New SM Entertainment girl group Aespa make their debut with "Black Mamba" and Red Velvet are worried

With Girls' Generation long in the dirt and Red Velvet's days 'bout to be over because Irene couldn't keep her mouth in check, SM Entertainment could not have picked a better time to debut a new girl group. And after a teasing phase which felt never ending and I was done with after about a week, Aespa's debut song "Black Mamba" finally dropped. And no, this is not a tribute song to Kobe or Uma Thurman's character in Kill Bill.

With Blackpink not just being the K-Pop girl group, but THE girl group of the moment, it makes sense that SM Entertainment would want an act on their roster to rival them sound-wise and visually. Especially with Red Velvet being the f(x) replacement and plugging part of the gap left by Girls' Generation until SM debut a girl group to fill the SNSD void outright.

Part of Aespa's uniqueness, gimmick, whatever you want to call it was that the group has 8 members, 4 of whom are digital avatars of the real life members. But there's wasn't that much of a deal made about these avatars in the music video, who all made blink and you'll miss them appearances. And because the theme of the music video was phones and digitisation, the avatar appearances just felt like part of the visual concept, as opposed to something we should focus on or pay any real attention to. It would have made far more sense to have shown the avatars dancing with the real life girls, but I guess that's a thing for another music video. I think the avatar thing is foolishness anyway and I'm sure SM know it. I bet they'll can the avatar thing after a while and just make Aespa's continual theme and concept Y2K.

As for the song, it's just okay to me. But I really liked the music video, and the whole Spider-Man / Black Widow pose in the choreo. It's going to be interesting to see how Aespa develops, and if SM will be able to make them into their own within the SM girl group line-up, which is literally just them and Red Velvet for now.