part to be like "no guys
this is not another remake, this is another remake with a beat drop that'll confuse the hell out of
everyone" and i think it could be a hit or miss i mean obviously "i got a boy" it's still a very
iconic song to this day but for the purpose of this song and this not even being us was original
song it just you know it just all of this added together i'm just wondering why sm isn't giving
them their own original song their own original sound that i thought was being developed through
"black mamba" but definitely let me know what you thought of the song itself of course these things
were all very capable of changing our minds if we ended up not liking something at first maybe
i will like it later maybe it'll grow on me maybe it's a grower not a shower but for now i would
definitely put it within my ranking system in yg's dungeon because admittedly like the whole "next
level", like the parts that they did remake from the original song sound cool as hell on the next
level yeah but it's those sm parts that i'm just like "oh my what's going on here" and some people
have pointed out that maybe this is actually just aespa's entire next album put into one song to
which i would say that's even more confusing so you can definitely let me know what you think
of that as well, do you think someone do that my friend pointed out that you know they did that for
resonance for nct, but that was after the songs had already been released so you think they would
do that before the songs are even released because there are vastly different songs but you know in
my opinion maybe it's just what sm does, "i got a boy", "house party" and so on, so of course
i'm super excited for aespa because i do feel like they're bringing something new to the table
this concept i feel is very revolutionary they're very rarely if ever actually disappoint
with their outfits and with "black mamba" being you know one of those songs where i'm like that
is their flavor, i was just taking a little bit back when i heard "next level" and i thought "you
know maybe this could also be an exo song it could be an nct song" it just felt more company specific
rather than aespa that's the port i'm trying to get across but yeah of course the song is familiar
it's a remake, and actually despite my 47 copyright claims from sbs i am going to show you
a little snippet of the original versus what aespa did as the remake so my friends if you are lucky
enough to hear this audio it means i did not get a copyright claim...yet so let's give a few examples
here's example number one of the original song versus aespa's remake of this part in particular
and then here's another example "i'm on the next level i'm on the next level" i do think it's fun i
do think it's fun to reimagine things to you know have a song that maybe somebody loved and then to
reinvent it entirely or do you know what i mean? i'm not opposed to that maybe i'm just opposed to
SM entertainment, that's possible! but in terms of why it's familiar that's pretty much it,
i don't really have the most to compare too, surprisingly! i will point out that my friend,
not me! i did not say this, my friend did say that it was quite similar to 2NE1's "can't nobody",
you know space theme is a space theme, now did yg entertainment invent space and time? as far as i
know "galaxy supernova" only came out in 2013, case closed! that was a joke but definitely let
me know in the comments down below of all the space themes you can think of in k-pop i would
love to reminisce or possibly learn of new ones. i usually like more post-apocalyptic themes but i-
wonder girls! wait no that's JYP, because the wonder girls "like money"- that wasn't really
space theme, that was more a robot theme. digressing, as i should! the stans will come!
so i did read an article from the korea times that says "next level is a follow-up song to aespa's
debut single black mamba which was unleashed last november, in "black mamba" the members learned
that an evil force in the form of a snake poses a threat to the world and will attempt to disconnect
them from their avatars" they then go on to explain that in "next level" they head to
Kwangya which is the place where avatars and the human counterparts can meet and interact
to hunt down black mamba which i will henceforth call the virus, because i think black mamba is
kind of a virus of sorts so with that in mind i did want to dissect the entire music video of
"next level", the music video for "black mamba" how they connect together as well as episode one
of sm cultures universe titled "black mamba" as well! "next level" starts out with this space
theme which is quite different from "black mamba" as i don't think we're in Kwangya anymore, toto!
but as we just read in the korea times, it seems that in "next level" they actually go to Kwangya
to defeat the black mamba but if that's the case then why does Kwangya look so different in "next
level" than it did in "black mamba"? because i think "next level" is a lot more than just
Kwangya, i think we're actually also introduced to a new place called KOSMO, and i think it ties
into SYNKOUT but to understand SYNKOUT, we need to first discover episode one titled "black mamba",
so as i mentioned previously sm culture universe have released a kind of backstory titled episode
1 "black mamba" and we start out with an animated character and a text that asks "where did we come
from?" and from there we seem to go through a digital sinkhole which brings us to aespa's world,
kind of the real world shall we say. and the news is actually referring to these mysterious digital
sinkholes that are starting to appear everywhere we then cut to a classroom that giselle is
attending, and her hologram teacher is explaining what Æ is, it's an alter ego with a personality
built from all the data we upload every day, but she's not paying attention because she's
writing raps out loud and no one is calling her out on this. we then see that her own Æ is
actually behind her and helps her pick out some lyrics but points to the class board where it
turns into basically a red carpet. meanwhile our friend winter and her Æ are absolutely
destroying people but then we find out they were actually just playing a video game together,
so it seems that even in the real world Æ and their human counterparts can to an extent still
interact with each other. as for ning-ning and her Æ, they create digital art and end up infiltrating
an art exhibition and hijacking it with this beautiful butterfly but as we cut back to giselle
who is still not paying attention her hologram teacher asks her what this french phrase means,
and instead of answering him she just reads it out loud but i digress! this might actually be
a trilingual class because the teacher's speaking korean, giselle speaks to him in french apparently
and then later on she speaks to him in english. this feels oddly reminiscent of my koreaboo days.
