It was like a really tense rubber band breaking at once.”Īt that time, CL was mired in talks to leave her former label, which controlled most aspects of her life and her career. “I never went on a trip where I just had days of nothing happening-just resting and eating good food and spending time with family. “How I reacted to that was so unexpected,” she says. It is CL’s rallying cry of freedom, and a symbol of her creative independence.įollowing the Olympics performance, the artist forced herself out of her comfort zone with time off between South Korea and Los Angeles. But more importantly, as CL tells it, the album is a source of empowerment for the Asian community, and Asian women in particular. The record has been the subject of much industry brouhaha, after issues with CL’s former Korean label, YG Entertainment, came to light. Today, she releases her debut solo album Alpha, a work that has been anticipated by listeners as far back as 2014.
It’s been three years since her monumental Olympics performance-and CL has come a long way. Looking back, I re-programmed myself and allowed myself more layers to perspective in life, my experiences, seeing myself. (The travel, she admitted, had her feeling a bit under the weather.) “So for me to take some time off, even that was the hardest thing. “I was working since, I don't know, 15 or something, constantly,” CL tells me over Zoom from her home in South Korea, where she’d finally docked after weeks of flying between Los Angeles, New York for the Met Gala, and Las Vegas. After the Olympics, for the first time in her life, CL decided to take a break.
Within the K-pop industrial complex, she’d traveled with 2NE1, performing worldwide, recording, rehearsing, making endless media appearances. The artist, who shot to stratospheric fame in 2009 as the leader and main rapper of one of the most popular K-pop groups of all time, 2NE1, had spent her teenage years working nonstop. Backup dancers threw their bodies around CL, who strutted onto a platform where she went on to perform another record-breaking hit, “I Am the Best.” To any viewer-millions of whom tuned in to watch the spectacle on television and online-the show was a triumph.īut behind the scenes, the performance marked a significant turning point in CL, née Lee Chae-rin’s, life. “Not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good, you know?” Rings of fire blazed, while lasers shot every which way. “This is for all my bad girls around the world,” the musician rapped. From inside Pyeongchang’s Olympic Stadium, the K-pop star and rapper CL’s darkened silhouette appeared, as the opening lines to her 2013 hit single “The Baddest Female” rang out to the thousands of spectators assembled there. It was an undisputed, electrifying performance at the closing ceremony of the 2018 winter Olympics.
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