Omijacha

What is really weird is that there is absolutely no need for Hayi to be anything other than solo. She has thousands and thousands of fans who just want to hear her singing. She also has proven success on the charts. Sure, there are some antis and haters too. But every popular artist has those. Something really sick is going on in YG's mind, the way he seems to be going out of his way to downplay Hayi's talent and popularity and act like there is something "wrong" with her being a solo artist. It really looks to me like there are some business politics going on here and he's intentionally keeping her down to benefit a separate agenda.

Can you pm me too? I've been suspecting some things for a while now. And your post makes me think that my worst suspicions are true. I also think that there are a lot of internal politics at YG (and the whole "family" thing is for show). Hayi has a level of popularity and potential that could easily begin eclipsing some more senior members of the "family" who want to keep her from "stealing their thunder" so to speak. Really just anticipated thunder at this point. When I saw what YG apparently did in using Hayi's MAMA award as a bargaining chip, which he apparently traded away to get promotional stage time for other acts, I realized that not only was YG not promoting Hayi any longer, he was actually going out of his way to supress her career. I think its time for people close to Hayi to start collecting evidence and think about suing the bastard...for millions.

LOL! You can tell I'm full of warm feelings for the guy after all the really, really hard work he's done for Hayi during the past two years, showcasing her talent at every opportunity and, as a good manager, helping her to build up her fan base. ;o) ... wait * cough...cough* whooo! That was a close one. I almost choked on my own sarcasm. But seriously, I'm glad we can at least see her once or twice every Kpop Star season and I'm looking forward to seeing her in the final episode. And the Hi Suhyun unit was nice. (But not an acceptable substitute for properly producing, releasing and promoting a second album for her.)

Makes me happy to hear that Jung Sungha follows Hayi. OTOH, it's frustrating to see that there are so many possibilities for YG to let Hayi have some meaningful side activities, even if he has his head too far up his own *ss right now to let her have an official comeback. Just seeing Jung Sungha's name reminds me of those great (and relatively inexpensive) studio collaboration videos that 2NE1 did with Jung Sungha. It would be so easy to do something like that with Hayi and Jung Sungha, using some of Hayi's songs from her album. It's like YG's not even willing to spend 5 minutes of mental effort thinking of doing something that may be good for Hayi.

That's interesting. There have been a few news items, like this one: http://tvdaily.asiae.co.kr/read.php3?aid=1428465310882955019 showing a photo of Dara and Hayi and referring to them as YG's "beauties" (미녀). The Osen article linked in the tweet above refers to speculation about which YG girl is going to be in Jinusean's M/V. (But the teaser photo shows someone with blonde hair, so it doesn't seem likely that it would be Hayi, since she's back to being a beautiful brunette.) It would be great if it's some really good news for Hayi and her fans.

I just noticed that Lee Moon Sae (ì´ë¬¸ì„¸), who is pretty much an icon among Korean singers now, released a new album a few days ago. It includes a couple of featurings and a duet with young artists. I remember that in 2013, he made some comments about how much he admired Lee Hi's singing and really wanted to do a collaboration with her...and those comments became a relatively big news story in Korea. As a result of that news story, a TV show called "Thank You" (ë•¡í) invited Lee Hi to appear briefly on an episode that Lee Moon Sae was in. (The youtube segment from the show that Lee Hi appeared in had the greatest number of views (by a huge margin) of any of the other official youtube segments for the show.) In the show, she sang a short version of Whistle, one of Lee Moon Sae's songs (w/Lee Moon Sae playing guitar accompaniment) and really wowed everyone. Lee Moon Sae again expressed admiration for Lee Hi's emotionally expressive singing and style and repeated his interest in doing a collaboration. Lee Hi was obviously also thrilled about that. My best guess is that she likely would have been featured on LMS's new album or even would have done a full duet with him and that the reason she is not and the reason that we have never heard anything further about a possible collaboration with LMS is because a certain troll (initials YHS) decided to shut it all down... because everyone knows that it's much better to keep a new singer away from the public and locked in a dungeon. Nothing good can come from having a new singer do a collaboration with one of the most popular Korean singers of the past 3 or 4 decades. As YHS knows, the only reason to have a solo singer around in an entertainment company is so that they can occasionally play supporting roles to promote the company's idol groups or to occasionally promote a TV show that pays good mula and gives good publicity to the entertainment company CEO. My current nightmare is that YHS will keep this b**lsh*t up for another several years, then he'll start giving her a hard time about being "too old" or something equally ridiculous.