for karina's scene it's absolutely stunning you know she's sitting at the pool as her Æ
tells her to meet her and she goes swimming and they dramatically touch hands, however back to
giselle whose classmates are discussing whether Æ can really be a part of ourselves because if Æ is
part of the data that we upload every day and the data we upload every day is damn near perfection
with all the photoshop and us really only putting our best foot forward can that really be a part
of ourselves, the deep philosophical questions! but then suddenly Æ-giselle disappears and the
hologram teacher starts glitching and in english giselle asks "professor, what if Æ gets hacked?"
and then we start to see all of the members Æs malfunctioning, getting hacked and going offline
with this snake symbol appearing, so this is how it all connects to black mamba because this image
of the snake is obviously representative of black mamba, black mamba being a sort of virus or sort
of evil eye, i didn't mean it like that an evil Æ! that is trying to disconnect them from their
Æ counterparts we see karina getting out of the water and she's met with the different version of
Æ-karina and her own eyes go dark very much like they did in the music video for "black mamba" and
were brought back to this scene which seems very majestic and we have this mysterious person with
her hands around karina's neck. her own eyes coming back to normal and she asks this person
who are you, or this Æ "who are you?" so it seems this phenomenon is affecting Æ across the country,
everyone is being disconnected and they have named this SYNKOUT, we end with the hologram
teacher actually transforming into a sinister looking Æ and you might notice the short hair
which is similar to the last scene in "black mamba" where we see this mysterious figure
appear who also has short hair, so i have reason to believe they are the same entity possibly,
black mamba, whatever black mamba actually is, whether it's a virus whether, it's an individual
entity or whatever the case may be then. we're met with credits with the instrumental of "black
mamba" playing in the background but not so fast it is not over if we were in a movie theater,
we would have to awkwardly sit back down we then get to see the animated versions of everyone's Æ
and we are met with the character nævis which is also present in the lyrics of "next level",
this seems to be the aftermath of the SYNKOUT, they cannot sync with their human counterparts and
they're wondering, you know, what should they do? they decide to go to Kwangya, but the portal is
closed, however nævis is able to open the portal but once the portal is open, or perhaps it's
actually a digital sinkhole, we see a snake come out of it. i'm actually unsure whether or not this
is intentional, as nævis also seems to have quite short hair and seems to look like the sinister Æ
that we had just seen, however in the lyrics for "next level" it seems nævis is someone who leads
and aespa will follow, and maybe just like we had seen a possible evil version of karina's avatar
there is also an evil version of nævis but let me know what you think of that theory. so all of this
brings us to the music video of "black mamba" i feel like the "black mamba" music video is
actually the aftermath of the SYNKOUT as well because we do have this theme that the members
don't have access to their avatars. anytime we do see their avatars, they are glitching
and there's even lyrics that says "if only i could connect to you again" and of course there's
even this one scene where karina has her phone and she's getting an airdrop from black mamba,
and when she accepts it she gets brought into what seems to be a different universe,
a universe that seems different from the one she was in before, you could see she was in a train
and then when she accepts the airdrop everything is full of flowers and it's very purple and
beautiful with butterflies. so i actually think these purple themed places are Kwangya, so though
in the press conference they say that "black mamba" is where they learn about the SYNKOUT and
that "next level" is where they go to Kwangya to fight black mamba, i do think there's some overlap
between the two and i do think we end up seeing Kwangya in both. with the music video for "black
mamba" being a little bit of the aftermath of that SYNKOUT, especially with lyrics that talk about
wandering the place, so i do think that within "black mamba" they're venturing into this quest
to get their avatars back, which we eventually see followed up in "next level" which is represented
through the lyrics "you wonder this Kwangya, i can't lose against" you potentially alluding to
the fact that this virus is wandering where these worlds connect however i'm wondering if Kwangya is
really the place to be doing any of this, because the lyrics also allude to a place called KOSMO,
so maybe Kwangya is a place where they all have to meet together to then get to the next level,
which is KOSMO, to eventually defeat the black mamba because in "next level" giselle says she
walks to Kwangya, and then we see further in the lyrics that "until i reach the next level KOSMO"
however it's also possible that this is all a hallucination, hear me out! you know
i talked a little bit previously about how the Kwangya in "black mamba" seems a lot different
than the Kwangya that we're seeing in "next level" because the lyrics in "next level" say
"a hallucination quest created by the black mamba" so maybe they are in Kwangya in "next
level" but it's all a hallucination hence all these space themes that are going on,
so to kind of recap we have SYNKOUT which disconnects everyone from their Æ counterparts, in
the music video for "black mamba" we see that they desperately want to reconnect with their Æ, but i
also think that within the "black mamba" music video the black mamba itself the virus itself
brings aespa into Kwangya where they're then given a task to get to Kosmo which is the next level,
where there they would eventually be able to actually defeat the black mamba, does that make
sense? i would love to know all of your thoughts in the comments down below, maybe the space thing
is a hallucination as it is a hallucination class by the black mamba, maybe they're headed to KOSMO,
anyways that's basically all i have to say in today's video don't forget you can support this
channel in different ways by joining my channel members, these are the lovely individuals who
help support my channel on a monthly basis it means the world to me thank you so much
you could also do other things like like comment and share this video with friends you don't have!
my channel members actually got to see this video yesterday so that's one of the benefits depending
on which level you are on, as for me i'm gonna get going and i'll see you guys next time bye!