It’s mid-December and Jurin, Maya, Chisa, Hinata, Juria, Cocona and Harvey, the seven members of XG, catch their breath after vogueing, breaking and duck-walking their method by way of “Gala,” a tribute to ballroom tradition and the lead single from their upcoming first full-length album.
Quickly, they’re surrounded. A cluster of make-up artists, PR reps, translators and crew members huddle about whereas some members steal a smile and alternate hand hearts with giddy followers within the viewers.
Sienna Lalau is a part of the workforce assembled on the Common Studios soundstage for XG’s taping of “The Voice” season finale. Choreographer and motion director for the downtown L.A.-based Lab Studios, Lalau, 25, works incessantly with Jennifer Lopez and has created and carried out with Ciara, Missy Elliott, BTS and Ozuna, amongst others. She has choreographed for XG, since earlier than the group’s 2022 debut.
For Lalau, XG stood out from the start.
“Carrie, my supervisor, she had informed me, ‘Oh, there’s this new Japanese group that wishes you to choreograph for them,’ ” she says over the telephone throughout a break in rehearsals for Lopez’s Las Vegas residency.
Prior to now, Lalau had minimal interplay with labels relating to Okay-pop submissions — “ship within the factor, after which that’s just about it,” she says. In contrast, XG’s firm, XGALX, despatched over an in depth transient of its younger members, every of whom had spent the earlier 5 years honing their nascent rap, vocal and dance expertise.
Lalau jumped on the prospect of working with a gaggle from the bottom flooring. “I bear in mind I had despatched in movies to choreograph for “Mascara” and “Tippy Toes,” which had been the primary two songs I feel they had been planning on popping out with. And , I’m right here 5 years later, nonetheless working with them which is so loopy to say.”
Transcending obstacles
For Okay-pop fans, XG’s flawlessly executed choreography is acquainted territory. However scratch the floor and the identification of the group is a fluid mix of cultures. Whereas all of the members are Japanese, Hinata has Korean heritage and Harvey is Japanese-Australian. Their music, nevertheless, is firmly rooted within the golden age of American ‘90s R&B and hip-hop. Then there’s their out-of-this-world visible identification referencing the whole lot from anime to streetwear to house aliens.
In 2022, “Galz Xypher,” a stand-alone YouTube single, introduced XG worldwide consideration. Major rappers Jurin, Harvey, Cocona and Maya commerce bars in three languages over samples from Ty Dolla Signal, Rosalía, Dreamville, JID, Jack Harlow and 24kGoldn (the JID monitor, in flip, samples Aretha Franklin’s legendary sped-up pattern of “One Step Forward”).
What surprises many is the group’s capacity to transcend language obstacles. XGALX government producer and CEO Simon Junho-Park, who goes by JAKOPS, defined what language shifting means to him and the group musically.
“Once we rap in a number of languages, we don’t consider it as merely switching languages,” he stated by e mail. “It’s nearer to switching the form of the rhythm and the power. Every language is totally completely different when it comes to issues just like the size of pronunciation — the assault of consonants and vowels and its pure intonation. So, if you happen to take the very same move and simply drop it in one other language, it received’t sound pure.”
JAKOPS, 39, is snug shifting between cultures. He was born in Seattle to Korean-Japanese dad and mom. He spent 10 years as a member of the boy group DMTN and later expanded into songwriting and producing. He realized first-hand each the facility, and limitations, of the Okay-pop coaching tradition.
“As an artist, what I need to do with XGALX is create this surroundings the place development is inspired in a method I don’t essentially assume it was within the outdated programs,” he says.
“I feel it’s extra a couple of mindset … the relationships between workforce members, the employees, the tradition we’ve constructed, the angle we now have in the direction of a whole lot of issues,” he says. “It nearly feels woven into our DNA that we’ve constructed collectively. … However I feel that’s why we don’t affiliate with the prevailing establishment and are very drawn to aliens and [the] unknown, in order that form of interprets into our world mindset, world angle.”
A part of growing that world mindset means fastidiously selecting collaborators like Chancellor, a producer and artist in his late 30s who grew up in L.A.’s Koreatown studying from acts just like the Neptunes. Upon shifting to Korea, Chancellor bonded with JAKOPS over shared musical pursuits and fervour. Not not like Lalau, he has been with the XG members from the start, serving to to form their output, together with their upcoming album.
Chancellor, over a Zoom name from Korea, is fast to level out that in relation to artistic enter with XG, it’s a two-way road. “From their coaching days up till as we speak, they’ve already been listening to the ‘8701’ Usher album,” he says of the members. They’ve been listening to the Omarion album. Like, these women are already so in love with music, even earlier than I met them.”
Xtraordinary Genes
A few days after taping “The Voice” efficiency, XG information right into a Koreatown lodge convention room. It’s Harvey’s birthday, and selling an album or acting on a vacation isn’t something new. The disco-meets-space-cowboy stage outfits that the members wore for “The Voice” taping are swapped out for Gen Z streetwear. Chatting collectively, they might simply be mistaken for a pack of younger pals hanging out as a substitute of the Coachella-headlining superstars they’ve change into.
