I did not like Jennie’s Ruby album at all
Warning goes long. This is my opinion everyone can have their opinions yadda yadda. This is an unpopular opinion because everywhere it's being heavily praised as the best of the Blackpink Solo albums as a great album and real feeling piece of art and honestly I don't see it.
I think the reason why I didn't like too much is Jennie's performances. Haughty is the word I'd use to describe her voice for most of this album. It's imperious in a way that really throws me off. This is not to say that bragging while rapping is wrong I just feels the energy is off here in a way I can't vibe with especially for an album being praised for being honest and having a lot of heart. It's probably not a good sign that too many verses here remind me of that infamous It's Jennie ai song she (rightfully) disses in Like Jennie when it comes to bars and lines in here. There's too many cringe bars flubbed rhymes a lot of times her flows feel unconvincing she gets slathered in autotune one too many times. Which again is not a bad thing for pop rap (yes even in wpop) except there's many problems with the presentation here that stops me from fully sinking in. She is better when she properly sings but too much of this album has her in this awkward dead sing talk dead zone that just makes her sound uneasy and like she's lost.
A lot of these songs feel like fragments. I've joked that the singles all feel like intros and that's because of their limited scope. Unironically the actual intro Jane is one of the better songs of this album and does more with its very limited scope than the majority does with their (vaguely more) expanded . But Mantra, Zen and Like Jennie all feel like the kind of thre to introduce an album not track 7, 9 and 2 . Mantra is probably the best of them as a pure distillment of this formula but I've never really liked it the way so many do and Like Jennie is basically Mantra with way more 'bombast' that just adds up to a headache. Zen is the worst of them, the kind of nonsense 'experimental' kpop track that sounds like all the non Yellow Lim Kim songs no one cares about except Jennie doesn't have the excuse of being indie so it just comes across as baffling why an album so expensive has a song this cheap on it. And with its spot as track 9 (why) it doesn't even have the excuse of being an intro like the fans said to everyone criticising this when it dropped it looks worse when made to be an actual song. ExtraL contains some of Jennie's best rapping where she can actually have pleasant interplay with Doechii but it's ruined by a boring beat that sounds like it came from the trap beat bargin bin but I still feels like an actual song and Love Hangover ends abruptly and is crippled by a truly abysmal Dominic Fike verse but is probably the best of them.
As for the rest of the album there's a grand total of 5 out of 15 songs that reach past the three minute mark and bridges and third choruses feel optional. It's repetitive in a way that makes it obvious there was no real ideas left.
The album itself sticks itself in a rut fast and never really attempts to unstick itself. It's clearly going for a 2000s rnb vibe and maybe if I was more into that sound I'd tolerate this more but in practice too much of Ruby has this dusty colorless production that barely feels fit to evolve which doesn't help an already bloated album feel like it never ends. Take Damn Right for instance a song featuring Kali Uchis and Childish Gambino that simultaneously feels like they're phoning it in and takes a lot of mistakes their last couple of albums have fallen into where the production feels airy and is less dreamy than lethargic and dull. The best of 2000s rnb is tight organic and filled with hooks and Ruby too much feels flabby aimless programmed and unable to hit a constant hook that sticks in the brain. The nadir of these attempts is With The IE (Way Up) which is just the instrumental of Jenny from the Block with somehow even more unconvincing rapping from Jennie over it (like no I don't believe you're riding round in cars with bulletproof glass Jennie). Why this album mining Y2K nostalgic felt like it was a good idea to throw back to the one of the more mocked songs from that era is beyond me but it's probably not a good sign that this borderline freestyle gets lapped by twenty year old lines from JLO's ghostwriters. The best attempt at 00s rnb is probably Filter but let's be real if it was actually placed in that era it'd be radio bait played in between the dead hours at most.
Unsurprisingly the best songs here are the ones where Jennie just makes a simple pop song. Handlebars with Dua Lipa has been pegged as the obvious standout and it's not hard to see why with the tight production the actually good chemistry between Jennie and Dua Lipa (too many collabs here feel like they recorded in different continents with little to no interplay and that's not just a problem with Jennie) and the monster hook. I've already mentioned Jane but Seoul City is great when she's singing and embarrassing when she's not. Whenever I stop thinking of it as slowed down APT I can enjoy a fair amount of Start A War. I guess as far as simple closing track ballads that crater the momentum go Twin feels acceptable. That's it.
Most of all this album feels not very fun. I didn't expect Jennie to make an all bangers album but the amount of water treading here is outstanding . It's attempts at depth feels more shallow than if she embraced the emptyheadness. It falls into the same problem Rosè’s album did and I can’t think of why many called it out there and not here. I plain don't get the praise. I'm glad if you do.