“Ice Cream” by Jeon So Mi (전소미), Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Ennik Somi Douma, known professionally by her Korean name, Jeon Somi (저소미), was born in Canada to a German-Dutch Canadian and a Korean mother. Somi’s parents moved back to Korea when she was a toddler. Her father had met her mother while he was studying taekwondo in Seoul. The two married and moved to Canada until her mother experienced homesickness for her home country. Life in a mostly homogeneous country wasn’t easy for Somi, though. Like her father, she began studying taekwondo. She decided to study in an elementary school that allowed her to study the martial art. Being of mixed ethnicity, Somi experienced bullying and discrimination. Her dream of becoming a singer began after watching Rihanna’s music video for “Don’t Stop the Music.” When she was nine, she got into Korean pop, particularly admiring Park Bom of 2NE1.

YEAH, I’M SWEET AS SHIT. Jeon Somi had early exposure to appearing on television and performing. She made her first television appearance when she was four. KBS interviewed her father who had helped clear the neighborhood after a snowstorm. Local viewers, however, loved seeing his little helper, four-year-old Somi. Jeon had many opportunities to perform in school, from student music videos to taekwondo performances. She and her sister even appeared in the 2014 drama, Ode to My Father, as the role called for biracial children. In 2015, Somi was accepted into JYP Entertainment’s trainee program. Later that year, she was part of the Mnet talent survival show Sixteen, competing for a spot in Twice, finishing tenth, two spots below the cut-off point. The next year, though, she participated in another survival competition, Produce 101, where she placed number 1, securing a spot in the girl group I.O.I. The group was active until January 2017, and Somi signed a solo contract with JYP; however, she left the label under a mutual agreement the next year.

IF YOU BITE ME, BRAIN FREEZE. Since 2018, Jeon Somi has been releasing music on The Black Label, a sublabel of YG Entertainment. The label was founded by Teddy Park (박홍준), writer/ producer of some of YG’s biggest acts from BIGBANG to BLACKPINK. Teddy is perhaps best known for bringing American-style R&B and pop-accessible hip-hop into K-pop. Park spent his formative years in New York City before returning to Seoul to form the hip-hop group 1TYM. The group was active between 1998 and 2006, but when they went on hiatus, Teddy stepped behind the soundboards and eventually became the in-house producer at YG Entertainment. In 2016, he founded The Black Label. The label functions mostly symbiotically with its parent label, focusing more on solo artists than groups. Zion.T, BLACKPINK’s Rosé, Taeyang, and Jeon Somi, are some of the biggest acts that the label has managed. Somi hasn’t released a lot of music, but with Teddy’s production, she achieved her greatest level of solo success. Her latest single, “Ice Cream,” is a sweltering doo-wop track punctuated with New Orleans, Dixieland Jazz, and a modern beat. Lyrically, the provocative nature of ice cream seems similar to a 2020 song also produced by Teddy and also called “Ice Cream.” BLACKPINK and Selena Gomez’s track musically sounds very different from Somi’s 2024 track, but the lyrical tropes of comparing ice cream to love or sex feel less than original. But let’s stop complaining. After all, there’s never too much ice cream.
 

Read “Ice Cream” by JEON SOMI (전소미) on Genius.