XG used to face for Xtraordinary Ladies, however with the brand new yr got here a reputation change: Now XG stands for Xtraordinary Genes. This got here on the heels of a fair greater change, which had been introduced in early December.
Selecting the auspicious date of their twentieth birthday, which in Japan marks the official transition to maturity, Cocona, writing on XG’s official Instagram account, shared they’re AFAB (assigned feminine at start) transmasculine nonbinary and had earlier within the yr undergone high surgical procedure. Because the information unfold, making headlines around the globe, JAKOPS adopted up with an announcement of help from his private account.
“Simon and all of the members are an enormous a part of my identification in a method. And Chisa, my roommate, knew how I felt,” Cocona shares from throughout a convention desk within the Koreatown lodge convention room. “Breaking this information to them was an enormous second. I questioned it rather a lot too. ‘Is that this good?’ ‘Is that this actually part of me?’ … However after I informed the members, they stated, ‘Wow, Cocona, we nonetheless love you,’ they usually listened and took what I used to be making an attempt to say very severely,” the rapper stated. “As a result of it’s exhausting to place one thing like that into phrases. And that’s after I first realized what I’m doing is OK and isn’t improper. … That’s after I needed the members to be concerned on this course of from a really early stage, as a result of I feel it gave me a whole lot of cause to like me for myself and occurring this path collectively, I feel they had been capable of see it from a vantage level that not a whole lot of others actually might.”
Jurin took the softly lit photographs of Cocona accompanying their announcement whereas Hinata did their make-up. Surgical procedure scar peeking from behind a black blazer, their gaze is each delicate and agency. They maintain a big, purple dahlia.
“I didn’t need to fully lose my outdated self, however I needed to let it wilt in a method,” they are saying, explaining how they noticed themselves mirrored within the dahlia. “It seems very sturdy and highly effective, however on the identical time, understanding that in the future it’s going to wither and die, I feel this captures nearly like this smothered ardour … or this love that’s proper beneath the floor. I feel a whole lot of the that means was consultant of each XG and myself.”
The journey to ‘The Core’
Launched in late 2024, XG’s second EP, “Awe,” earned a primary entry on the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart. Shortly after, they launched into a world tour, their first likelihood to see the North American followers who kind their largest viewers outdoors of Japan.
“Howling” — the fierce but honeyed lead monitor on “Awe” — noticed the group remodeled right into a futuristic wolf pack. It’s an analogy Chisa likens to their evolving relationship with followers they name “Alphaz.”
“Even the identify Alphaz comes from this concept of the chief of a wolf pack,” she says. “In some methods the Alphaz are the alpha: They lead us to the subsequent stage and vice versa. We’ve been on this journey collectively, and that hasn’t modified, however what has modified is the depth of that bond.”
In October, “Gala” entered the Prime 40 on U.S. radio whereas its spacy couture music video reached No. 1 on YouTube’s trending worldwide chart. Later this yr, XG embarks on a second world tour in help of the brand new album (North American dates haven’t been launched but).
Known as “The Core,” the album cowl options a big kanji character that interprets to “core” or “nucleus.” Jurin, XG’s doe-eyed chief, confesses the title is difficult to translate.
“We’ve hit a whole lot of these huge objectives that we’ve at all times had from a very long time in the past, and we needed to seize a whole lot of that emotion within the album,” she says. “And I feel it’s what was at our core that helped us to get the place we had been. … The entire album has a really various set of genres, and all of them are completely different parts of our core.”
XG’s first full-length launch builds on its signature sound with a few twists. “Gala” strikes in a dance/home route, whereas “Take My Breath” expands and softens on that theme. “Hypnotize,” the subsequent single to launch, brings in a dreamy ingredient, enjoyable into the Doja Cat-esque “Up Now.” “4 Seasons,” a soulful, ode to loss that includes Juria, Hinata and Chisa, got here out proper earlier than the vacations, whereas PS 118 is basic hip-hop (Jurin launched a stand-alone model with Rapsody in November). Issues take an abrupt activate “O.R.B. (Clearly Reads Bro).”
The emo pop-punk monitor is a favourite of Harvey, whose distinctive Betty Boop tone is integral to XG’s edge.
“It’s the primary time we swore in our lyrics, and in a method, we didn’t need to be afraid to seize that feeling we now have inside and specific it in music,” she says. “I feel there’s a whole lot of this inside power that we try to convey to the floor, not worrying about how others see us … having fun with life on our personal phrases and in our personal method.”
“We need to preserve going as we’re proper now,” provides Maya earlier than XG heads out. “Not making an attempt to goal too excessive however simply being true to ourselves, doing what we like to do, retaining this ardour. That’s our purpose ceaselessly.”