You're definitely not hated. Not by me, anyway. You're a fellow Hayi fan. I think of this as just a conversation among friends hanging out in a cyber cafe or something like that. I've been giving YG the benefit of the doubt for quite a long time now, though, and I'm not sure that he always has good reasons. (He always has spin, but not necessarily good reasons.) As I've observed him in action over the years, I've started seeing some patterns that indicate a touch of narcissistic personality (disorder) and some arrested development, which may explain a lot of the fickleness/inconsistency in his attention span. Like a hoarder kid who, as soon as he sees a new toy, drops the toy he was playing with before and just forgets about it, so that he can play with the new toy...except that he still doesn't want any other kids to play with ANY of his neglected toys. "It's MINE, MINE!" Your point about there probably being an underlying issue is a good one. And we don't know. But it's not necessarily -- and not even likely -- a problem with Lee Hi IMHO. It could be that he wanted her to do something that she didn't agree with artistically or thought was too undignified and wouldn't go along with it, so he's essentially punishing her for her disobedience or something. Of course that's just speculation, but so is any justification that we can think of that makes the extreme neglect seem benign. I really haven't seen any YG artists who have debuted as successfully as Lee Hi did be neglected so thoroughly for as long as Hayi has been (except maybe for Gummy, and I'm not even sure about that). Even in the relatively early days, BB and 2NE1 had so many different things going on, like 2NE1 TV, informal youtube collaborations (like a couple with Jung Sungha) and reggae remakes of their own songs, etc., to make it easy for fans to keep following them. The one long "hiatus" for 2NE1 was actually when they were working on some project with Will I. Am, which apparently didn't work out in the end. But even after that it still didn't take long for them to start releasing singles in 2013 (about 3 or 4), leading up to the big Crush album release in 2014. BB members have had so many individual activities that it doesn't really seem like they were ever on hiatus, even though I can understand why their fans want to see another group album too. It's almost as if he's engaged in a slow-motion sabotaging of her career. I really hope that's not the case. But at some point, in the absence of inside knowledge, all you can do is judge things by the results they produce.

I think most of us are/have been optimistically hoping that YG has only the best of intentions and everything is just the way you describe it. And I mostly agree with your more positive approach. I'm just letting off some built-up steam and, after today, I'll probably chill for a while and just hope for the best. But your last question really gets to the heart of the matter. "Why is Hayi not coming out with new material?" That's really the rub right there. We know she's capable. We know that she had one of the most successful debuts in recent Kpop history (largely due to her talent and fan base, but of course with help and support from YG people (Lydia, Master Wu, Teddy, Tablo, etc.). But as fans we've been left almost completely in the dark for more than 2 years now and Hayi has been kept out of sight and out of contact the whole time, except for a few very short exceptions. So the questions I'm asking myself is what kind of management company does that to a budding new talent who wants to sing for her fans and has many, many fans who want to hear her sing? If he hasn't felt the "time was right" for the past two years and, apparently, still doesn't think the "time is right" for the year ahead, how long do we keep accepting that as a smart management strategy? When does it start looking more like a lame excuse for neglecting her (the way that Gummy and several other solo artists have been neglected) just because he has other priorities and interests? And even if he thinks he has good reasons for not releasing a second full album right away, why won't he let her collaborate with other artists, do cover songs and generally keep developing her real world interactions with fans? She's gone from "amazing new female solo artist" two and a half years ago to, now, a solo artist who has done only one "unit" song per year for two years (one of which was just a cover and was mainly a project for Bom). I don't want to bash YG. In fact, I've generally been very supportive of YG since Hayi joined and have enthusiastically cheered for other YG artists. But the way he's handling Hayi's career is just starting to look weird to me. Just for example, even now you can go to Lee Hi's page on the YG Family website and see in the "news" section, that absolutely nothing has been updated since May 15, 2013. (And the last news item has a misleading and insulting-to-Hayi headline saying that YG gives 100 points to Jimin, but only 80 points to Hayi.) Since that news item, there have been dozens of newsworthy things that should have been added, such as her being the only Asian artist named as one of the elite artists included on the "21 under 21" Billboard USA list of top young artists around the world, or the fact that her First Love album won the prestigious Korean Music Awards for 2013, or the fact that she received the highest number of votes for the MAMA new artist award--by a margin of several million votes, etc., etc. Anyway, I don't really want to bash YG at all. But the frustration has been building for a while. And it bugs me that he almost never praises her publicly and (based on what Hayi has said herself recently) doesn't praise her in private either. She definitely deserves a lot of praise.

