After years of waiting since their stint on 2021’s competition show LOUD, KickFlip unveiled their frustratingly repetitive pre-release Umm Great earlier this month. And with the release of their mini album today, they become 2025’s first major debut act. As I stated back in Umm Great‘s review, I had hoped this group would balk current JYP Entertainment trends and deliver a more idiosyncratic sound driven by their youthful appeal.
Mama Said gets us closer to this aim than Umm Great, yet also takes two steps back. It still feels like the agency is giving all its boy bands the same material. For the life of me, I can’t distinguish what makes a KickFlip different than a NEXZ. Their sound is heavy on sing talk, opting for melodies that feel more like taunts than fully-developed, interconnected parts of a story. This fragmented approach — constantly pinballing between singing, chanting and rapping — has been done to death and results in music that feels more like branding. I often feel like I’m listening to a commercial for JYP’s next boy band rather than their actual song.
Looking back through the agency’s lineage, Mama Said‘s sing-song chorus seems to be cut from similar cloth as 2015’s excellent GOT7 single Just Right. However, this hand-me-down comes along with plenty of new-gen tropes, including grating percussion and a lack of melodic imagination. On the plus side, other parts of the track offer peeks at more engaging choices. I love the guitar that sprouts up during the pre-chorus and the finale offers some interesting vocal interplay that should have been highlighted throughout the song. Sadly, Mama Said‘s bratty energy overshadows all of this and just doesn’t work for me.
Hooks
7
Production
8
Longevity
8
Bias
7
RATING
7.5