LISA UNLEASHED

With a new solo project, her own management company, and her acting debut in 7e White Lotus, the Blackpink idol is sitting pretty.

- STEPHAN LEE

In K-pop vernacular, the “Killing Part” is the ultimate slay of a song. It’s different from what we know as a hook, the part of a pop chorus that’s expertly lab-engineered to get lodged in your brain. The Killing Part, on the other hand, is a singular, unpredictable moment, typically in the second half of a video: a lightning-in-a-bottle alchemy of visual and vocal elements that shuts the whole thing down. And, of course, gets replayed millions of times on social media.

Lalisa Manobal—known mononymously as Lisa since the 2016 debut of the phenomenally successful girl group Blackpink—seems almost like her own subspecies evolved to serve up Killing Part after Killing Part. If you’ve ever been down a Blackpink wormhole (an experience, shared by millions, of coming across your first Blackpink music video and then feeling the compulsive need to watch all of them—trust me, it’s a thing), you’ve seen her deep arsenal of skills: a pout and a nod dripping with attitude; fearless delivery of wild rap lines (“Middle finger up, F-U pay me/’90s baby, I pump up the jam”); or a fashion risk pulled off to perfection (see: her Slimergreen gloves paired with magenta thigh-highs in 2018’s “DDU-DU DDU-DU”). You don’t become the world’s foremost K-pop assassin without an abundance of swagger.

“Play it safe? No,” says Lisa, 27, with a sly grin and wag of her finger (not the middle one).

She arrived just hours ago in Los Angeles from a long overseas flight. Her skin is flawless; her mood smiley, yet slightly antsy. It’s two days before the global drop of “Rockstar,” her first solo release in three years. At the very start of our Zoom, when I tell her I’ve listened to the track early, her first reaction is to go bug-eyed, throw her hands on her head, and gasp with an air of equal parts delight and panic, “Oh, nooo!”