Maybe it's because YG himself comes from an idol group background, so all he really knows personally is the formula for promoting idol groups. It's bizarre though, because when you look at how much he invests in promoting and launching his groups, it's several multiples of the amount that he has ever invested in a solo performer. It's like a mental block and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like: "Solo artists don't earn as much as groups, so I won't make any serious investment in promoting any of my solo artists." Then of course the solo artist who gets a pre-release promotional effort of 1 or 2 weeks... surprise, surprise... doesn't get results as big as the group that has benefited from nonstop pre-release promotional efforts carried out for more than 1 year.

As an eternal optimist, I've been trying really hard to give him the benefit of the doubt. But now I'm starting to think that his goal is actually to keep Lee Hi from singing for her fans. He just does the bare minimum, so that fans keep thinking "oh, something is in the works" but then another long stretch of nothing. Just think of all of the beautiful songs that we could have been listening to during the past 2 years if she had been in a management company that truly valued her talent and wanted it to be shared with the public. Look at both IU and Ailee. They've not been overworked, but their management companies have supported them in having very regular and consistent activity from the beginning. I give 5 stars to IU's management company. I think they should be the model for the Kpop industry...a management company that actually is there for the artist, instead of the usual approach, where the artist is there for the management company (as in where YG only seems to remember Lee Hi when he wants to promote Kpop Star or wants to promote some pet project for YG).

Yes, Katie seems to be a genuinely humble, down-to-earth person. They would probably be good influences for each other. Jimin's new song does sound really good. I agree that it's her best so far and her vocals have more of an edge to them this time around, which make them more interesting to listen to. She's always been a really good singer, but previously her voice didn't really stand out in a distinct way when compared to a dozen or so other really good singers who have the same style of singing. So this song seems to indicate that she's developing something more distinctive in her vocal coloring and that's quite promising. Sort of related, though, I'm starting to see comments again from a few Jimin fans to the effect that the only reason that Lee Hi has been so popular is due to YG's "better promotion" (cue bitter, sardonic laughter). As anyone who has followed Lee Hi's career closely knows, YG's promotional efforts for Lee Hi have been a bad joke. She got no more (and, from what I've seen, even less) promotional support than 15& have gotten. Kang Seung Yoon (now in Winner) got almost exactly the same promotional package for his solo debut from YG that Lee Hi did. The only difference is that Lee Hi hit a home run with the bases loaded when she came out with her first single (1234) and then hit a home run with each new title song release afterwards (It's Over and Rose). It's due to 1234 being at the top of all major charts for almost a month (in no small part thanks to the fact that Lee Hi was already immensely popular in Korea even before she joined YG) that she won a triple crown on M-Countdown and multiple trophies on Inkigayo, etc., etc. That, and her follow-up hits, also led to several Rookie of the Year awards and so on. It's those follow-on activities that were due to her success on the charts that people misattribute to YG's "great promotional efforts." In fact, YG was just doing the minimum you would expect from a management company for an artist who had topped the charts three times in a row. (YG in fact actually prevented her from attending some very prominent award shows.)

