2024

ROSÉ Is On Top

“You can call me Rosie,” ROSÉ says.

She’s video calling from New York City, where she’s in town for an undisclosed video shoot. She’s currently in cozy mode: Her dyed strawberry blonde hair hangs relaxed around her clean and bare face, and she’s dressed in a solid gray tee she’s accessorized with a few layered necklaces. The heavy red curtains of her hotel room are drawn tightly behind her. “I’m sorry, I’m sick today,” she says, leaning off screen to quietly request some tea, her soft-spoken, New-Zealand-inflected English switching to rapid Korean. Despite any illness, she’s wide-eyed and all smiles. “I’ve been traveling,” she tells PAPER, “but I’ve been better than ever.”

She has many reasons to be beaming. It’s five days after the release of “APT,” her punchy and long-awaited solo debut with a diamond-level feature from Bruno Mars, and she’s still riding that high. Granted, she was a little nervous initially about how it’d be received, but the immediate avalanche of TikToks and positive chatter have since eased that worry. “Now that I’m getting live feedback on how fans are feeling about everything, I think I’m starting to enjoy it.” She corrects herself. “I’m definitely enjoying it now.”

Her one, maybe, small hesitation is around this part of the process: press. “Now I have to be me, the personality that people want to see,” she says. “It’s been a bit of a rocky start, mentally.”

The personality she’s referring to is, of course, one that needs no introduction (though I’ll give one, anyway). For the past eight years, Rosie — real name Roseanne Park — has been better known as ROSÉ, one-fourth of the dominating K-pop force BLACKPINK and arguably the world’s most talked-about girl group since the advent of the Spice Girls. Alongside fellow members Jennie, Lisa and Jisoo, the group broke records and sold out tours as one of the first K-pop girl groups to not only commercially crossover globally — but dominate.

But things have slightly shifted since then. On December 23, 2023, BLACKPINK’s record label, YG Entertainment, announced that ROSÉ, alongside fellow members Jennie, Lisa and Jisoo, declined to renew their solo contracts with the company and would be striking out on their own (future BLACKPINK activities would still be managed by the company). For the first time ever, they were free agents.

That brings us to this moment — 10 months after that announcement and less than two months before the arrival of her debut solo album, rosie — an album she didn’t know she had in her. “It was a big dream,” she says of the project, dropping December 6. “I didn’t want to say it to everyone because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to deliver an album that I was proud of.” But now, she says, “I’m excited and proud to release it.”………

Read the full article at Papermag.com

Gallery Link:

• Rosé > Photo Sessions > 2024 > Set 3 – Paper Magazine