The Art of Being CL

How K-pop’s Baddest Female reclaimed her throne

- RIDDHI CHAKRABORTY

It’s the end of October and CL is completing the promotion cycle for her debut LP, Alpha. The record dropped on the 20th, and the entire month saw the South Korean superstar’s schedule packed full of interviews, fan meetings and live performances–all in celebration of her glorious return to the scene. Each single racked up tens of millions of views on YouTube and the world rejoiced with tweets, articles and reaction videos, but the scale of Alpha’s roaring success hasn’t quite hit the singer-songwriter and rapper just yet. “It feels… I don’t know,” she confesses. “It hasn’t got into me that it’s out, because those are the pictures and videos and everything I’ve been with for so long, that I’ve been preparing. I’ve been in the process very deep. But whenever I can perform it or just talk about it with you guys or my fans, that’s when I kind of feel like it’s happened.”

While the success of Alpha was expected, it’s also a little unbelievable to have her back onstage. For both CL and her fandom, the GZBz, the time between 2018 to late 2019 was painful. Her former group 2NE1 had disbanded in 2017, and rumored disputes between her Korean label and overseas management delayed her plans for a big American solo career, eventually leading to a pause on any projects she had in the pipeline. It was a massive blow, shutting down the numerous predictions of her being the ‘next big thing from South Korea’ and disappointing legions of fans. As time passed and her silence on the music front grew, the world attempted to theorize what went wrong and if there was a way to fix it. CL handled it all with grace, maintaining her silence and eventually walking away from her label in 2019.