I think you're right. I don't recall any instance where she actually said that she didn't want to be solo. At the very earliest stages in YG when she was scheduled to debut as a solo singer and also separately participate in Supearls (which didn't materialize for reasons unrelated to Lee HI's debut), she did say that she regretted that Supearls didn't work out because she liked the group activity and how the members have different strengths and can compensate for each others' weaknesses. IIRC, that's as far as her comments went in that regard. As you mentioned, I don't think she ever said that she wanted to stop being a solo singer.

Really can't wait for the collaboration with Katie. I hope they picked a fantastic song that will be perfect for them. Knowing Lee Hi's tendency to be a perfectionist and the fact that they both seem to have really thoughtful and considerate personalities, I'm pretty sure it will be a winner. It seems like their voices should be quite complementary too.

I think it is possible that the toy collection in his office may be indicative of a general tendency or orientation that he has -- maybe just one manifestation of a pattern that runs through everything else. ;-) I keep trying to give YHS the benefit of the doubt, and I know there are people that say that his intention is for her comeback to be as impactful as possible, so he's not rushing it. But it seems like there are a lot of relatively easy, inexpensive things that he could be doing for her (or just letting her do) in the meantime for her to keep in touch with fans and building her fan base. I can't help it. But whenever she's out of sight and there's no news at all about her for months at a time, I start to worry. "What's happening in the dungeon? Should we put out a missing person report? Has she been abducted by space aliens? Just a little youtube every month with her covering a song or something would be enough to let me know she's okay.

The announcement today is great for BB fans. But it really leaves Hayi's fans still in the dark wondering if we'll ever get to hear her singing on a fairly regular basis, or if YG is just going to let her make one or two appearances on Kpop Star and maybe just one or two "unit" collaborations every year. I know in the past year, each individual member of BB had a lot of solo activity. (GD's album, Taeyang's album, Seungri's album, Top's single plus movie roles, Daesung's album (in Japan), etc.) Now it looks like 5 months of BB group activity. I'm starting to wonder how YG's management approach is going to work in the future without overlapping activity periods. If 2NE1 does both group and individual activities too, and then you add in Psy, Epik High, Winner, Ikon, AKMU, new girl group and...the one I'm most interested in, Lee Hi...it seems like the "down time" between album promotions is going to be several years and everything, as usual, will just depend on what Yang Hyun Seok is personally interested in at the moment. And I'm sure the new groups (Winner, Ikon, new GG) will also want to have individual solo activities too at some point. YG is really going to have to come up with a new approach. Just for starters, he should start allowing more collaborations with other artists, really nice youtube videos (like black and white studio performances) of YG artists doing different versions/remakes of their own songs and covers of other songs and other such things. Maybe he's got it all figured out and everything will work out fine the way it is. But to me, keeping a talented singer like Lee Hi out of sight and out of contact with fans for something like 340 or 350 days out of the year, every year, for 2 to 3 years at a time doesn't seem like a good management approach. Ideally, the artists should be in control of their careers and the management companies should be seen as the managers/agents hired by the artists (based on commissions) to help the artists. But in reality this has been turned on its head, so that the management companies have total control. They can collect artists like toys and choose to display them or stick them in a corner and just let them collect dust and there's no accountability. I'm sure the contract provisions are totally one-sided.

