Jennie’s LP “Ruby” was touted as an uncommonly candid record leaning out of the strict K-Pop clampdown. Even if it didn’t quite shock or reveal too much in the end, it did make a powerful case for Jennie as a hugely rangy vocalist who swings through throwback R&B, clattering modern club music, vintage belters and misty atmospheres with grace.
But rather than lean into the limber, exultant club music native to the Sahara tent, Jennie and her very-present live band spent a lot of her set in a Lauryn Hill-adjacent lane, like on “With the IE (way up),” which sampled Jennifer Lopez’s millennial classic about essential Jenny-dom. She brought out Kali Uchis for “Damn Right,” swapping verses across cultures with an equal reverence for the song’s incandescent soul mood.
Leave a Reply