Without being an insider, it's of course impossible to know what exactly happened behind the scenes in 2014. But I suspect that there probably was no problem on the Lee Hi side of things. I think it was more likely that the amount of time and focus that YG put into launching the new boy groups ended up being a huge amount more than YG initially planned. After investing so much on promotion, including the creation of weekly TV shows (running for almost a year if you count WIN, Winner TV and then Mix & Match...and probably iKon TV in the future), YG probably got into a situation where there was no way he could afford to have just so-so results when Winner debuted and then doubled the promotional effort, training and polishing in order to be as close to 100% sure of success as possible. As a result, there simply was not enough time in 2014 left over to really focus on Lee Hi's album or give Lee Hi a proper promotional period (and anything less than proper promotion would rightly be seen as an insult to Lee HI and her fans). I'm pretty sure that a huge amount of promotional effort is yet to come for iKon this year. I'm just hoping that it will be balanced and Lee Hi won't again be left in the shadows, while all attention focuses on iKon for another 6 months or so, followed by a Winner comeback. If Lee Hi keeps getting pushed aside while YG focuses hugely on the new boy groups (with a new girl group to come), I'll really be... @!##%&%^!!! Just a guess, but I've noticed that YG likes to link the Kpopstar alumni (Lee Hi and AKMU) promotions to the Kpopstar program. For example, last year, the timing of AKMU's debut and promotion was scheduled so that they could perform their song "Melted" toward the end of the Kpopstar season. Maybe this year will be Lee Hi's turn...so springtime would be a good bet.

Yes, all I can really do is stay hopeful I guess. At least the last couple of months we've been able to see more of her than we have in a long, long time. I'm hoping that this will continue and build up to a comeback in the near future.

Where did you hear that news?

What?? A Winner comeback before Lee Hi gets a comeback? For all practical purposes, they're still actively promoting anyway. And Ikon has had more promotional effort, activity and attention from yang before their debut than Hi ever got during her debut and first album promotions (or during her entire time at YG for that matter). BB may not have been active a lot as a group this past year, but each of the individual members released albums and promoted (and TOP's been doing his movie stuff) I'm happy for their fans. But I'm really losing my patience with yang goon. It is starting to look like Hi Suhyun was just his way of saying "look I did something for Hi" before he puts her in the dungeon for another year or two. It's like he's on a personal mission to actually prevent her from singing songs for her fans -- to the full extent that he thinks he can get away with it without looking totally insane. It's like he's thinking: "Hey, maybe if I isolate her from her fans long enough and keep her public performances to an absolute minimum for several years, they'll forget that she was one of the most massively popular debuting solo artists in recent K-pop history and they'll start thinking that there's something wrong with her, instead of realizing that there's actually something wrong with me."

http://channel.pandora.tv/channel/video.ptv?c1=01&ch_userid=sis9591&prgid=51715847&ref=da Lee Hi's "Let It Be" I reeeaaally want to hear the full song from her sometime.

http://channel.pandora.tv/channel/video.ptv?ch_userid=sis9591&prgid=51715784&categid=34560430&page=1&ref=ch&lot=cthum2_1_1 Lee Hi & AKMU on Healing Camp Can't stop replaying this. (I hope the link works. You have to sit through an advertisement before it plays.)

(YG seems to have a thing for putting her in red outfits every December. I remember the red outfits that she had in her 1234 performances in December 2012. Then the red dress she had in her Gayo Daejun performance of Rose in December last year. Now this fire engine red outfit this year. ) Funny thing is I so often see the informal fan pics taken of her in other settings (i.e. not formal stage appearances) and her styling is so great. But for her formal performance appearances, it seems to be going 50/50. About half the time, it seems like the stylist is working for Hi...and the other half of the time it's like the stylist is consciously trying to hide Hi's amazing cuteness and beauty. Maybe the stylist has been told that she has to do that out of courtesy to the other performers, so that Hi's cuteness doesn't dominate everything. :o)

There's nothing on the YG LIFE site. And my guess is that there would at least be one of those little announcement boxes there if it was for real. It's hard to believe that they would just launch a single without any kind of notice to fans whatsoever.

I went back and watched the "Lee Hi focus" version of "Let It Go" and I've got to say...her singing performance in that was pretty much flawless. Her harmonies, cascading ad-libs and belts were fantastic. I know there are some people who criticize the arrangement as a whole, but that wasn't really her doing. She was just "featuring" for the boys on her team and I love the way she handled her lines.